The papers of Donald and Mary McGavran include correspondence (personal and business), class lectures, manuscripts of books and articles, newspaper clippings, statistics, maps, reference materials, financial records, documents gathered to study church growth in different parts of the world, photographs, audio tapes, and videos. They document a wide variety of different topics, but are particularly strong for three areas: the McGavrans' family life, their work in India as missionaries, and, especially, Donald McGavran's theories about church growth and the impact of these theories on the church, especially North American Protestant Evangelicals. The collection consists of various personal documents the McGavrans gathered during their lives, as well as files of material generated by Donald's teaching and administrative activities, particularly at the Institute of Church Growth at Northwest Christian College and Fuller Seminary.

In a letter written to the BGC Archives on November 3, 1989, Dr. McGavran wrote, "I hope that you will include in whatever account you print of this collection of my papers at the Billy Graham Archives that it is important primarily because it casts a good deal of light on world evangelization. The manuscripts are written by a missionary of 31 years of experience in the field. All the manuscripts deal with aspects of missionary work. That so much of missions does not deal with effective evangelism but with good deeds done to non-Christians needs to be emphasized in any summary that you make and print of this collection. Mission today, yesterday, and I fear tomorrow is always in danger of doing good works in the name of Christ as a substitute for carrying out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-19). Please also include the statement that these archives were contributed to Billy Graham Archives by the founding dean of the School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. This School of World Mission is now the largest school of world mission in the world and will probably continue so for many years."

The first sixty boxes of this collection consists of materials which Donald McGavran gave to the library of Northwest Christian College (NCC) and for which a guide was completed in 1977. Selected portions of the collection were microfilmed at that time. The guide prepared by Richard Gaust of Northwest Christian College is in folder 60-5. Subsequently, this collection of material was returned to Dr. McGavran and sent to his office at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena California. In 1989 he gave several boxes of his and his wife's papers to the Billy Graham Center Archives. Almost but not quite all of the documents that were part of the NCC collection was included in this gift, as was some additional material, mostly family correspondence. A few other odds and ends which Dr. McGavran gave to the collection (such as the 1984 manuscript in folder 47-20) were also included in the collection. In 2000, the McGavran's daughter Patricia Sheafor gave a box of letters and other materials relating to the illness and death of her parents in 1990. Also included, although not received from Dr. McGavran, are audio tapes of his class lectures on church growth from 1975 and 1979 and the videos in this collection. Also in 2000 the Archives received from Fuller Seminary the records of Donald McGavran's years there as first dean of the School of World Missions which document his work from 1965 until 1981 as teacher, scholar and administrator, as well as the his files from his very active retirement, 1981-1990. These materials make up boxes 61-99 of this collection. The collection therefore covers the entire adult life of Donald and Mary McGavran, although most of the materials deal with Donald's work as missionary, church leader, teacher and scholar. There is relatively little material about the last decades of Mary's life after the couple returned to the United States from India. The materials in boxes 1 through 11 and 20 through 59 were for the most left in the arrangement established for them by the Northwest Christian College library staff. Dr. McGavran apparently worked with the NCC staff when they processed the collection and the arrangement is partly his. The BGC Archives (hereafter referred to as "Archives") staff simplified the arrangement somewhat by dividing the material into eight series and rearranging a very few items to fit this system. As mentioned, the NCC materials were selectively microfilmed. As part of this process, each folder was wrapped in sheets of white paper on which were a few notes on its contents, the number of pages in the folder, and whether or not the material should be microfilmed. These comments for the most part do not appear to have been written by Dr. McGavran, but rather by someone who was involved in processing the collection, perhaps Robert Gault or Reyburn McCready who provided the intellectual direction to the task. These wrappers have been removed and included inside at the beginning of each folder.

Series: Paper Records (also see Box List)

The paper records are divided into the seven subseries, described further below:

Subseries: Financial

Arrangement: Chronological, alphabetical

Date Range: 1926-1965

Volume: 2.75 linear feet

Boxes: 19-24

Geographic coverage: United States, India

Type of documents: Ledgers and account books, records of donations made to the McGavrans' mission work, receipts, checks, bills

Subjects: Household budget and expenses of the McGavrans, contributions to their mission work, the operation of the Disciple of Christ's Divinity House at Yale Divinity School and the Mission House at their Michigan conference ground

Notes: These folders contain various documents that relate to the McGavrans' household accounts while they were missionaries and after their return to the United States in 1954.

Exceptional items: Folder 24-2 contains account books of monies the McGavran's received for their mission work from various individuals and churches, including Donald's brother Edward. (Edward also sent money for their personal use.) The 1943 account book contains an interesting letter from Donald to a church in the United States, detailing how their money had been used. They list some of his expenses and receipts. Receipts for donations received by Donald and Mary, as well as records of the expenses of their mission work are in folders 23-1 and 24-4. For three years the McGavrans (mostly Mary) were in charge of the Disciples of Christ's Mission House at Yale, a home for Disciples missionaries or Christian workers who were attending Yale. (Folder 55-11 contains a minute book from the Mission House which is from before the time of the McGavran's occupancy there but which they apparently acquired when they lived there.) Folder 24-3 contains materials relating to running the house and moving it to a new location. Folder 22-8 contains information about the sale of McGavran's various books.

