The Rescue Mission Movement: A Case Study in Revival as Systemic Change

Introduction: Framing Revivals as Systemic Change

The Gospel Rescue Mission movement, a defining feature of American urban social outreach for over 150 years, was not a spontaneous or isolated development. Its emergence is best understood as an emergent property of a complex system that was fundamentally reshaped by the religious upheavals of the First and Second Great Awakenings. The movement’s genesis offers a compelling case study in how profound social change cascades across interconnected spheres, originating in the deeply personal realm of individual belief and culminating in the establishment of enduring institutions. This report will argue that the rescue mission was the beneficiary of a century-long systemic transformation driven by revivalist theology.

To analyze this complex historical process, this report will employ the Spheres of System Change model as shown in the diagram below, an analytical framework that illuminates the multiple dimensions in which change occurs and how these dimensions dynamically interact.¹ The model posits that for change to become systemic, it must manifest across various spheres, including the Internal (beliefs, attitudes, worldviews), Cultural (shared societal beliefs and behaviors), Infrastructural (the systems and institutions that structure society), and Organizational (the specific entities that operate within the system).¹ This framework moves beyond simplistic, linear narratives of cause and effect, encouraging an appreciation for the “networks of cause and effect” that produce both social problems and their solutions.² It recognizes that the most visible changes in a system are invariably underpinned by shifts in the “mindsets, beliefs and worldviews” of its participants.³

This analysis will trace the causal chain that connects revivalism to the rescue mission. It will begin by examining how the Great Awakenings revolutionized the Internal and Cultural spheres of American life, creating a new kind of Protestant Christian animated by a powerful sense of personal agency and a divine mandate for social reform. It will then demonstrate how this new cultural energy drove the creation of a new social infrastructure—a network of voluntary mission societies designed to channel revivalist zeal into concrete action. Finally, the report will show how this new context empowered a generation of “foot soldiers,” individuals with profound personal transformation stories, to leverage the new infrastructure and create a novel organizational form—the Gospel Rescue Mission—uniquely suited to address the spiritual and material crises of the 19th-century American city.

The Engine of Change: Revivalism and the Transformation of the Internal and Cultural Spheres

The Great Awakenings were, first and foremost, revolutions in the Internal and Cultural spheres of American society. They fundamentally altered the “mental models” of Protestantism, changing how individuals understood God, themselves, and their role in the world.³ This transformation of belief and worldview created the immense potential energy that would later power the creation of new institutions and organizations.

The First Great Awakening (c. 1730s-1750s): A Revolution in Piety and Polity

The First Great Awakening erupted into a colonial religious landscape characterized by declining church attendance, spiritual complacency, and a prevailing “arid rationalism”.⁵ The established churches, whether Congregationalist in New England or Anglican in the South, were often marked by a formalism that left many colonists spiritually unfulfilled. The system was stable but stagnant, ripe for disruption.

The revivalists shattered this stasis by shifting the very foundation of religious life. At the core of this disruption was a profound change in the Internal Sphere . The preaching of figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield rejected the idea of a corporate, inherited, or purely intellectual faith, demanding instead an intensely personal, emotional, and experiential conversion.⁷ The central message was the necessity of a “new birth,” a direct and sensible experience of divine grace that authenticated one’s status as a true Christian.⁵ This powerful idea moved the locus of religious authority from the external institution of the church to the internal state of the individual’s heart. This new piety was theologically grounded in a revitalized and popularly accessible form of Reformed theology, emphasizing God’s absolute sovereignty, humanity’s dependence on divine grace, and the covenantal nature of the relationship between God and the believer.⁵

