With the start of a new year comes a favorite tradition at Wheaton Archives & Special Collections – taking a moment to look back at some of the fascinating “new” old materials that found their way to the Archives over the last year. Below is a review of selected highlights from the Archives’ 2025 acquisitions:

Evangelism & Missions Archives

Perhaps the most significant additions to the Evangelism & Missions Archives were the large accessions we received from evangelical foreign mission associations. SEND International (formerly Far Eastern Gospel Crusade), Crossworld (formerly Unevangelized Field Mission), The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), and SIM International are each multimillion dollar organizations that between them have thousands of workers on five continents. SIM, in particular, was born out of the merger of several different missions active in North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Together these mission organizations gave more than 100 linear feet of their files to the Archives (TEAM has been donating materials since 2022) with other large accessions from SIM expected in 2026. In addition, the family of John Gration, a missionary of Africa Inland Mission and long-time professor of missions at Wheaton College, gave his files on the history of AIM, including the manuscript of his dissertation. Together these different accessions give an extraordinarily detailed pictures of North American Protestant missions around the world in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Archives also received the papers of individual missionaries, sometimes from the missionaries themselves and sometimes from their relatives. These include the papers of workers in Cambodia, France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, India, Kenya, Philippines, Indonesia, Sudan, and Vietnam. At the very beginning of the year, the Archives received a large collection of books and other materials in English and Chinese about the indigenous Chinese church as well as missionary efforts in the land before the Communists came to power.

Jim and Elisabeth Elliot are well-known figures in Evangelical mission history from their work in Ecuador and Jim’s death there. The Archives already has large collections of both of their papers, and probably for that reason several people added to our holdings with some items that were small in number but very interesting in content, including home movies, letters, and papers from Jim’s college days.

Another major figure in Evangelical missions was Donald McGavran, missionary to India and founder of the church growth movement. Dr. McGavran gave his papers to the Archives before his death. His family added a few more interesting items this year and his biographer, Gary McIntosh, gave the Archives his voluminous research files on McGavran, including some McGavran documents as well as McIntosh’s own manuscripts and notes.

One last intriguing missions item: The Zamzam was an Egyptian freighter carrying over 140 missionaries to Africa in 1941 when it was sunk by a German surface raider. Fourscore and four years after the sinking, the Archives acquired the diary of Ethel Wright, a passenger. It describes the sinking of the Zamzam, the rescue of Wright and her husband and the other victims aboard the German boat and their internment in Berlin. Read more about this interesting diary on a past From the Vault blog post.

The year also brought materials about two charismatic figures from the history of American evangelism. The Archives already had a single item from the famous “girl evangelist” Betty Weakland. She began preaching in 1925 at the age of 9 and soon had a national reputation. Unlike many of the child evangelists of that era, she continued her ministry for the rest of her long life and when she retired from the pulpit visited missionaries around the world to bring comfort and support. One of her descendants donated Weakland’s papers, including scrapbooks, photos, manuscripts, and hymnbooks. These provide a detailed look at her evangelism as well as at evangelism more broadly in the mid-twentieth century. Percy Crawford was another colorful figure who was already well documented in our holdings, including his pioneering work in television. In 2025, one of his sons gave the Archives a recording of an August 1955 broadcast of Crawford’s Youth on the March.

Growing out of the International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974, the Lausanne Movement continues today as one of the major avenues for discussion and cooperation among evangelicals around the world. The Archives has served as Lausanne’s principal repository since 1978. During this past year, we received not only the audio cassettes of the papers given at the 1989 Lausanne II Congress held in Manilla, Philippines, but also the files of the staff that organized the Lausanne III congress held in 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa.

As always, the staff spent a good deal of time during the year doing oral history interviews. Eight people were interviewed in 28 sessions totaling 45 hours. One project involved interviewing past senior editors of Christianity Today publications about the history of CT – magazine and organization. There were also extended sessions with two past leaders of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (now called the Lausanne Movement): Leighton Ford and Douglas Birdsall.  Ford also talked about his experiences over many decades as an evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and as head of his own ministry. Birdsall’s interviews include descriptions of his work as a missionary in Japan. Other interviews described mission work in Morocco, Portugal, Chad and Kenya, counseling missionary kids, and Youth for Christ evangelistic tours of Europe and Japan in the years after World War II. Another oral history related accession contained notebooks with excerpts from transcripts of interviews (not by the Archives staff) of alumni of Rift Valley Academy, the school for missionary kids in Kenya. The interviews covered experiences at the school over several decades.

Special Collections

In 2025, Special Collections expanded its small collection of medieval and Renaissance devotional manuscripts with the addition of leaves from five Book of Hours, dating from the early to mid-15th century. The year’s acquisitions also included a 1567 French Bible published by Francoise Estienne and a 1575 volume of Martin Luther’s sermons and Bible commentaries.

Another collecting focus for Special Collections is the documentation of Christian humanitarian, social, and activist work. This year, we received materials from Thomas Getman, former legislative director for Senator Mark Hatfield and later Director of Government Relations with World Vision International; Dr. Arthur Evan Gay, longtime pastor and former president for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and World Relief; and James Jennings, former Wheaton College archeology professor, whose work included service with Conscience International in Africa and the Middle East.

In 2025, Special Collections received two significant donations documenting local Chicago and Wheaton history. In August, the Chicago Bible Society donated several boxes of reports, minutes, and other records chronicling one hundred years of the Society’s efforts to distribute Bibles and promote Bible literacy in and around the city. We also received a box of Wheaton Family Papers containing correspondence, photographs, and other materials related to the Wheaton family, including documents from Warren L. Wheaton and Jesse C. Wheaton, who helped found both the city of Wheaton and Wheaton College.

Along with new materials, Special Collections received many donations that expanded existing collections, including additional materials from Vida Chenoweth, Luci Shaw, Marilyn Unruh, Dean Arnold, Marvin Olasky, Peter and Anita Deyneka, David Fuller, the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), and the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU).

Explore all the accessions and collections held by Wheaton Archives & Special Collections through our archival database at archives.wheaton.edu. Join the Archives & Special Collections’ mailing list for more collection updates and event announcements.