Here's How InterVarsity Got Started, Roots and All

InterVarsity is people—students and staff members working in partnership. InterVarsity is people proclaiming and demonstrating the truth of the gospel in all sectors of college and university campuses, students of all ethnicity, to Americans and internationals, to commuter students and dorm students, to engineering students and psychology majors. InterVarsity is a college movement, which has a vision for engaging campuses across the United States with a strong on-going witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Our origins as a campus movement began with students at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1877. Some Christian students, in spite of the disapproval of many influential people at the University, began to meet together to pray, to study the Bible and to witness to fellow students. From the very beginning they had a strong concern for world missions—to take the gospel to those who had never heard it—a concern that continues in InterVarsity today.

In 1928, the British InterVarsity fellowship sent Howard Guinness, a medical school graduate and vice-chairman of the movement, to Canada in response to a plea for help in starting similar groups there.

Students helped raise the money to provide one-way passage to Canada. Between bouts of seasickness, Guinness led his cabin mate to Christ during the crossing. As God supplied the funds, he slowly worked his way across Canada, starting up and assisting evangelical student groups.

By 1937 the Canadians began to hear requests for help from students in the United States, as independent evangelical student groups began springing up. In 1938, Stacey Woods, the Canadian InterVarsity director, met with students on the University of Michigan campus. As an immediate result of that visit, students formed the first United States chapter.

In 1939, InterVarsity Canada appointed three staff members to work in the United States. Then in May 1941, IVCF-USA officially began. Students actively seeking to represent Christ on their campuses were joined by itinerant staff members who aided them in evangelism.

Student initiative and leadership have been woven into the structure of InterVarsity throughout our history. Students are insiders on campus. They know their school and understand other students. They have a unique opportunity and responsibility to be Christ’s ambassadors where they are.

Missionaries call this the “indigenous principle.” In any environment, the people living and working there have the most effective witness to those around them. Missiologists have learned that missionaries should go as servants and partners in ministry with the aim of training local leadership, not dominating but enabling the indigenous people to do the work of ministry. Thus the role of an InterVarsity staff member is very much that of a modern missionary. Students are the local leadership with the insights and contacts crucial to the campus. Staff are there to support the students, and to partner in the work of God on campus.

For more than 60 years, students have received the message of God’s grace and truth through fellow students who have carried on the ministry of InterVarsity to the campus world.

—Adapted by Judy Johnson, InterVarsity Director of Staff Assessment and Development