25 彼を伝道者として覚えよ♪

1865年5月25日 は、YMCAの指導者ジョン・モットの生まれた日♪

1910年撮影

ジョン・ローリー・モットは、ニューヨーク州のリヴィングストンマナの農園で生まれた。16歳で家族から離れ、アイオワ大学、ニューヨーク州コーネル大学に進む。在学中の夏期学校で、ドワイト・ムーディーやA・T・ピアソンの説教を聴き献身を決意♪

1889年にコーネル大学を卒業したモットは、YMCAの働きを中心として、世界の学生キリスト教運動や世界教会運動の指導者として活躍する。1910年エディンバラで開催された世界宣教会議も主導した。

1913年に来日、日本の教会指導者達に協同伝道を提案し、2万円（現在の価値で1200万円程）を寄付した。日本の教会はこれを受けて「全国伝道」を計画し、1914年から実施され、777,000人の会衆を動員して、27,000人の決心者を生み出し、大正期の日本の教会は一気に飛躍した。

1946年撮影

合計10回来日し、1929年に日本政府から勲一等瑞宝章を送られる♪　また1946年に、非武装論者のE・G・バルクと共にノーベル平和賞を受賞♪　89歳で世界教会会議に出席し、「ジョン・モットが死んだら彼を伝道者として記憶せよ！」と宣言した♪

John Raleigh Mott (May 25, 1865 – January 31, 1955) was a long-serving leader of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for his work in establishing and strengthening international Protestant Christian student organizations that worked to promote peace. He shared the prize with Emily Balch. From 1895 until 1920 Mott was the General Secretary of the WSCF. Intimately involved in the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948, that body elected him as a lifelong honorary President. His best-known book, The Evangelization of the World in this Generation, became a missionary slogan in the early 20th century.

Mott was born in Livingston Manor, New York, Sullivan County, New York on May 25, 1865, and his family moved to Postville, Iowa in September of the same year. He attended Upper Iowa University, where he studied history and was an award-winning student debater. He transferred to Cornell University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1888. He was influenced by Arthur Tappan Pierson one of the forces behind the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, which was founded in 1886. Mott married Leila Ada White (1866-1952) in 1891 and had two sons and two daughters.

In 1910, Mott, an American Methodist layperson, presided at the 1910 World Missionary Conference, which was an important milestone in the modern Protestant missions movement and some say the modern ecumenical movement.

Mott and a colleague were offered free passage on the Titanic in 1912 by a White Star Line official who was interested in their work, but they declined and took the more humble liner the SS Lapland. According to a biography by C. Howard Hopkins, upon hearing of the news in New York, the two men looked at each other and remarked that, "The Good Lord must have more work for us to do."[2]

After touring Europe and promoting ecumenism, Mott traveled to Asia where, from October 1912 to May 1913, he held a series of 18 regional and national conferences, including in Ceylon, India, Burma, Malaya, China, Korea and Japan.[3]

He also worked with Robert Hallowell Gardiner III to maintain relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, and Archbishops Tikhon after the Russian Revolution.

From 1920 until 1928, Mott served as the WSCF Chairperson. For his labors in both missions and ecumenism, as well as for peace, some historians consider him to be "the most widely traveled and universally trusted Christian leader of his time".[4]