The American Minute: BASKETBALL and VOLLEYBALL were invented by…

The U.S. Census Bureau statistics (2009) report that over 24 million Americans play BASKETBALL and over 10 million Americans play VOLLEYBALL.Did you know BASKETBALL and VOLLEYBALL were invented by instructors at the Young Men’s Christian Association – YMCA ?

James Naismith, a medical doctor and Presbyterian minister, invented the game of BASKETBALL at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891.

His colleague, William Morgan, as the physical education director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented VOLLEYBALL in 1895.

The Young Men’s Christian Association, founded in 1844, has a membership of millions in 124 countries.

YMCA Founder George Williams, who died NOVEMBER 6, 1905, wrote:

“My life-long experience as a business man, and as a Christian worker among young men, has taught me that

the only power in this world that can effectually keep one from sin, in all the varied and often attractive forms…is that which comes from an intimate knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as a present Saviour.”

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George Williams continued:

“And I can also heartily testify that the safe Guide-Book by which one may be led to Christ is the Bible, the Word of God, which is inspired by the Holy Ghost.”

On October 24, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson addressed the 70th anniversary of the YMCA:

“Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother.”

Woodrow Wilson continued:

“I do believe that at 70 the YMCA is just reaching its majority.

A dream greater even than George Williams ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulating momentum of Christian men throughout the world…

These 70 years have just been a running start…now there will be a great rush of Christian principle upon the strongholds of evil and of wrong in the world.

Those strongholds are not as strong as they look… All you have to do is to fight, not with cannon but with light…

That, in my judgment, is what the Young Men’s Christian Association can do…”

Woodrow Wilson concluded:

“Eternal vigilance is the price, not only of liberty, but of a great many other things…

It is the price of one’s own soul…

What shall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any other man’s soul?…

There is a text in Scripture… It says godliness is profitable in this life as well as in the life that is to come…

This world is intended as the place in which we shall show that we know how to grow in the stature of manliness and of righteousness.

I have come here to bid Godspeed to the great work of the Young Men’s Christian Association.”