The YMCA is now calling itself the "Y". This triggered John Murray's reflections in Wall Street Journal: (excerpt)
And herein lies the challenge that began when the YMCA moved away from its evangelical mission in the 1930s and continues today—what to do with the C in the YMCA. Speaking to the national council of the YMCA in the 1970s, evangelist Billy Graham said that to change society was to "change men's hearts first." Take, for example, the conversion experience of Cornell student and future Nobel Peace Prize winner John Mott. . .
In his book "The Soul of the American University," Notre Dame professor George Marsden demonstrates the impact of the YMCA in an era when more than 3,000 of the American missionaries who went aboard from 1899-1915 were products of the YMCAs and YWCAs. "By 1921, the YMCAs reached their numerical peak with 731 chapters on the approximately 1,000 [college] campuses in the country; they had enrolled well over 90,000 members, or about one in seven, in a student population of about 600,000."
Regarding youth development, healthy living and reaching out to neighbors, Mott's work fostered "equality, justice and mutual respect"—which was later noted at his Nobel Prize Ceremony—as he encouraged Christian schools, hospitals and businesses abroad. Traveling to 68 countries from Europe to Asia, to the Far and Near East—Mott served as a Christian diplomat and dedicated missionary to the world—the work of which led to his Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.
Reflecting on the example of John Mott, I believe that it will take more than a brand strategy and a name change to meet our generation's needs today. I cannot help but remember the generational challenge issued by another Nobel Prize winner—Alexander Solzhenitsyn—to Harvard graduates in 1978:
"The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer... We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life."
That is why the "C" needs to remain in the YMCA. [more. . .]