On-ramps:
Our goal is to help students hear God’s call to follow Jesus onto the very road that Jesus is on. What is that road? It is a lifestyle of compassion for the poor, of justice and reconciliation. (The best name for this road is Shalom.) For that we need some carefully placed on-ramps.
Now, all freeway on-ramps are not equal. Some are gentle and safe, some are steep and require more speed and courage. For students that have picked up the message of shalom in our movement, we need to be ready to help them take appropriate next steps. What might these look like?
- Provide a welcome table brochure on our beliefs and values that refers to the theme of justice as being central to who we are as a movement, perhaps what makes us distinctive.
- Dedicate a few LG’s, SG’s, & conferences to the theme of God’s concern for the poor and for reconciliation.
- Weave justice prayers, testimonies, or special scripture readings into events.
- In one-on-one meetings w/students look for opportunities to refer to the Jesus of the poor.
- Spend time viewing justice oriented videos or reading reconciliation related books with them. If these themes form a repeating soundtrack in your life, they will become that in theirs.
- Have the chapter raise or give money toward a justice/poverty type concern 1/semester.
- Use weekly connection to a city ministry program as a way to build community in the chapter.
- Encourage the involvement of young students in order to set this value in concrete early on: this kind of service is characteristic of Jesus, and a logical response to his Lordship.
- Try a “poverty day” or “justice day” campus outreach.
- Recruit some older leaders who are clearly being called by God to care about justice to live in the Pink House during their senior year.
- Build simple, repeatable structural mechanisms and rhythms into the chapter’s calendar that undergird the value of justice.
Tensions Created by adopting this commitment:
The involvement of evangelical students in social issues has always sparked tensions & controversy, both in Britain and in the U.S. In the British context the controversy in IVF was a reaction to the perceived liberalism of the Student Christian Movement, which had been characterized by many as “abandoning a primary commitment to evangelism in the interest of social concern.” Others in the British IVF felt that the SCM wasn't dealing with the questions students were asking, and that it was often "talking about questions that were quite outside the experience of students."
In the U.S., tensions surrounding student involvement in our growing national program of urban programs were prevalent in the '70s and '80s as well. Some staff questioned whether we should be taking students off-campus to become involved in inner-city mission. The trouble was that many students wanted to stay on after the program and continue serving in the city during the school year, and this was seen as competition for on-campus related activities. Today, some staff have begun to build urban programs that are more year-round, that pull students off-campus routinely to be involved in urban mission, and this creates a whole new level of complexity. Special care must be taken to negotiate leadership roles for exec members who are gaining a heart for the city, and young students who must be helped to balance commitment to the chapter with obeying Jesus’ command to serve the last and the least. Turns out, the minute teams turn from seeing ministry as a matter of words, discussions, meetings, conferences, etc., to ministry being more about setting captives free, things get messy.
There is one sense in which questions about the legitimacy of ministry among the urban poor being part of the fabric of campus ministry, is a question only raised by a privileged class. It is in its very nature elitist to suggest that because we are a campus ministry we should only focus on-campus, and address a narrow slice of issues related to student’s lives, mostly defined by questions of personal piety and spiritual discipline. Many students of color, many children of refugees who are now entering college, and many students in world-class cities in developing countries that are racked by violence and poverty, civil strife and hunger don’t have the luxury of separating their discipleship from those forces which are currently shaping life in their cities. If the gospel they learn on-campus is not tied directly to the realities most severely affecting their families in the city, then that gospel is seen as irrelevant.
In an increasingly diverse campus environment, where cities are surrounding campuses, and the separation between campus and city (town and gown) is diminishing, it makes good strategic sense to address urban issues, to involve students in urban ministry, as a component of campus ministry. In fact, many, many IFES movements regularly involve their students in ministries of compassion and justice in the city and have for many years, leaving one to wonder why is it the more affluent countries that have the greater theological problems with this practice?
Vinoth Ramachandra, Sri Lankan theologian, addressed the question succinctly at the 2003 IFES World Assembly. "Why be involved in social justice if we are a mission to university students?" His answer was two pronged: first, because students bring about social change. They are a strategic investment. It would be irresponsible to miss the opportunity to equip them out of an over concern for issues of personal piety. Secondly, because students ask questions that have social implications. Pastoral care dictates that we deal with those questions. When a student asks what relevance the gospel has for the poor in his community, or what the gospel would say to a local government that was ignoring the need for adequate housing, or to backroom political deals that allow developers to benefit while the poor have no say to what happens in their community, we cannot afford to say the gospel has no answer, or worse yet, "I'm sure there's an answer for that, but I only want to talk about how your quiet time is going, or whether you are thinking impure thoughts." Some might argue that students are not asking questions about injustice. My response is “which students are not?” The ones with a vested interest in the status quo. Most of the students in the world are, in fact, asking about justice.
