IFES

��ñ�� Remembers David Howard

drew.larson@intervarsity.org — Tue, 10 May 2022 20:10:25 +0000

Drew Larson

��ñ�� Remembers David Howard

With David Howard’s passing yesterday, ��ñ�� remembers his lasting impact mobilizing students and campuses for God’s global mission. As Director of multiple Urbana conferences, President of Latin American Mission, and International Director of the World Evangelical Alliance, David’s humble and servant-hearted leadership in missions spanned nearly six decades.

“��ñ�� owes a great debt to Dave and to his leadership in missions,” said ��ñ�� President and CEO Tom Lin. “[He kept] us focused globally and on the importance of mobilizing students to share the gospel around the world. His legacy includes hundreds of thousands of college students who had their lives transformed and received God’s calling to global missions through an Urbana Student Missions Conference. ��ñ�� is forever grateful.”

A Legacy of Global Missions Begins

David attended the very first Urbana in 1946 with his good friend, Wheaton College roommate, and future brother-in-law, the missionary/martyr Jim Elliot. David attended, spoke at, or directed nearly every Urbana for the next five decades. For his entire life, he kept his signed World Evangelism Decision card from Urbana 46. (Urbana participants use these cards to mark their commitment to God’s global mission.)

After graduating from Wheaton College in 1949, C. Stacey Woods (��ñ��’s first president) recruited David to ��ñ�� staff for a year as an appointed ‘missionary staff member,’ visiting 120 campuses across the U.S. and Canada to challenge students to give their lives to missions. He then served Northwestern University as a part-time campus minister while attending graduate school at Wheaton and preparing for the mission field.

“My years with ��ñ�� were a very significant part of my life,” he said in a 2006 interview with ��ñ��. “They were a time when God taught me many things and gave me many opportunities. I didn’t know much about missions in those days, except what I’d learned second or thirdhand. But I learned to trust God, and not myself, for any results.”

After 15 years as a missionary in Colombia, God stirred David’s heart again about calling and equipping college students to give their lives to God’s global mission. The stirring, David remembered, was gradual — John Alexander, ��ñ��’s President at the time, offered him the job of Missions Director three times before David accepted!

During his tenure as Urbana Director (Urbana 73 and 76; he also served as Assistant Director of Urbana 51 and 70) attendance grew from 12,000 to 18,000 students, and commitments to missions grew from 8 percent to nearly 50 percent. He also helped design a summer follow-up program for those commitments that eventually grew into the Perspectives Program, which is a cornerstone of missions training in churches, seminaries, and ��ñ�� chapters to this day.

David also helped steer Urbana through the turbulent 1970s, a time when social unrest, campus violence, and the Vietnam War all pushed national anxiety to the brink. Leighton Ford, a leader in both the Lausanne Movement and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association — as well as a lifelong friend of David’s — remembered David’s example at Urbana 70. Leighton had been asked to deliver the keynote evangelistic message at a time when those tensions at the conference were especially high.

“That message was one of the most difficult of my life. I labored in prayer and heart searching as I prepared … [and] I felt little peace as I spoke,” he said. “But I knew that David was nearby, praying, standing by me, encouraging me.

“His fortitude, his steady calm in a testing time, left a lasting impression of Christlike grace and strength. His ability to listen and discern, his concern for helping others to flourish, his ongoing passion to know Christ and make him known — these traits always come to mind when I think of David Howard. I am grateful to have known and served with him.”

In that same 2006 interview, David reflected on the impact of Urbana for global missions: “I’ve been to probably 80 countries, and almost everywhere I go, invariably I run into people who tell me they’re serving today on the mission field because God used Urbana to call them.”

“David’s friendship was such a blessing to me,” said Tom Lin. “When I began as Urbana Director, he told me, ‘I will be praying for you every day.’ And that’s exactly what he did. Over those five years, in the most difficult days of leadership, I was always encouraged to know that each day David was praying for me.

“I’m deeply saddened and grieving Dave’s passing. Many throughout the missions world will miss Dave and celebrate him — in many ways he was a ‘giant’ in global missions. But I, most of all, will miss his smile, his joy, and his passion for students and for Christ.”