Subseries: India

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title

Date Range: 1929-1960

Volume: 1.5 linear foot

Boxes: 25-27

Geographic coverage: Mostly materials relating to Harda, Jubbulpore, and Takhatpur, India, although there are other materials relating to other parts of India or India as a whole.

Type of documents: Articles, class notes, minutes, address lists, memos, reports, lists, sheet music

Subjects: The McGavrans' mission work in India - church planting, evangelistic, educational, medical, community development; work of the Disciples of Christ in India; the development of the Christian churches in India; Indian society and culture; Indian religions; devotional life and prayer

Notes: These files contain a wide variety of documents gathered by both McGavrans in the course of their missionary activities, although most of the materials seem to Donald's. There are several folders of documents from the Mass Movement Committee, which was a group of missionaries and Indian Christians studying the current (in the 1930s) character of the Indian churches and how they could spread the Gospel. Its studies were a kind of precursor for the church growth surveys McGavran would later do.

Exceptional items: Folder 25-3 contains a series of devotional and prayer guides for a prayer fellowship with which the McGavrans were involved. Folders 25-9 and 25-10 contains some of Donald McGavran's earliest writings on church growth. Folder 26-7 contains some of the letters the McGavrans sent to their supporters in the United States, describing their activities. Folder 26-8, besides lists of the possessions the McGavrans brought back from India and the expenses involved, includes a magazine from Woodstock High School, the school attended by the McGavran children in India. Folder 26-10 contains a handwritten song book with lyrics in an Indian language and music. This may be a hymn book. Folder 27-1 contains various documents related to Donald's study of the disparity between the lifestyles of Western missionaries and indigenous Christian workers in India and his suggestions for adapting more of an Indian lifestyle. Including is a kind of survey he did of missionaries, asking what kind of actions they would be willing to take. Folder 26-6 contains various documents on the importance of missionaries being proficient in the languages of their regions and ways to increase that proficiency.

Subseries: Institute of Church Growth / School of World Missions

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title

Date Range: 1948-1988

Volume: 4.5 linear feet

Boxes: 27-31, 61-64

Geographic coverage: This subseries contains information on church growth in different parts of the world, especially Nigeria, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Bolivia.

Type of documents: Correspondence, newsletters, clippings, minutes, reports and studies, notes

Subjects: The founding development of the Institute, early studies that were done by its students, response of other missiologists to McGavran's theories, McGavran's developing ideas on church growth, the establishment of the School of World Mission at Fuller and its development up to about the late 1970s.

Notes: Boxes 27-31 mainly concerned with the Institute at Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon. Boxes 61-64 contain materials relating to Fuller Seminary's School of World Missions in Pasadena, California. The Northwest folders relate to Donald's activities in starting the Institute at Eugene, raising financial support for it, and developing its curriculum. The Fuller folders deal with roughly the first decade of the School of World Mission and McGavran's leadership of it. Most of the folders in this subseries also deal with Donald's building of support for church growth theories among other Christian leaders and institutions. Many folders contain reports on evangelism activity and church growth as experienced by particular missions or in various regions of the world. Folder 62-16, for example, has material on the Liebenzeller Mission and folder 62-20 has reports and statistics on church growth in Malaysia.

Exceptional items:

Subseries: Lectures, Speeches and Sermons

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title

Date Range: 1917-1988

Volume: 11.5 linear feet

Boxes: 31-39, 83-96

Geographic coverage: Concern with the growth of Christianity worldwide

Type of documents: Lecture and sermon transcripts and notes, supporting materials for lectures such as programs, syllabi, student papers, resource materials used in lectures

Subjects: Church growth, theology of missions, theory and practice of missions, church history, expansion of Christianity in the twentieth century, cross-cultural communications, comparative religion, Christianity and culture

Notes: This section contains Donald McGavran's lectures, speeches, and sermons in a variety of forums. They are classroom lectures on missiology or church growth as well as seminar talks and lectures that McGavran gave around the world. The folder titles generally are those assigned by McGavran and are either the topic of or the place of the lectures. Besides containing notes for or transcripts of the lectures, folders of class lectures often contain papers done by students for the class and other miscellaneous material related to the class. McGavran often gave seminars on church growth at seminaries and churches around the world to students and to church leaders and the notes from many of these can be found in boxes 88 through 90. The name of a country in a folder title, such as "Church Growth–Canada" does not mean that the lecture is on church growth in Canada, but rather that it was given in Canada. McGavran would apparently keep a particular set of messages together in a notebook and revise them or change them over time. So a set of folders labeled "Church Growth Seminar–Indiana" might contain notes or changes he made when he gave the set talks or some of them later in Japan and then further additions or deletions when he gave them yet again in another location. So the lectures were always in a sense works in progress. Whenever possible, these lecture notebooks have been left in their original binder. However, when the notebook itself was too badly worn, the materials were taken out of the cover and put loose in a folder. Some notebooks, such as those in boxes 83 and 84, are talks that were kept together because they were given during the same year or years.