IFES MODELS THIS PRACTICE.
Our IFES brothers and sisters mix campus ministry and urban ministry routinely:
Aggrey Madolomani, president of the IFES movement in Tanzania told me of a student who participated in regular IFES sponsored "Institutes" that were held for one week each year during Easter, where the issues of greed, politics, vocation, development, the environment, and poverty were addressed from a Christian perspective. (An Urban plunge!) These Institutes were held at the Tanzanian IFES student center. The student, Mr. Lazaro, went on to graduate, and is now Member of Parliament in the city of Dar-es-sallam, in Tanzania. He says that during his years as a student in his IFES chapter he learned to integrate his career with a passion for empowering people to help each other. Now, as a Member of Parliament he has enacted legislation to establish scholarships for poor students. These scholarships are liberating students from bleak futures.
Leah Genita is a manager of development who also serves as CEO of Share An Opportunity Philippines, a Christian development organization that does extensive work among poor communities in the Philippines. She became a Christian due to ministry of IVCF Philippines and has served the movement in various capacities prior to her current focus. Genita said, "IVCF taught me to seek justice and fight corruption in the Philippines. It taught me to nurture a spirituality that was sensitive to our context. Our context is corruption and greed." That spirituality included horizontal, social involvement as an expression of her faith, not something divorced from the proclamation of the gospel. She draws a direct line between what she learned and practiced as a student in the Filipino InterVarsity movement and her current work in organizational development. She has become both an agent of and catalyst for liberation.
Aggrey Duncan Mugisha is the media specialist for IFES in the English and Portuguese speaking African countries. His InterVarsity experience has led him to apply his technical knowledge and communication skills in the creation of Christian based informational videos on the subject of HIV AIDS and sexuality, designed for release on secular TV. He’s going outside the IV box. Because these resources are so well designed, and because this is the number one social issue in Africa today, they're getting wide use, even though they come from a Christian perspective. He is liberating many people in Africa from the bondage of AIDS, and modeling for his students what this looks like.
Theodora Niringiye, alumni of the IFES/Focus movement of Uganda who, out of the FOCUS office in a Uganda slum, created a student ministry to children that partners with Compassion International in providing food, school fees, vocational training and health-care to over 300 children. Alumni of the student ministry who are now doctors come regularly to serve at the clinic. Niringiye has noticed that many of the children who were served over the years have now gone on to college and are involved in a student ministry. They have instituted a college scholarship program that requires that the graduates come back to serve in the community. One outcome of the ministry is that nutrition in the wider community has improved, through the foods provided at class each week. This program, called the FOCUS Child Development Program in Uganda, is still running after many years. Teodora and her students are liberating those children from hunger and illiteracy.
But its not just in IFES countries. In the U.S., it’s Marshall Benbow in a Greensboro tutoring program, it’s a Andrea Garner, Shannon Wittevrogel in a Tucson ministry house, and Lisa Rodriquez Watson the Fresno Pink House. It’s Jen Vettrus in Milwaukee, Brian Sanders in Tampa and Kim Koi in Orlando -- all staff who have relocated to impoverished neighborhoods and are involving students in ministry there. In Fresno FIFUL has for the last several years involved non Christian international students in weekly Christian tutoring programs for the children of the Lowell neighborhood. These students stay for the Bible study and prayer after each tutoring program. Some of them went on to participate in an Urban Dip we designed just for them. Some of them even led worship for the event! We have linked students in the Pink House to the local Leadership Foundation, called One by One Leadership Foundation, where they are involved in several community development programs, including linking non-profit, Christian agencies with one another, mentoring the highest risk youth in the city, and pretty much just soaking in the culture of service to the last and the least in the name of Christ.
God is leading a new generation of staff and students to ministries of liberation and wholistic ministry. As they are doing this, they are having to navigate complexity, and color outside the InterVarsity lines. These staff know that when Jesus said "the truth shall set you free," his vision of freedom was comprehensive and holistic.
Filipina theologian Melba Maggay, asks, “When we call students on campus to repent, what are we calling them to do? When we give lordship talks, are we to automatically section off entire categories of human existence as things we won't talk about or address? "To speak of Jesus as Lord is to demand subjection of personal, and social life under his kingly rule. To call for repentance is to ask people to turn away, not simply from their individual vices, but from participation in the collective guilt of organized injustice. Truly, the gospel is more than a set of things to believe about Christ." “Evangelism needs a context, a setting in which the things we say about Jesus become truly incarnate. The whole body of Christ is to stand as a sign, a visual aid to the kingdom that has come. [Social action] is a thing that needs to be done if the gospel is to be heard at all. It is part of the process we call ‘evangelism’."
Barclay, Oliver, From Cambridge to the World, Leicester: IVP, p. 131
2003 IFES World Assembly Handbook, p. 37
Maggay, Melba, Transforming Society, p. 13
Ibid., p. 15