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“Ridiculous” and “Scary”: Bob Grahmann’s 40 Years of Ministry With ��ñ��

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:40:18 +0000

Gordon Govier

“Ridiculous” and “Scary”: Bob Grahmann’s 40 Years of Ministry With ��ñ��

The train stopped at the border between Hungary and Romania. Bob Grahmann was sitting in the last row of seats. He saw the glaring searchlights, the dogs, and the barbed wire outside. He watched as guards boarded the train with their machine guns and methodically rifled through the passengers’ luggage.

It was 1983, at the height of the Cold War. Bob was an ��ñ�� Area Director in New Jersey with four years of campus ministry experience preceded by four years as a local church pastor. A friend working in Eastern Europe had invited Bob to teach church history to Romanian pastors for three weeks during the summer. When they met in Vienna, the friend told Bob that his wife was sick and Bob would have to travel on his own.

As the Romanian border guards moved down the aisle, getting closer and closer, Bob didn’t like what he saw. “I have a whole suitcase full of Christian books,” he thought. “This is going to be really bad.” Bob knew that many people were praying for his trip. And strangely, as the guards got nearer and nearer, he felt at peace with whatever was going to happen.

“They got to the person in front of me and the train started to lurch a little bit,” he recalled. “They said to each other, ‘That’s it.’ They came over to me, shook my hand, and said in English, ‘Have a nice time in Romania.’ Then they jumped off the train. I was the only one on that train whose luggage they did not check.”

With that trip Bob was hooked on international ministry. “I thought, this was the hardest thing I have ever done. This was ridiculous. This was scary. And I want to do this the rest of my life.”

Within a couple years Bob and his wife Patricia moved their family to Vienna. They were invited by ��ñ��’s Missions Director at the time, John Kyle, to begin a Global Project in Eastern Europe. ��ñ�� students from the US came to Eastern European countries to assist evangelistic summer camps organized by the Slavic Gospel Association.

Soon they were also working with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). Student Christian movements were expanding as communism began to lose its grip on Eastern Europe—something Bob witnessed first hand. “I was there when the walls came down,” he said, referring to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

In 1990 he returned to the US to succeed Barbara Boyd as director of the Bible and Life discipleship training. But he couldn’t stay away from Eastern Europe because the new student movements needed Bible training.

“They were coming out of seventy years of Communism and all of a sudden it disappeared,” he said. “I returned three or four times a year through the 1990s. I started Bible and Life in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia.”

In August of 1991, Bob was in Vienna and took a phone call from ��ñ��’s then Missions Director Dan Harrison, asking him to go to Albania and set up a Global Project. Until that time Albania had been the most atheistic country in the world, and closed to most visitors. Within hours Bob was able to get a visa and a seat on the once-weekly flight between Vienna and Tirana.

He landed in the middle of the night and providentially met a recent graduate of the University of Tirana English Department, who had been led to Christ by a previous visitor two weeks earlier. He told Bob the English faculty at the university was meeting the next morning but advised Bob to watch out for the department chair, who also happened to be the chair of the Communist Party at the university.

Bob presented ��ñ��’s plan for the cultural exchange project at the meeting, including the fact that they would be studying the Bible. “The chairman looked at me and she said, ‘We have been without God for 50 years in this country, and we really need that. Where do I sign?” The next summer there was a Global Project in Albania.

At a conference in 1999 Bob was told by the leaders of the IFES movements in Eastern Europe that they felt they were suffering from lack of proper training. "We'd like you to come and start a training institute for us, for national staff in Eurasia, to train us in theology, Bible, skills of the ministry, and engaging the cultural and spiritual formation," they told him.

In 2002, Bob and his wife Patricia moved overseas again, this time to Kyiv, Ukraine to start what he called The Barbara Boyd Institute for Staff Development and Training in Eurasia. The program was funded for the first 12 years by an entrepreneur who had been mentored by a college professor who, in turn, had been mentored in Bible study by Barbara Boyd.

In 2010 Bob and Patricia returned to the US so Bob could become director of Link, ��ñ��’s program which sends staff volunteers overseas to partner with IFES movements in other countries. He directed Link for seven years and is now Senior Missions Ambassador, splitting his time between recruiting for missions, Bible study training, and Bible training overseas with IFES.

