God's Vison for the Campus

Recognizing the importance of these influences on today's college students, what is God's vision for your chapter and campus? It certainly would include His desire for His people to focus on Him rather than the influences of secularization and pluralization. Instead of turning inward, He wants us to look to the needs of others. God's vision for your chapter and campus can be summed up in Jesus' answer to the following question: What is the greatest command?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind: and love your neighbor as yourself.
(Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30,31)

Examine Jesus' statement so you can build a foundation for God's vision for your campus.

God desires His people to be totally dependent on Him. In the last year, God has been moving within InterVarsity's national leaders, staff, and students, calling us to renew our prayer life as a movement and to deepen our dependence on Him. One part of God's vision for your chapter is that it be a chapter of prayer.

As I contacted former UNC-Chapel Hill InterVarsity students from the 1950's and 60's, I found one continuous thread that ran through the chapter for 20 years - prayer. Many of these former students said that God had called them to faithfully pray that He would use their chapter to reach the UNC campus. It took over 20 years for their prayers to bear much fruit.

God desires all InterVarsity chapters to be chapters of prayer. He desires His people to break through the influences of secularization which say "there are no windows, there is no hope." Instead of being a people without hope, we place our hope in God through prayer.

How would you characterize the prayer life of your chapter? What role does prayer have in God's vision of your chapter and campus?

God also desires His people to love Him by setting themselves apart from the world. "Set apart" does not mean withdrawal into "Christian ghettos" or "holy huddles" on campus. Too many InterVarsity groups have a survival mentality. They think that if they all stick together, the evils of the university will not taint them.

When God calls His people to be set apart, He asks them to live out their faith with right conduct. The world influenced by the pressure of pluralization lives by the code that says there are no absolutes, only choices. God, however, desires that His people live by His code of conduct, which has rights and wrongs.

Sadly, too many students in InterVarsity chapters are succumbing to the pressures of our society, such as materialism, racism, and sexual misconduct. To help students, our chapters need to model right behavior and teach truthful concepts.

Some Christian students today are not convinced that what God states in the Bible is best for them. When I was growing up, one of my favorite television programs was "Father Knows Best," starring Robert Young. In each show, a problem arose within the family that could not be solved by the other family members. Toward the end of the program, they presented Father with the problem. Without a lot of superfluous words, he would provide the correct answer.

We must teach students that our heavenly Father knows what is best for us. He is the loving Father who cared so much for His family that He let His only Son die so that the rest of the family could be saved.

Does part of God's vision for your campus include loving God through right conduct?