This internal revolution had immediate and dramatic consequences in the Cultural Sphere . The most significant was the democratization of American religion. The revivalists’ emphasis on personal experience as the ultimate test of faith directly challenged the spiritual authority of the established, university-trained clergy, who became known as “Old Lights”.⁹ In their place rose the “New Lights”—itinerant preachers like Whitefield, who preached to massive crowds in open fields, and a host of lay exhorters who felt called by the Spirit to share their testimony.⁶ This new model of ministry empowered a wide range of people who had previously been excluded from religious leadership, including women, African Americans, and poor, uneducated men, to preach and participate actively in religious life, thereby subverting traditional social and ecclesiastical hierarchies.⁷

This democratization was fueled by a new sense of spiritual egalitarianism. The revivalist message—that all people, regardless of gender, race, or status, were sinners in need of salvation and equal before God—began to break down social barriers within religious gatherings.⁷ White and Black colonists, free and enslaved, began to worship together in unprecedented ways, and the religious experiences of African Americans were taken seriously, with some being admitted to active roles as deacons and even preachers.⁷ While the Awakening did not produce a widespread anti-slavery movement, it planted the seeds of human dignity and equality before God that would bear fruit in later generations.¹⁰ Furthermore, the very act of questioning religious authority and separating from established churches to form new, independent congregations provided a powerful cultural script for challenging civil authority. This experience helped forge the ideological tools and the spirit of resistance that would later be deployed in the American Revolution.⁵

The Second Great Awakening (c. 1795-1835): From Personal Salvation to Societal Perfection

If the First Great Awakening established the primacy of personal conversion, the Second Great Awakening inherited this principle and supercharged it with a new theological engine that redirected its energy from personal piety toward societal transformation. This period witnessed another fundamental rewiring of the Internal Sphere , which in turn created a new and profoundly activist Cultural Sphere .

The most critical theological shift was the move away from the strict Calvinism that had influenced the First Great Awakening toward a more optimistic and practical Arminianism.¹¹ While the first revival emphasized God’s sovereign predestination, the second revival’s preachers stressed free will —the belief that individuals possessed the moral agency to choose salvation for themselves.¹³ This theological change dramatically elevated the role of the individual, transforming them from a passive recipient of irresistible grace into an active participant in their own redemption.¹² This empowerment resonated powerfully with the democratic ethos of the new American republic, which celebrated the capacity of individuals to decide their own political and personal destinies.¹³

This newfound sense of individual agency was given a clear and urgent purpose by another dominant theological current: postmillennialism. This was the belief that Christ would return to earth after a millennium of peace and righteousness, and that Christians therefore had a divine duty to purify society and build this kingdom of God on earth in preparation for His return.¹⁴ The combination of these two beliefs—free will and postmillennialism—was explosive. It created a generation of Protestants who believed not only that they could change, but that they must change the world around them.

This new internal reality gave birth to a new cultural ethos, which historians have termed the “benevolent empire”.¹⁶ Philanthropic activity and social reform became primary and expected expressions of one’s Christian faith.¹¹ The result was an explosion of voluntary benevolent societies, often interdenominational and led by ministers and middle-class women, dedicated to tackling the social ills of the day.¹⁶ These societies campaigned against intemperance, promoted education, distributed Bibles, and increasingly agitated for the abolition of slavery.¹² This cultural shift was particularly pronounced in the nation’s burgeoning urban centers. As industrialization and immigration created new and highly visible social problems—poverty, anonymity, crime, and what moralists saw as rampant vice—evangelical preachers and reformers felt a profound moral and spiritual obligation to intervene, providing order and solace to these rapidly changing communities.¹⁶ The city became the new frontier for Christian mission, the primary theater for the work of perfecting society. This theological evolution, from a focus on God’s agency to a focus on human agency directed toward social perfection, was the essential driver of the systemic changes that would follow. It provided both the immense power (a populace of newly empowered individuals) and the clear direction (a divine mandate for social reform) needed to build a new infrastructure for benevolence.

Building the “Benevolent Empire”: The Emergence of a New Infrastructural Sphere

The tremendous cultural and spiritual energy generated by the Second Great Awakening could not be contained within existing structures. The traditional parish church, often tied to a specific denomination and locality, was an insufficient vehicle for a national, reform-minded movement. This gap between impulse and implementation drove the creation of a new Infrastructural Sphere : a national network of formal, voluntary organizations designed to channel the revival’s energy into concrete, large-scale action.

