Introducing the Rescue Mission History Project & Podcast

Deepen your understanding of the history of the movement.

Jul 15, 2025

The theme of the Rescue Mission Report and Podcast is to bridge tradition with innovation. We believe it is essential to be grounded in the Biblical history and tradition of the movement before delving into innovations.

To deepen our understanding of history and tradition, City Vision University has launched a new initiative called The Rescue Mission History Project where we are compiling what we believe to be the most extensive digital library of history resources on the rescue mission movement. Because most of the recorded history of rescue missions is in out-of-print books, we have been collecting all the books we can find and digitizing them. There are four components of The Rescue Mission History Project:

The Rescue Mission History Project Webpage: Resources to Train Staff: This webpage pulls together all of these resources and explains how you can use them to train staff at your mission. We also provide our workshop Teaching Staff Core Values & Theology that explains how to implement this.
Rescue Mission Digital Books and Articles Archive contains free out-of-print books, articles and doctoral dissertations on the rescue mission movement.
Rescue Mission History NotebookLM. This is a free AI tool with most of the archive sources listed above. You can enter AI prompts as described here to have the AI produce research, papers and other output based on the archive.
The Rescue Mission Podcast Season 1 focuses on the history of the movement. We have taken the best of the materials in the books and articles archive into podcast episodes.

But, I Already Know the History of the Rescue Mission Movement

We have found that even those with decades of experience in the rescue mission movement are likely to learn a lot from our rescue mission history podcast. We help answer questions like:

Was the founder of the first rescue mission David Nasmith or Jerry McAuley?
What is the difference between a rescue mission and a city mission?
How does the rescue mission movement fit into the history of Christian parachurch charity over the past 2,000 years?
Who were some of the key women leaders in the rescue mission movement and what was their impact?

We believe that everyone can learn from this podcast. If you are a seasoned leader and already know much of the history, in addition to learning more, by listening to these episodes you will have a better understanding of how they could be helpful to share with your staff.

The City Mission Family Tree

As a part of this effort, we have developed what we are calling the City Mission Family Tree listing some key movements that have developed out of the broader City Mission movement. Because the YMCA is largely distinct from the City Mission movement, we did not include in this tree how David Naismith also formed the Young Men’s Society for Religious Improvement in 1824, which has been credited as the prototype for the YMCA founded by Sir George Williams in London in 1844.

How to Use this for Your Mission & Contribute to the History of the Movement

Given the impact that the rescue mission movement has had, it is surprising how poorly documented its history is. The reason is that too often those in the movement are too busy saving lives than to take the time to write a history about it. Having said that, our hope is that with AI tools and the Rescue Mission History Archive, we can help change that. Here are three ideas of ways you can use this for your mission:

Assign Staff the Role of Resident Historian. Our hope is that every large mission would appoint someone to be their “resident historian” to help continue to document their mission’s history and also contribute to the larger history of the movement. It is fairly easy these days for missions to assign this task to their Communications Director, who could add their newsletters, annual reports and other key documents to NotebookLM to have it help update the organization’s history. You can view more about this vision in our lecture Building a Vibrant Culture in Organizations & Movements to Navigate Transitions. This lecture is a part of our course MIN640: Aligning Strategy with Theology and Values, which could be very helpful for anyone with an interest in rescue mission values and history.
Write/Update the History of your Mission for its Founding Anniversary. A major anniversary of your mission’s founding is the most common time for missions to write or update their history, usually in a book. This can often be integrated into a fundraising campaign: both as a gift to donors and as a specific request to help fund the documentation of the mission’s history. With the Rescue Mission History Archive and AI tools, you can both more quickly integrate your history with the larger movement history as well as translate the history into podcasts, videos and other media.
Contribute to the Larger History of the Movement. If you or your mission has any valuable books or other history documents that you might want to add to the Rescue Mission History Project, please let us know by sending an email to partnerships@cityvision.edu. You can see which books we already have and the current state of our digitization process in our Rescue Mission Book Catalog.

You can see our Citygate 2025 Workshop “Teaching Staff Core Values and Theology” on how these tools can be used below.

CVU’s Rescue Mission Report: Bridging Innovation & Tradition

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