Exceptional items: Folder 33-2 contains notes and transcripts of speeches Donald McGavran gave when he was on the debate team in college on topics of the day, including America's entry into World War I. Folder 33-7 contains notes for the sermons McGavran sometimes gave to the church held in the McGavrans' home at Eugene, Oregon, for the student, their families and eventually members of the community. Folders 36-2 through 38-2 contain various clippings and notes that McGavran gathered as background materials for his lectures. Folder 91-5 contains McGavran's records of the grades for his students for almost the entire time he taught at Fuller. Folder 94-3 contains texts of the prayers that McGavran prepared for various of his classes. Also see the online version of the first class in McGavran's Adanced Church Growth class in early 1979 on video tape V3.

Subseries: Manuscripts

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title

Date Range: 1925-1989

Volume: 8.0 linear feet

Boxes: 40-52, 97-99

Geographic coverage: Christianity worldwide, especially in Bangladesh, Gold Coast, India, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand, United States, West Africa

Type of documents: Manuscripts of books and articles, including different drafts of the same work, correspondence with publishers.

Subjects: Christianity and culture, Christianity in the modern world, church growth, conversion, the Disciples of Christ, Hinduism, Indian Christianity, the social gospel, the theory and practice of missions, study of missions, religious education

Notes: This section contains manuscripts and typescripts of books and articles by McGavran, sometimes accompanied by other supporting material related to the work. Usually there is also a wrapper that was around the manuscript which sometimes has a few notes by McGavran, written in the late 1970s when some of these materials were microfilmed. A miscellaneous selection of his articles can be found in folder 40-7, especially those relating to evangelistic work in India and to church growth theory. There is also a contemporary appraisal by McGavran of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Several folders of correspondence with publishers or about articles or books McGavran was working on were bundled together with one group of manuscripts, so the archivists left them together. These can be found in box 97.

Exceptional Items: Folder 97-11 contains not an article but a kind of diary of his impressions of a 1956 trip through Africa that included stops in Kenya, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sudan, Rwanda and other countries. Information he gathered and notes he made about Lutheran churches in Liberia are in folder 99-5 and on Methodist missions and churches in Gold Coast are in folder 99-6. There are endorsements in folders 70-5 and 97-2 from Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Harold Lindsell and others of a book by McGavran emphasizing the need for greater concentration on evangelism in the seminary training of pastors. Also of interest is McGavran's correspondence (in folder 97-6) with officials of the World Council of Churches about an article he wanted to do for them on the need for evangelism in missions.

Subseries: Miscellaneous

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title

Date Range: 1905-1977

Volume: 2.5 linear feet

Boxes: 52-56

Geographic coverage: United States, India

Type of documents: Address books, biographical data on the McGavrans, church programs, church conference reports, diaries, minutes, newspaper and magazine clippings, military documents and souvenirs from Donald McGavran' service in World War I.

Subjects: The McGavran's college education and preparation of missions; the life of the Jackson Street Church of Muncie, Indiana; the McGavran's work in India; Donald McGavran's military service in World War I; the McGavran's homes and housekeeping; racial integration

Notes: Most of the material in this section had been labeled "Miscellaneous" by the Northwest Christian College staff when the collection was originally processed. A few items were added by the BGC Archives staff.

Subseries: Surveys

Arrangement: Alphabetical by title

Date Range: 1936-1964

Volume: 2.25 linear feet

Boxes: 56-60

Geographic coverage: India, Jamaica, Latin America, Papua New Guiana, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand, Washington State

Type of documents: Reports on church growth in various regions of the world and the data used to make the report, correspondence, maps, charts.

Subjects: Detailed examination of the obstacles and opportunities for church growth in various parts of the world, particularly among the Disciples of Christ

Notes: This subseries contains the notes, reports, and supporting materials for the surveys, mostly for the Disciples, of church growth in various parts of the world. See also folders 25-13 to 26-3 and folders 29-1 to 30-4.

Audio and Video Recordings

Arrangement: Tapes are basically grouped together by occasion. Thus, all the tapes from the Ethiopian church growth conference are together, as are all those from McGavran's church growth lectures. Then within these groups, the tapes are in chronological order. There are also a few individual items, not part of any group.

Date Range: 1950-1987

Volume: Audio tapes T1-T61, Video tapes V1-V29

Geographic coverage: Ethiopia, India, United States

Type of documents: McGavran's lectures on church growth, papers given at a conference in Ethiopia on church growth, film made to explain to supporters the McGavran's mission work in India, recording of the celebration of Donald McGavran's ninetieth birthday.

Subjects: Mission work in India, church growth theory and practice

Notes: The contents of individual tapes are described in the location records. Tapes T10 through T58 are particularly important, since they contain McGavran's considered exposition of basic and advanced church growth theory after years of thought and discussion on the subject. The online version of the first class in McGavran's Adanced Church Growth class in early 1979 is on video tape V3.