He also continues to work with the leaders of five IFES movement whom he first started mentoring when they were students. “Mentoring is one of my favorite activities,” he said. “When I was a freshman, an older student discipled me, really invested in me. Not a staff, not a pastor, not a missionary, but a student who taught me everything he knew about Jesus and really helped me. And that's a model I use.”

After becoming a Christian in college, Bob went to seminary and started pastoring a small church in New Jersey. But he was impatient and began to wonder if there wasn’t another way to change the world for Jesus. He attended Urbana 76 to investigate missions and sat in on a session with then ��ñ�� president John Alexander. Many of the questions had to do with what career people choose after they leave ��ñ�� staff. Some, of course, become pastors.

“I went up to him afterwards and I said, ‘Have you ever had a pastor come on staff instead of a staff go to be a pastor?’ He said, ‘It’s very unusual. But we’ll check with your church. If they’re really mad that you’re leaving, we want you.’”

The church was not happy to lose its pastor. But the lives of generations of students in the US and abroad have been changed because of Bob’s decision.

Following is the video that was prepared to celebrate Bob's first 40 years with ��ñ��. (Yes, he's not ready to retire yet.)

News Keywords

Bible and Life

International Fellowship Evangelical Students

World Assembly 2019–What’s It All About?

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:57:49 +0000

News

Steph Schmaltz

World Assembly 2019–What’s It All About?

Eleven hundred participants made up of college students and campus staff ministers from 170 countries. Seventy seminars. Twenty-two meals together. Thirteen new student movements. And one message of hope to take back to universities across the globe. July 3–11, 2019, this is what 50 staff from across ��ñ��/USA experienced as they participated in a special event that only occurs once every four years: IFES World Assembly.

World Assembly, put on by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, focused its delegates on being messengers of hope to the world around them. It provided a unique place for our movements to break bread, listen to front-line perspectives, learn from exposition on portions of Luke and Acts, form new friendships through daily cross-national small groups, lament, rejoice, and pray with our brothers and sisters across the globe. In addition, affiliated IFES members voted on resolutions, welcomed 13 new movements, and had vibrant discussions on issues facing today’s global church. With no shortage of content, World Assembly delegates went home with much to process.

It’s tempting to let this be a standalone event for those of us privileged enough to attend, but what if we instead catalyzed our experience to improve our own movement and better love our IFES brothers and sisters?

As the USA delegation returns to our roles, here are some points to contemplate and implement across our movement.

Learning from IFES movements to further the 2030 Calling: While innovation and ideas are coming from within our movement, we can also learn from IFES movements who have already faced similar challenges. For example, UESI in India empowers alumni to plant chapters, EvaSUE Ethiopia reaches 45,000 students with less than 50 full-time staff, and movements in Europe are finding new ways to reach students in an increasingly post-Christian society. We have a great deal to learn from our IFES brothers and sisters.

Developing world changers: Not only do we long to see lives transformed and campuses renewed, but we also long to see world changers developed. To do that well, we need to educate our students on global issues and help them form healthy cross-cultural relationships. While we can do some of that on our campuses, what would it look like for chapters or areas to regularly connect with another IFES movement? Students could pray for each other on World Student Day (October 18, 2019), share ideas to reach their friends, visit one another (a possible Global Program), and dream of new ways to support and encourage one another.

Establishing and deepening relationships with IFES movements: As a founding member of IFES in 1947, ��ñ�� committed to seeing a Christian witness not just on every corner and every campus of the US, but also in every country! While each IFES movement is independently led, what are ways we can serve and support our global fellowship? Could areas or regions establish and deepen relationships with other movements by praying with, taking offerings for, or even hosting students and staff? ��ñ�� Link currently has 200+ staffing requests from across the IFES fellowship. Could God be calling some of us to go and serve as staff in another movement?

World Assembly brought forth major topics that will require careful thought and consideration at personal, chapter, regional, and national levels. However, we don’t want these topics to paralyze us or stop us from taking a step in the direction the Lord is leading. We pray that World Assembly will instead be an Ebenezer of remembrance for how the Lord moved us.

To watch talks, hear delegate reflections, and get a better picture of World Assembly, watch videos on the IFES World YouTube channel by clicking below.