The solution that emerged was the voluntary benevolent society, a new “social technology” perfectly suited to the era.¹² These organizations were typically interdenominational or non-denominational, focused on a single, specific mission, and capable of mobilizing people, funds, and literature on a national scale.¹⁸ They represented a structural innovation that allowed the principles of the Awakening to be put into practice far beyond the confines of any single congregation.

This new infrastructure developed in waves, adapting to the perceived needs of the nation. The first wave focused outward, driven by a global evangelistic impulse. The founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1810 by a group of convicted college students marked the beginning of organized American foreign missions.¹⁹ This was soon followed by the American Baptist Missionary Board in 1814 and numerous other societies that sent missionaries to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.¹⁹

The focus quickly turned inward as well, toward the vast, unchurched territories of the American frontier. Domestic mission societies became a powerful force in the nation’s westward expansion. The American Baptist Home Mission Society, founded in 1832 by John Mason Peck and Jonathan Going, exemplifies this effort. Its missionaries traveled thousands of miles on horseback, planting churches, establishing schools, and distributing Bibles to settlers in the Mississippi Valley and beyond.²¹ These societies, alongside their Methodist and Presbyterian counterparts, were instrumental in shaping the religious and social fabric of the American West.¹⁸

This missionary infrastructure was supported by a host of specialized organizations that provided critical resources. The American Bible Society, founded in 1816, aimed to place a Bible in every American home, while the American Sunday School Union, established in 1824, focused on the religious education of children.¹² Together, these foreign, domestic, and support societies formed a comprehensive and powerful infrastructure for disseminating evangelical Protestantism and its associated moral values throughout the nation and the world.

The Urban Focus: The City Mission as Infrastructural Adaptation

As the 19th century progressed, the focus of social concern began to shift from the rural frontier to the rapidly growing, industrializing, and increasingly diverse cities.¹⁶ The social problems of urban life—poverty, disease, overcrowding, and the social dislocation of immigrants—presented a new and urgent challenge to the “benevolent empire.” In response, the mission society model, which had been honed on the frontier, adapted to this new environment. This adaptation gave rise to the City Mission , a crucial specialization of the benevolent infrastructure and the direct institutional precursor to the Gospel Rescue Mission.²³

These new organizations were established with the explicit purpose of serving the spiritual and material needs of the urban poor. The New York City Mission and Tract Society, which began home visitations in the 1830s, and the Home Missionary Society of Philadelphia, organized in 1835, were pioneers in this field.²² Initially founded under Methodist-Episcopal auspices, the Philadelphia society became nonsectarian and focused on visiting the homes of the poor, particularly widowed mothers, to provide essential aid like food, coal, and funds.²²

These City Missions pioneered methods that would become the standard practice for urban ministry. They combined evangelistic preaching and the distribution of religious literature with the provision of direct material relief.²³ They established mission stations and community houses, and in some cases, provided care for impoverished children.²² They were recognized as key providers of social welfare services long before government agencies assumed such roles.²² This evolving infrastructure was an adaptive and enabling platform. The mission societies did not emerge fully formed but evolved in response to changing societal challenges. The initial impulse for evangelism was first channeled toward clear geographical targets—foreign nations and the American frontier—which established a scalable infrastructural template. As the locus of social crisis shifted to the city, this template was modified, narrowing its focus to the urban poor and broadening its methods to include holistic, material aid. This City Mission infrastructure did not, in itself, create the rescue mission. However, it created the necessary preconditions for its emergence. It established the legitimacy and the operational playbook for targeted, faith-based urban social work, creating a specific institutional niche that an innovator like Jerry McAuley could later occupy and radically transform.

