The Upper Room, a popular daily devotional guide, celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.
Although the printed devotional dates to 1935, the idea goes back to 1929, when Francis Craig sought to encourage people in their daily walk after the great stock market failure. Francis was a Sunday School teacher at Travis Park Methodist Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas.
She urged her pastor, Paul Kern, to write a collection of devotionals. In the weekly church newsletter, Kern began suggesting daily Scripture readings alongside short notes to encourage people to read the Bible.
Craig never forgot the impact of that daily guidance in Bible reading. In 1934, she collaborated with Grover Emmons, a clergyperson of the Methodist Episcopal Church who had served in France and the Far East. He dreamed of a devotional book that would be available and usable for all, “to cultivate an acquaintance with God.”
Ninety years later, The Upper Room reaches 100 countries and is translated into 35 languages.
Lindsay Gray
“The Upper Room began with a daily devotional magazine back in 1935. It was the brainstorm of a Sunday school class and a couple of church leaders who were looking for a way for families and individuals to reconnect with God daily beyond Sunday mornings,” said Editor Lindsay Gray. “It was the Great Depression. This little magazine, which was just a brief daily story of how God is showing up in the world, accompanied by a Scripture passage and a prayer, grew very quickly by the fourth or fifth issue.
“They were printing hundreds and thousands of copies quickly and had over a million copies in circulation. It was an idea that was very needed at the time and really gained traction quickly. And as that happened, it started to travel with missionaries and others to other parts of the world. Other language editions began shortly after.”
Although rooted in the Methodist tradition, the magazine serves a wide variety of Christians worldwide.
Gray, who is a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, has been with the publication since 2012.
“I wasn’t interested in a traditional church pastoring kind of role. I asked the field education coordinator, instead of being in a church placement for the school year, could I be in another nonprofit setting? We talked through some of my interests and skills, which some of those had been in tutoring, writing and working in the writing center at my university, and she said, “You know, I think you need to speak with John McGabb at The Upper Room.”
And from there, way led on to way.
Although the publication has had many editors through the years and much has changed in the world of publishing, Gray says the publication’s core message of spreading Scripture around the world remains stable.
Even during the pandemic, the work went on.
“We moved to remote work during the pandemic and cleaned out the basement of our building, which was quite eye-opening. We had old carbon copies and mimeograph copies of typewritten and typeset pieces from decades ago that had been held onto.”
The technology of publishing may have changed, but the message of The Upper Room has not, she said. “For 90 years it has been a very solid and reliable resource that hasn’t changed dramatically in terms of the type of content we publish. It is still the same daily story, daily Scripture and a prayer that we’re sharing around the world. That construct hasn’t changed at all. The mission hasn’t changed.”
One thing that has changed today is the advance notice required to get translation work done.
“When it comes to language translation, some of the legacy of that is that we still have quite a lot of time in our production schedules because we’re still coordinating with publishing partners in other areas of the globe. We work far in advance to help accommodate the timelines for our publishing partners who are translating and producing and distributing in their countries. This is a ministry and passion project for them. … We work hard to try to make sure that everybody’s got enough time to do the work.”
That means most of the content you read today was written 18 to 24 months earlier, “and it remains timely,” she said.
The work is extremely rewarding, Gray added.
“We recently received a story of a granddaughter who has a digital subscription, and her grandmother has a print subscription. They both read it each morning and then in the evening they call and talk to each other about it. It’s a way for them to stay in touch and stay connected. It’s valuable that the central connection point between the granddaughter and grandmother is scripture, which makes it even more special.”