A Brief Overview of the Christian Endeavor Society

It was a bitterly cold day in Williston, Maine, with snow covering the ground and icicles hanging from the eaves, but still around sixty young people showed up that Sunday night in February 1881. This was the regular youth meeting in the home of the pastor, Dr. Francis E. Clark. After a little general conversation as to the importance of starting right, or working for the Church, and of showing one’s colours for Christ on all occasions, Dr. Clark with, as later admitted, ‘a good deal of hesitation, ’ produced a constitution, the germs of which had lain in his mind for a long while, but which he had written out for the first time that day. It proposed that the society should be called the ‘Williston Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour.’ Its object was declared to be ‘to promote the earnest Christian life among its members, to increase their mutual acquaintance, and to make them more useful in the service of God.