InterVarsity's StudentSoul.org

“The university is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. Change the university and you change the world,” declared Dr. Charles Malik, former president of the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. You may wonder if you will ever change the world, but if you’re involved in a Christian group on campus, you have more influence that you think. Dr. Malik understood that the key to changing the university is changing the people in the university through the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

Born under a haystack

History is filled with stories of humble, unassuming students who had a radical influence on the world in which they lived. Let’s start with the first generation of students born after the Revolutionary War. If you’re not familiar with the historic Haystack Prayer Meeting, you might enjoy reviewing how five students prayed for the God’s global mission under a haystack during a thunderstorm in 1806 and thus launched the Protestant missions movement in North America. They changed the world. Today, nearly every Protestant mission organization in the U.S. traces its roots to the Haystack Prayer Meeting. More on Samuel Mills and his friends.

Haystack reloaded

In 1886, students were again mobilized for world evangelism through the Student Volunteer Movement. As a result of vision and passion, more than 20,000 students in that generation served as foreign missionaries. For more than 200 years, God has been messing with students, turning them into world-changers for the kingdom.

You have a calling: Urbana 06

If you’re curious about ways to join in God’s work on the campus and in the world, one excellent opportunity is the upcoming Urbana 06 conference, to be held in St. Louis for the first time at the end of December 2006. You’ll have a chance to hear awesome speakers and check out missions agencies from all over the globe. Even if you can’t make the convention, the Urbana website is rich with good reading and multi-media content in its own right.

Global involvement

Another way to get involved in moving the world is to participate in a summer Global Project or Global Urban Trek. We’ve already featured three Trek cities and student blogs here on StudentSoul.org, and there are plenty more to read about. You can read student experiences from this year and download a screensaver (Flash player required for the page to display the sample). You can apply online anytime, since the projects will remain more or less the same for next year. More definitive information should be up in early December, so be sure to bookmark the site.