Participants at Urbana 09 were challenged to be counter-cultural followers of Jesus by the speakers at Tuesday night’s general session in the Edward Jones dome in St. Louis. The challenge set the stage for Wednesday’s call to commitment to the 16,000 participants at InterVarsity’s student missions conference.
“We are God’s counter culture,” said Shane Claiborne, the dreadlocked pastor of The Simple Way community, which operates in inner city Philadephia.
Describing his work with Mother Teresa in India, Shane said that he noticed that she had deformed feet. He discovered her feet were deformed because Mother Teresa always chose the worst pair of shoes for herself, from among those that had been donated to the ministry. “Don’t you wonder what the world would look like if we really took that idea of loving our neighbor as ourself that seriously?”
He suggested that some in the current student generation may be starting to do just that. “There is a generation re-imagining what our faith looks like, not so that people can see how good we are, but so they can’t help but taste how good is our God.”
Speaking immediately afterward, Oscar Muriu, the pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya, said modern ministry is in too much of a hurry. Recalling that Jesus did not begin his ministry until the age of 30, and spent only about three years in ministry, Oscar said, “We need to examine the way we do missions.”
“The Son of God chose voluntary poverty for the sake of his mission,” Oscar said. “This is a model for missions for us today.”
Oscar also suggested it was time for a generational change in Christian missions, and a departure from helicopter styles that fail to identify with people where they actually live. “For some of you here, God is calling you to radical relocation into the broken places of this world,” he said. “Take us to the next level.”
At the end of the evening, Urbana participants were challenged to give one million dollars to missions (an average of $63 per participant). The offering will go to a dozen different ministries, many of whom work to combat human trafficking.
Some of the offering will also go to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students to help sponsor other Urbana-type gatherings. “The offering will support 17 different missionary conferences in eight regions of the world,” said Urbana director Jim Tebbe.
The preliminary offering total was later announced as $874,000. However, additional contributions are still being accepted online.
Videos of Urbana 09 presentations can be viewed online at the Urbana 09 webpage.
Urbana 09, InterVarsity’s 22nd Student Missions Conference, continued through New Year’s Eve at the Edward Jones Dome and The America’s Center in St. Louis.
