Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

Near the haystack monument, there is a bronze plaque with these words.

On this site in the shelter of a haystack, during a summer storm in 1806, five Williams College students

dedicated their lives to the spread of the church around the globe. Out of their decision,

grew the American Foreign Mission Movement. And on the monument itself is inscribed these words, the field is the world.

All right, there is definitely a good story here, so let's dive in.

So we know this is on the campus of Williams College.

Williams College is near Williamstown, Massachusetts.

It was founded in 1793, so it's relatively young.

And we know when it occurred.

We know that it occurred during a summer storm in 1806.

It was a Saturday afternoon.

And these five students were standing there discussing missions when all of a sudden a storm

came upon them and they took shelter in the haystack.

This was also during the early days of the Second Great Awakening, and that movement began on college campuses.

Campuses like Williams, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Middlebury, Union College, and Princeton.

Now, who were these five students? And you know we love the number five here at Five Minutes in Church History.

We have Samuel Mills, James Richards, Francis Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green. Samuel Mills emerged as one of the

leaders of this group. He was born in 1783. He graduated from Williams in 1609, and he graduated

from Andover Seminary in 1812. One of the things he did that was very crucial at Williams before he graduated

was he and the other four formed a religious society they called the Society of the Brethren.

Its purpose was, quote, to effect in the persons of its members a mission to the heathen.

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