Watch World Assembly Videos

News Keywords

International Fellowship Evangelical Students

��ñ�� Link: God Prepares the Way in Costa Rica

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 21 May 2019 14:34:34 +0000

Gordon Govier

��ñ�� Link: God Prepares the Way in Costa Rica

When Joel and Rachel Watters first visited the campus of La Universidad Nacional Pérez Zeledón (la UNA) in southern Costa Rica a year ago, they sensed that God was already at work, preparing the way to plant ministry there. Rachel and Joel are Link staff serving with IFES sister movement Estudiantes Cristianos Unidos (ECU) in Costa Rica.

One of the first students they met was Mariela who immediately started inviting her friends to get involved. She quickly became a local leader. “When you’re planting you’re always praying for a person of peace that the Holy Spirit brings, and Mariela has been that for us on this campus,” Joel said.

They also met a faculty member who showed them a meeting schedule on his phone. “Three weeks ago, three other professors and I began praying for a Christian group to come to our campus,” he told them, with tears in his eyes. “We feel like you guys are an answer to that prayer.”

Joel and Rachel spent three days on the campus, joined by a group of ��ñ�� students from the US Midwest participating in a Global Program. They did outreach with Proxe stations, coordinated several Bible studies, and told the students that they would return when the new year of classes started in February.

In 40 years of campus ministry in Costa Rica, ECU had never been able to expand out of the central valley and reach the southern part of the country. Now in their second year with ECU, Joel and Rachel have planted a chapter at the main public university in the southern region and are starting to turn their attention to almost a half dozen other area campuses.

Joel and Rachel spent their first year in Costa Rica in San Jose, brushing up on their Spanish language skills and working with ECU on campuses there. Now they lead Bible studies in Spanish but also meet with students who want to practice their English, since Costa Rica is a major Latin American tourism destination and many jobs require English proficieny.

“I love learning about Costa Rican culture, and I think people are interested in learning about our US culture too,” Joel said. “There’s a connection there, an interest in learning from one another, that opens doors and opportunities.”

Joel and Rachel met in a young adult group at a church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2009. Joel had taken a year off from college and was living at home with his parents. Rachel had been on staff for five years and was working with the ��ñ�� chapter at Coe College.

After they married, Joel pursued a physical therapy degree at Creighton University, and Rachel worked with Eric and Stacy Rafferty to plant the first ��ñ�� chapters in the state of Nebraska. Joel volunteered to help lead Bible studies and, together with Rachel, helped lead students on Global Program trips to Ethiopia and then China.

“��ñ�� has always been a part of our marriage and our life,” Joel said. “As I got more involved I felt like God invited me to be open to staff work, and especially going overseas as a family and serving with Link.”

Each short-term ministry trip helped nurture their desire to live and do ministry overseas. “As we have taken our students overseas and experienced God in a different culture and context, we have seen their faith grow,” he said.

When they joined Link in 2017 they discovered their planting skills from Nebraska matched the needs of ECU in Costa Rica. Now, as they are enjoying starting something new they are also facing new challenges. When they arrived at the beginning of the school year and began talking with school administrators, they realized that la UNA had never had formal organizations such as ECU on campus.

However, as they built relationship with the administration and staff, and met and shared the vision of the ministry, they were given formal permission to be on campus. Even in this process, Joel and Rachel could see the hand of God working and opening doors through these relationships.

They also discovered that students at la UNA do not live on campus; instead, they ride the bus to class. It’s a major sacrifice to stay late or come early.

While they are working on finding the best times for meetings, they are still having life-changing conversations with students. One student, a self-proclaimed skeptic, has come to every single Bible study so far. “It’s so fun to watch his eyes and his heart be opened as we study the life of Jesus in the book of John,” Joel said.

Recently, as Joel met with Mariela for another Bible study, they felt the Holy Spirit lead them to sit by one particular student who they did not know. Her ears perked up as she heard them talking about Nicodemus in John 3. “My pastor just spoke on Nicodemus yesterday,” she told them. “I’m really interested in being a part of this group.”

The Watters are confident that they made the right decision to join Link staff. “We have hard days and challenging days,” Joel said, “but also days where you see the Lord has been going ahead and preparing the way.”

Find out more about how you can help Link staff like Joel and Rachel as they serve IFES movements in other countries.

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IFES Chooses New Leadership

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 17:39:37 +0000

News

IFES Chooses New Leadership

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) has announced new leadership for the global movement that includes ��ñ��. The IFES Board has nominated Chris Clarke to become IFES General Secretary.

