How it all began...

In 1952, the ´Greater European Mission´ founded the European Bible Institute (EBI) in France. Mainly thanks to Robert Munn, the school was very mission orientated. He himself had been a missionary in Africa and so the school chose him to be their mission advisor. Since his experience in the mission field had been of a very positive nature, it was easy for him to motivate and interest the students. One of these students was Joop Schotanus who always wanted to serve the Lord in one of the french-speaking countries in Africa.

Praying

Joop was chosen as the coordinator of all students‘ weekly prayer groups that got together to pray especially for missions. These prayer nights were similar to those at some of the other European schools: the evening always began with sharing general information followed by a short time of devotion. After that a group was formed for each continent and these groups then specifically prayed for the requests unique to each continent. Concentrating on missions in that way was a great blessing to the schools‘ spiritual atmosphere.

Giving

Many of the students were motivated to support mission work with what they had to offer. Although some of them did not have a lot of money themselves and had to work to put themselves through school, they still decided to invest in the Lords‘ work. They started supporting missionary projects and gladly took on some extra work to earn money for this good cause. All of them decided to skip some of the meals and the school then invested the money they saved on food in missionary work. Through their love for mission they became inventive and by that they experienced that they could always depend on the Lord with all of their needs.

Going

However in all they did, the focus of their attention was Gods‘ call for world mission. Those who had not been called to serve the Lord in a foreign country, encouraged others to do so. They supported their home churches and students from other European bible schools on their way to the mission field.

ESMA is born

One day Robert Munn came to Joop, first president of the EBI prayer groups, and gave him extensive information on an American mission organization. He told him: ´Make it European!´ For Joop, being in his last semester, this was a great opportunity to write an essay titling: „How to start a European Student Missionary Association“. The essay included a number of suggestions on how to reach out to other bible schools via inter-bible- school conferences to present the ideas that they started at the EBI. Joop got his essay back with the words: ´Excellent, Joop! Do it!´ And that is what he did. He graduated in 1956 and went on to visit seven different bible schools in 4 different countries. His successor as the president of the EBI mission prayer groups was Bill Boerop who organized the first conference in 1957. Later they decided to hold an annual conference which should be hosted by a different bible school every year. This was the beginning of the ESMA movement.

´ESMA- sister´ TEMA

In the seventees more and more non-students asked to participate in the ESMA conferences. Eric Gay and a group of EBI students were just in the process of praying for and organizing a new conference. That is when they came up with the idea of TEMA, the European missionary association. 1976 they organized the first International Mission Congress in Lausanne. About 3000 young people came to this very first congress. Joop, who had returned from Africa to the Netherlands, became his countries‘ first TEMA coordinator. He introduced the congess there and also became very involved in leading the TEMA congresses. In spite of his age and decreasing energy, he still enjoys being part of these mission congresses. Now there is a new generation of leaders that took over in spreading the vision they have for mission world wide.

What has become of TEMA?

Unfortunately, the idea of praying for missions as a group has not stayed successful at all bible schools, so that the ESMA program simply discontinued at some of them. In 2004 the TEMA congress took place for the last time. But this end wasn‘t final. ´Mission-net´ was held for the very first time in 2009. The Mission-Net movement now follows in the footsteps of ´ESMA-sister´ TEMA.

ESMA today

The history of ESMA continues as well. No longer are there 40-50 ESMA schools like there used to be which is why the question of relevance has often been raised at ESMA leadership meetings. However, all of these discussions always ended in the result that because of the lack of understanding for the importance of world wide mission, ESMA remains being as important as it has always been.