The Foot Soldiers of Faith: Activating the Organizational Sphere

The systemic changes in the Internal, Cultural, and Infrastructural spheres created a fertile ground for new forms of social action. However, systems do not change on their own; they are changed by the actions of individuals. The final step in the causal chain leading to the Gospel Rescue Mission was the activation of the Organizational Sphere by a new type of religious actor: the “foot soldier” of faith, an individual whose own life was a testament to the revival’s transformative power and who felt a divine calling to minister to those trapped in the same circumstances from which they had been delivered.

The Archetype of the Converted: The Case of Jerry McAuley

The life of Jeremiah “Jerry” McAuley serves as the quintessential case study of this process, embodying the entire systemic cascade from social problem to organizational solution. His early life represented the very social ills that the City Mission movement sought to address. Born in Ireland, he was sent to New York City as a teenager and quickly fell into a life of crime and alcoholism in the notorious slums of Water Street, becoming a “river thief” and a “homeless, friendless, dying drunkard”.²⁴ Falsely convicted of robbery, he was sentenced to over 15 years in Sing Sing prison.²⁴

It was in prison that McAuley experienced the radical transformation of the Internal Sphere that was the hallmark of revivalism. He heard the testimony of Orville Gardner, a fellow criminal who had converted to Christianity, and was deeply moved.²⁴ After a period of intense spiritual struggle, reading the Bible and praying in his cell, McAuley experienced a dramatic conversion, feeling himself washed clean of his sins.²⁶ This was a classic “new birth” experience, a radical change in his internal condition and worldview that gave him a new purpose.

Upon his release, McAuley’s own past became his greatest asset. His “lived experience” of addiction, crime, and despair gave him a unique empathy for and credibility with the most downtrodden members of society.²⁸ In the language of systems change, he was not a well-meaning, middle-class reformer observing a problem from the outside; he was an “unlikely suspect” with deep, internal knowledge of the system he sought to change, making him a uniquely powerful agent.²⁹ His personal story was a living embodiment of the revivalist promise that no one was beyond the reach of God’s grace.

The Birth of the Rescue Mission: A New Organizational Model

McAuley did not act in a vacuum. He leveraged the existing Infrastructural Sphere . After his release from prison, he was befriended and encouraged by Water Street missionaries like Henry Little, and he found a crucial benefactor in Alfrederick Smith Hatch, a wealthy banker who provided both financial support and the building for his new venture.²⁴ McAuley operated within the context of the City Mission movement, but he pushed its boundaries to create something new.

In October 1872, Jerry and his wife Maria—a former prostitute who had also experienced a dramatic conversion—opened the “Helping Hand for Men” at 316 Water Street.²⁴ This event marks the crystallization of a new Organizational form: the Gospel Rescue Mission.³¹ This new model was distinguished by several key characteristics that set it apart from existing charities.

First, it had a radical focus on a specific target population: the “unworthy poor”.²⁵ McAuley and his successor, S.H. Hadley, explicitly sought out the people other organizations often overlooked or deemed hopeless: chronic alcoholics, ex-convicts, thieves, and prostitutes.²⁵ This was a disruptive innovation that aimed to serve those who had fallen through every other social safety net.

Second, its methodology was a unique synthesis of radical hospitality and intense, testimony-based evangelism. Every person who came to the mission was offered food, coffee, and a place to sleep, no questions asked.²⁶ But the ultimate goal was not mere relief; it was total life transformation. As McAuley envisioned it, he would “clean them up on the outside, and the Lord washed them inside”.²⁷ The centerpiece of the mission’s work was the nightly prayer meeting, where the primary “sermon” was the raw, emotional testimony of men and women who had been saved from the depths of degradation.²⁵

Third, and most critically, its leadership and staff were composed of the very people it sought to help. The use of converted individuals as the primary agents of change created a self-replicating model. The story of S.H. Hadley, who arrived at the mission as a “dying drunkard” in 1882, experienced a dramatic conversion, and eventually became its celebrated superintendent, was the mission’s core “technology”.²⁵ The rescue mission was an organization run by the rescued, for the purpose of rescue. This created a powerful feedback loop and a culture of profound empathy and understanding.