If approved by the IFES General Committee in July, 2019, Chris will succeed Daniel Bourdanné, who has served as IFES General Secretary since 2007. Chris was active in the national IFES movement in New Zealand as a student president, national board member, president, and conference speaker.

More on his background in this IFES news report.

News Keywords

IFES

International Fellowship Evangelical Students

New Zealand

Chris Clarke

Daniel Bourdanne

Remembering Two IFES Stalwarts

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 22:10:30 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Remembering Two IFES Stalwarts

��ñ�� is saying good-bye to two key staff whose lengthy service to campus ministry includes work among university students in the US and, through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), in Latin America.

Marilyn Stewart, who advised and counseled multitudes of staff during more than a half century of ministry with her husband Doug, passed on to her eternal reward on Saturday, December 1, 2018. She was 77.

Bill McConnell, spent fifteen years in Brazil before returning to the U.S. and serving at ��ñ��’s National Service Center. He died on November 28, 2018. He was 77 years old.

_____

Marilyn was first introduced to ��ñ�� while a nursing student at Jackson Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Miami, Florida, when she became involved with Nurses Christian Fellowship. She attended URBANA 61, ��ñ��’s triennial student missions conference, and followed up with a four-week missionary training camp the following summer.

She met her husband, Doug, through ��ñ��. They married in 1964 with a shared vision of doing student work overseas. They spent their first two years of marriage in Bolivia studying Spanish, then moved to Buenos Aires.

It was a tumultuous time in Latin America, with many uprisings against oppressive governments. But it was also a time of fruitful ministry among students and through their church. “There were many people becoming Christians,” she said in a 2013 interview. “It was a wonderful time.”

They returned to the States in 1971 for Doug to attend Trinity International Divinity School. Then Doug and Marilyn were invited to Mexico by Compa, the Mexican IFES movement, where they did student work for the next 21 years.

Missionaries were frowned upon by the Mexican government. Doug and Marilyn’s job was described as helping Christian students to understand their faith, and to practice it. “We never talked about being missionaries,” Marilyn recalled. “Our girls did not know we were missionaries until we were sitting in a church in North Carolina, and they introduced us as missionaries.”

After two more decades in Mexico, Doug and Marilyn were invited to return to ��ñ�� in the U.S. when there was a need for more senior staff. Marilyn served in many capacities from then on, including organizing retreats, providing spiritual direction, being Chaplain for leadership teams, and working in spiritual formation.

A memorial service was held on Saturday, December 8th, at First Presbyterian Church, 715 N. Carlton Avenue in Wheaton.

_____

Bill McConnell signed up for an ��ñ�� Bible study his first week on campus at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was chapter president as a junior, and joined ��ñ�� staff in 1966 while attending Denver Seminary.

After six years working with US college students, first based Albuquerque and then in St. Louis, Bill and his wife Beth began to consider working overseas with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).

Relations between ��ñ�� and IFES were not as strong then as they are today. However, after conferring with Doug Stewart, who was already working in Latin America, Bill and Beth were invited to join ABU in Brazil.

“We thought we were going for just five years to help train some new staff workers for the country, but it turned out to be fifteen,” he said. “The quality of people in IFES around the world is just fantastic. And to be counted one of them was an honor to me.”

While in Brazil he played a key role in launching ABU Editora, the publishing arm of the IFES movement in that country.

When he returned to the U.S. in 1987, he expected to work in the Missions Department to help strengthen ��ñ��’s ties to other IFES movements. But personnel shifts closed that door and Bill probably would have left ��ñ�� if not for another timely visit from longtime friends Doug and Marilyn Stewart. “They listened to me until three in the morning, prayed with me, and ministered to me,” he said. “It was a God's gift at a time when I needed it.

Instead, Bill found a job in the Executive Office, helping Steve Hayner with his communications. That included dealing with hate mail. “That was a role I really enjoyed,” he said later. “It was an opportunity to explain our mission.”

A Memorial Service for Bill McConnell was held Saturday, December 22, 2018, at Peace Mennonite Community Church, 13601 E. Alameda Ave., Aurora, CO.

