Students Making a Difference

Students, whose commitment to be redemptive change agents in society was shaped during their college years, will be featured in this section. Check back often as this section grows with the addition of new stories.

In the 20th Century & Before

In 1914 James Yen became a Christian in rural southwest China, thanks to China Inland missionaries. Cultivated under the influence of a godly YMCA worker and deeply moved by the suffering of poor, illiterate Chinese people whom he met while on a summer internship in France, Yen later received his Bachelor's at Yale, and then his Master's at Princeton.

As soon as he returned to China in 1921, Yen immediately became a leader in the Mass Education Movement, where thousands of Chinese intellectuals, many of them Christians, went out to the countryside to teach literacy to the masses. He later founded the Rural Reconstruction Movement which had phenomenal success in changing the culture of one region in China. In 1950, LIFE magazine listed him as one of the 10 most significant people in the world during the first half of the 20th century. Conservatively, he impacted the lives of 50 million Chinese, and, beyond that, 300 million people around the world. He died in 1990 in New York City, virtually unknown to the rest of the world.

He was a Christ-animated redemptive change agent, and today we hope to pick up his legacy among the 700,000 international students in North America, and the millions of American students coming out of our churches.