The success of McAuley’s model was immediate and profound, and it quickly spread. His work inspired the founding of over 300 similar rescue missions across the United States.²⁴ Later, prominent revivalists like Billy Sunday would make the founding of rescue missions a key outcome of their city-wide crusades, often leaving their final night’s offering as seed money to start a mission if one did not already exist.³³ This explicitly linked the energy of mass revivalism directly to this new organizational form. The Gospel Rescue Mission succeeded and replicated because it was a perfectly adapted solution to a specific systemic problem. It filled a gap in the existing benevolent infrastructure by creating a new organizational model that was uniquely tailored to both the worldview of its founders—the revivalist belief in radical, instantaneous transformation—and the acute needs of its clients. It was the final, tangible, organizational output of the systemic changes that had begun in the Internal Sphere over a century earlier.

Decline in Western Christianity

The powerful systemic current that flowed from the Great Awakenings, transforming individual beliefs into a potent force for social and organizational change, appears in the 21st century to be operating in reverse. The cultural energy that once fueled a “benevolent empire” is dissipating, leading to a cascade of negative effects across the cultural, political, and internal spheres. This reversal threatens the very foundations that supported the rise of ministries like the Gospel Rescue Mission.

The Fading of Christian Culture

The most significant reversal is occurring in the Cultural Sphere , where Christianity’s influence on shared societal beliefs and behaviors has markedly declined. Data from multiple sources shows a steady decrease in religious affiliation and practice. In the early 2000s, 42% of U.S. adults attended religious services weekly or almost weekly; by the early 2020s, that figure had dropped to 30%.³⁵ This decline is driven by a sharp increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans—the “nones”—which grew from 9% of the population to 21% in the same period.³⁶ The percentage of Americans identifying as Christian fell from 78% in 2007 to 62% in 2024.³⁷ For every person who converts to Christianity, six former Christians leave the faith.³⁷

This cultural shift is not merely a statistical curiosity; it represents a fundamental change in the shared “mental models” of society. Reasons for disaffiliation are varied, but a growing number cite the church’s negative teachings on social issues, clergy sexual abuse scandals, and an increasing perception that churches have become too focused on politics.³⁹ This phenomenon, where the church begins to look more like the surrounding culture than a reflection of scriptural values, is often described as “cultural captivity”.⁴⁰ Instead of transforming the culture, the church is being transformed by it, adopting prevailing attitudes of individualism, materialism, and political partisanship.⁴⁰

The Political Sphere: Polarization and Hostility

The decline in the Cultural Sphere is both a cause and a consequence of changes in the Political Sphere . American society has become increasingly entrenched in partisan political divides, and this polarization has profoundly affected faith communities.⁴² As Christianity has become more closely aligned with right-wing conservatism and the Republican Party, it has alienated many who hold different political views.⁴³ Research shows that young Americans who lean Democratic are more likely to disaffiliate from religion after being exposed to pastors endorsing conservative candidates or politicians making Christian nationalist statements.⁴³ This has led to a stark political sorting, where only 37% of U.S. liberals identify as Christian, down from 62% in 2007.³⁸

This dynamic creates a form of cultural captivity within political tribes, where one’s partisan identity can supersede one’s religious identity.⁴⁴ Churches are becoming more politically homogenous, creating “red” and “blue” congregations with fewer opportunities for dialogue across political lines.⁴² This environment not only drives people away from the church but also fosters increased political hostility toward Christian worldviews. The rise of an organized secular movement, which often opposes what it sees as religious overreach in politics, further challenges the public role of faith-based approaches to social problems.⁴⁵

The Dwindling of the “Foot Soldiers”

The negative feedback loop between the Cultural and Political spheres has had a profound impact on the Internal Sphere , leading to a decline in the number and zeal of the “foot soldiers” who historically powered faith-based movements. This decline can be attributed to three interconnected trends:

The Deconstruction of Mental Models: A growing number of believers are engaging in “faith deconstruction,” a process of systematically re-examining, questioning, and often rejecting the beliefs they grew up with.⁴⁶ This critical dismantling of core tenets can erode the certainty and zeal that characterized earlier revival movements.⁴⁷ The very concept of “missions,” once a powerful mobilizing idea, may be deconstructed into a more utilitarian or even problematic framework, replacing passionate sacrifice with a more mercenary or skeptical mentality.
The Rise of Affluent, Secularly-Trained Christians: The social profile of American Christianity is changing. Younger generations of evangelicals are closing the social class gap with mainline denominations, becoming more educated and affluent.⁴⁸ This shift creates a different kind of “foot soldier.” Unlike Jerry McAuley, who came from the population he served, today’s volunteers are more likely to be professionals engaging in a “ministryto the poor” rather than a “ministry of the poor.” While well-intentioned, this approach can lack the profound empathy and counter-cultural witness of those with shared lived experience. Greater affluence also introduces more lifestyle options—from youth sports to travel—that compete with deep engagement in church and ministry.⁵⁰
Weakened Resistance to Secularization: As Christians become more educated in secular institutions and integrated into affluent subcultures, their worldview is increasingly shaped by values that may conflict with traditional Christian teachings.⁵¹ This can weaken the counter-cultural mental models necessary to resist the pressure to conform to a secularizing society. When the church itself is in “cultural captivity,” prioritizing materialism, individualism, and political power, it offers little to insulate its members from these same pressures, further diminishing the pool of individuals willing to make the radical sacrifices that defined the foot soldiers of the past.⁴⁰

Synthesis and Conclusion: The Systemic Legacy of Revivalism

The history of the Gospel Rescue Mission movement provides a powerful illustration of how systemic change unfolds across multiple, interconnected spheres over time. The movement was not the product of a single event or innovator but the culmination of a long cascade of change that began with a fundamental shift in the religious “mental models” of American society. By tracing this process through the Spheres of System Change model, a clear causal pathway emerges, linking the revival fires of the 18th century to the storefront missions of the 19th.

The Cascade of Change

The entire historical-systemic process can be summarized as a flow of influence that moved from the internal and intangible to the external and organizational:

Internal/Cultural Spheres: The First and Second Great Awakenings acted as the primary engine of change. They transformed the Internal Sphere by generating a new worldview based on personal conversion, individual agency (free will), and a divine mandate for social perfection (postmillennialism). This, in turn, reshaped the Cultural Sphere, creating a new societal ethos—the “benevolent empire”—where active social reform was a central expression of faith.
Infrastructural Sphere: This new cultural energy demanded new vehicles for its expression. The traditional church was insufficient for this national, reform-minded project, leading to the creation of a new social infrastructure. This took the form of national voluntary societies—for foreign missions, domestic missions, and Bible distribution—which eventually adapted to the urban crisis by creating the specialized City Mission. This infrastructure provided the template, the legitimacy, and the operational space for faith-based urban social work.
Organizational Sphere: Finally, individuals who were themselves products of this new system—people like Jerry McAuley, whose Internal Spheres had been radically transformed by revivalist conversion—leveraged the existing infrastructure to create a new, highly specialized organizational model. The Gospel Rescue Mission was a synthesis of revivalist theology and the founders’ own “lived experience” of the problems they sought to solve, resulting in an organization perfectly adapted to serve the most marginalized populations of the industrial city.

The following table provides a concise summary of how the two Great Awakenings drove these changes across the key spheres, culminating in the organizational context that gave birth to the rescue mission movement.

