As Episcopalians approached their General Convention of 1934 in Atlantic City, the effects of the Great Depression had left the national church and many dioceses in debt, divided and defensive, and everyone was angry with headquarters. But early in 1934, a small group of laymen, led by Harvey Firestone and Charles Taft of Ohio, with the approval of their bishops, took it upon themselves to launch a private campaign to raise money to erase the national church's deficit before Convention met. They hoped that with the debt eliminated, the Convention would not be consumed by recriminations and distrust of the church's leadership but be able to face its responsibilities realistically. They called it Everyman's Offering and had as their slogan, "Hold the Line".

They spent the summer writing to their friends and visiting the vacation spots of the wealthy until they had raised (for those days a large sum) $600,000. When their success was reported to the delighted Convention in Atlantic City, a layman from Tennessee is reported to have risen to say, "What this church needs is not only a 'hold the line' campaign but a way to move forward."

The matter was referred to the Program and Budget Committee and, as church bodies are wont to do, Convention appointed a committee, actually a Joint Commission on the Forward Movement of the Church, under the chairmanship of the young Bishop of Southern Ohio, Henry Wise Hobson.

Not many could have expected the Commission to do much. No money was available for its expenses. Its terms of reference were breathtakingly vague: "to reinvigorate the life of the church and rehabilitate its work." There have been many renewal movements in the church but this may have been the only one officially designated as such. How were they ever to carry out such a mandate? The twenty members of the Commission, five bishops, five priests and ten laymen, represented every shade of churchmanship and every region of the country. They were asked to pray about it and to consult as many people as possible in their home dioceses. When the Commission finally met on December 5, 1934, it was in St. James Church, Chicago, the birthplace of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Bishop Hobson asked if anyone had a plan to propose. No one did, so he suggested that they return to their rooms and pray harder!

When they reconvened the next morning, they soon agreed that reinvigoration or renewal of the church meant both the renewal of individual devotion and the rebuilding of corporate life inspired by a common sense of purpose. The primary task, therefore, was to help Episcopalians recover the vision and the power implied by the key words Discipleship and Mission. They also agreed that this could not be achieved from the top down--as Bishop Hobson put it--by a "cut and dried superimposed program." A lasting "forward movement" must arise from and become part of the church at every level, through prayer and Bible study and gathering information about local needs in each place.

Canon Gilbert P. Symons, Bishop Hobson's secretary and an associate member of the Commission, drafted a brief outline of the seven steps of the Disciple's Way (Turn, Follow, Learn, Pray, Serve, Worship, Share) [now published in the pamphlet "Christian Living"] and these were quickly adopted by the Commission as its call to the church. They became the basis for individual reflection and group study in every parish the following Lent.

The time was ripe for such ideas. The work of the Commission soon became in fact a movement. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew offered its full support. Volunteers both part time and full time stepped forward to take the message to every corner of the church. At one time seventy persons were going, at their own expense, from diocese to diocese organizing conferences, missionary rallies, training programs for leaders of parish prayer and Bible study groups. Until then prayer and Bible study groups were rare in the Episcopal Church. Coordination of these efforts was in the hands of the Rev. David Covell and the Rev. Arthur Sherman who, with Canon Symons, were soon serving as full time associate members and staff of the Commission. Many dioceses organized their own Forward Movement committees and developed similar programs that reached nearly every parish and mission.

The pamphlet, Discipleship, issued for use in Lent 1935, sold an astonishing 700,000 copies. Canon Symons and his volunteers, many of them high school students, had to scramble to keep up with the orders, wrapping and mailing packages late into the night and rushing orders for new printings before the ink was dry on the old ones. Discipleship offered a plan for daily prayer and Bible study to be followed by individuals and families. In response to wide demand, similar devotional guides, based on a reading of the Book of the Acts, were issued in the spring and summer. In the fall of 1935 the first issue of "Forward Day by Day" appeared and has continued ever since, reaching more than half a million readers with every issue.

By 1940 it was clear that the new momentum generated by the Commission should be focused and directed by the Presiding Bishop and his staff. The program elements of the Commission's work became for several years the unifying theme of the program of the national church, Forward in Service. The publications effort in support of that program and of other renewal movements at the local level continued in Cincinnati under the direction of Bishop Hobson and a small Executive Committee. Although the life of the Commission came to an end in 1940, Forward Movement Publications has continued as an agency of the General Convention, under the supervision of the Presiding Bishop, its mandate subject to review and renewal by Convention every three years.