Urban Programs Further the Purpose of InterVarsity by:
1. Establishing and Advancing Witnessing Communities:
Giving students a foundational team ministry experience that can be built on in a campus context.
Giving staff a mechanism for inviting new students into the fellowship, even non-Christian students, and developing deeper relationships.
Giving staff a chance to develop the leadership skills of key students.
Giving the chapter an on-campus reputation among faculty as well as students as being involved in social issues and therefore highly relevant.
Giving students and staff the chance to develop their willingness to take risks for the kingdom.
Giving staff a mechanism to explore the themes of justice and reconciliation in a context where those needs are often very raw and obvious.
Giving staff another tool to use in their efforts to confront Lordship issues in the lives of students, especially in the areas of materialism, and racism.
Giving students an opportunity to practice what is perhaps a less threatening form of evangelism (sharing their faith, testimonies, etc., with children in Bible clubs, etc) and more threatening forms (such as jail ministry and homeless outreach) as a precursor to more college oriented evangelism training on campus.
2. Helping Students Grow in Love for God:
Exploring his compassion for the poor and his commitment to justice
Helping them experience the process by which God motivates his people to action
Placing them in new and uncomfortable situations - testing grounds - where they find God faithful
Confronting them with their own sin (racism, excessive individualism, consumersism, selfishness, etc.) in the light of a loving God
Providing vivid examples of God's power, grace, forgiveness, healing and love for sinners in actual situations in the urban church
3. Helping Students Grow in Love for God’s Word:
Engaging them in manuscript or intense study of the Scriptures in a setting that fills out the context and significance.
Intentionally applying that word and measuring its transforming effect in lives and whole communities.
Hearing pastors and leaders speak from the word with passion, creativity and power
4. Helping Students Grow in Love for God’s People of Every Ethnicity and Culture:
Helping students understand their own ethnic identities and histories.
Working side-by-side with teammates from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Serving ethnically diverse communities and neighborhoods, understanding the forces at work there.
Getting to know the work of indigenous and indigenized leaders who are people of color.
Eating together, arguing, confronting, depending on each other, talking and praying through our differences.
5. Helping Students Grow in Love for God’s Purposes in the World:
Examining what God is doing in the world and demonstrating creative opportunities for them to align their lives to that activity.
Preparing them for any number of potential vocational ministries.
Helping them to examine their choices and the impact of those choices on the world.
Highlighting the results of personal and corporate sin and the corruption of the structures of society.
Exposing them to God's agenda for the city through study of the Scriptures.
Seeing people whose lives are made full and rich by commitment to God purposes.
Participating in various models of ministry as the church lives out these purposes in the world and in the city.