Table 1: Mapping the Impact of the Great Awakenings Across the Spheres of System Change

Sphere of Change	Impact of the First Great Awakening (c. 1730s-1750s)	Impact of the Second Great Awakening (c. 1795-1835)
Internal	Shift to personal, emotional, experiential faith.⁷ Emphasis on individual conversion over tradition. Revitalized Calvinist theology.⁵	Shift to Arminian free will and postmillennialist theology.¹¹ Belief in human agency to choose salvation and perfect society.
Cultural	Democratization of religion, challenging established clerical authority.⁹ Rise of spiritual egalitarianism across class and race.⁷	Creation of the “benevolent empire” ethos.¹⁶ Social reform (temperance, abolition) becomes a central expression of Christian faith.¹²
Infrastructural	Founding of new colleges (e.g., Princeton) to train revivalist ministers.⁸ Growth of new denominations (Baptist, Methodist).⁷	Proliferation of national voluntary societies: Foreign Missions (ABCFM), Domestic Missions (ABHMS), Bible/Tract Societies, and the specialized City Mission.¹²
Organizational	Formation of itinerant preaching circuits and new, independent congregations separate from established churches.⁹	Enabled the founding of specific, targeted ministries like the Gospel Rescue Mission (1872), focused on the “unworthy poor” in urban centers.²⁴

Concluding Reflections

The systemic legacy of the Great Awakenings, as manifested in the Gospel Rescue Mission movement, offers enduring lessons about the nature of social innovation. It demonstrates that profound and lasting change is often the product of a deep and prior shift in the Internal Sphere—in the core beliefs, worldviews, and mental models of individuals. The Awakenings did not begin by designing new programs or policies; they began by offering a new way of understanding God and the self.

When this internal transformation becomes widespread enough to alter the Cultural Sphere, it creates a powerful demand for new structures and institutions. The “benevolent empire” and its network of mission societies were the necessary infrastructural response to a culture that now saw social action as a spiritual imperative. Finally, this analysis highlights the critical role of individuals with “lived experience” in activating change at the organizational level. The rescue mission was not conceived in a boardroom but was born from the painful and powerful experiences of its founders.

This historical trajectory affirms a central tenet of systems thinking: that change is a dynamic, two-way process, and that the most effective and sustainable solutions are often those that align the internal condition of individuals with the external structures of society.¹ The story of the rescue mission is a powerful testament to the idea that to truly change a system, one must often begin by changing the hearts and minds of the people within it.³⁴

This report was generated by Google Gemini 2.5 Deep Research using the prompt:
“Use the Spheres of System Change model from thinknpc.org to explain how the Gospel Rescue Mission movement largely grew out of the First and Second Great Awakening Revivals. Explain:

1. How revival changes the Cultural Sphere (shared societal beliefs and behaviors) and Internal Sphere (Beliefs, Attitudes, Worldview and Mental Models)
2. How that resulted in the establishment of new infrastructures (Foreign Missions Societies, Domestic Missions Societies and City Mission Societies) that provided the infrastructure that enabled the City Mission/Rescue Mission movement.
3. How the changes in the internal sphere resulted in a large number of Christians with zeal that created the “foot soldiers” that made the sacrifices to start individual missions (organizational spheres).”

Then, “Could you add a new section that explores whether the momentum from previous revivals may be now operating with a current in reverse. Explore:

1. How there has been a significant decline in the Cultural Sphere from a Christian perspective. Provide examples and references.
2. This has impacted the Political Sphere resulting in increasing political dysfunction and polarization. The polarization has resulted in forms of cultural captivity of Christians in both parties. There has also been increased political hostility toward Christian worldview and approaches.
3. There has been a decline in the number and zeal of “foot soldiers” from
    1) deconstruction of key mental models like the concept of missions that results in a more utilitarian mercenary mentality,
    2) Christians who are increasingly secularly trained and coming from affluent backgrounds more familiar with ministry to the poor rather than ministry of the poor,
    3) Affluent Christians often do not have the counter-cultural mental models needed to resist increasing pressure to secularize.”

It was reviewed and edited by Dr. Andrew Sears for accuracy.

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