_____

Marilyn Stewart speaking at Urbana 93:

Marilyn Stewart - Urbana 93 from ��ñ�� twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

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International Student Ministry Grows as the Globe Shrinks

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 17:06:07 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

International Student Ministry Grows as the Globe Shrinks

Tomsk is known as the Athens of Siberia. Home to six Russian state universities, one-fifth of its half million population are students. Tens of thousands of those students are from outside of Russia, many from sub-Saharan Africa.

“It’s a growing worldwide phenomenon,” said Richard*, one of ��ñ��'s senior ministry specialists. “That’s why they’ve invited me to come and help them.”

For the last three-and-a-half years Richard has been traveling back and forth to sites like Tomsk in Europe and Eurasia to train staff of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) in international student ministry (ISM). He is one of ��ñ��’s longest tenured ISM specialists, and has been involved with ISM for more than 30 years in the western U.S.

“The number of international students keeps growing like crazy,” said Daniel Bourdanné, IFES General Secretary. “What an amazing ministry opportunity.” International students in the U.S. doubled in the last decade, now numbering one million. Globally, there is similar growth, from 2.8 million in 2005 to 4.8 million in 2016 (Migration Data Portal).

“There’s a groundswell of interest in working with internationals,” said Kurt Thiel, who directs ��ñ��’s Link program. Link sends ��ñ�� volunteers, like Richard, to assist IFES partners in other countries. More and more requests are coming in for specialists in ISM.

Joseph*, a Link staff worker with ISM experience in the U.S., arrived in Israel about four years ago. Rasha Saba, General Secretary of the Fellowship of Christian Students in Israel (FCSI), invited him to focus on ISM. They discovered groups of Christian international students were already meeting. Having someone to connect them, train leaders, and encourage them was greatly beneficial. Currently there are four ISM groups in Israel and more are forming.

FCSI has separate groups of Arab Christians and Messianic Jews that meet together on occasion for Bible study and discipleship conferences. Rasha said having a third group of people who are “outside of the complexity” of Arab/Jewish relations helps the other two groups feel more comfortable with each other when they are together. “It’s sort of a bridge, I guess,” she said.

All three groups have been knit closer together by the FCSI emphasis on inductive Bible study but it seems to have a special benefit for the international students. “It’s unique that students are able to come to study the Bible in Israel together with locals,” she reported. “Students are saying this is something they will take back home.”

Lindsay Brown, longtime IFES staff member and former General Secretary, observes that many of the current leaders of the Christian church in certain Asian countries came to faith while they were international students in the U.S. “In the book of Acts few people were converted in their home,” he said. “Nearly everybody in Acts was converted away from home.”

The growing global middle class is helping boost the number of international students. Schools like international students because they increase diversity and prestige, and they are a financial boon. Some schools in certain Eurasian countries offer specialized instruction in fields like medicine and engineering, in English, to attract students who can’t quite afford or weren’t quite eligible to enroll in elite universities. Thus, proficiency in English can be a door-opener to ISM ministry in many countries abroad.

Some who are joining ISM ministry are international students themselves. On his next trip to Siberia, Richard plans to meet with a student from Ghana, an alumnus of the IFES affiliate in that country, so that he can train him to do ISM with his fellow students.

As ISM continues to grow and expand within IFES, leaders are studying the theological dimensions of ISM. Daniel Bourdanné says ISM goes beyond hospitality, welcoming the stranger, serving their needs, and sharing the gospel. IFES will also benefit from international students. “They are not coming like empty vessels; we can learn from them,” he said.

Indeed, ministry partnerships are growing through ISM. Kurt Thiel has been in touch with a student in Sri Lanka who plans to study law in the United States. His grades are good enough to get into any elite U.S. law school. His question for Kurt: “Where does ��ñ�� need the most help?”

International students are not only coming to the U.S. to study, they are also coming to do ministry. “What a great gift to ��ñ�� in the U.S. to have these students with a strong faith and a love for IFES come to us and work with us,” he said.

As the globe shrinks, the body of Christ grows, as each part learns to work more effectively with the others.

^{*not his real name}

^{Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash}

News Keywords

International student

ministry

IFES

international fellowship

evangelical students

World Student Day Reflects Our Global God

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:25:56 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

World Student Day Reflects Our Global God

World Student Day celebrates God’s work on college campuses around the world through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). This year, on Friday, October 19, 2018, students in up to 160 countries where there are IFES affiliates took part in World Student Day.

How do students who are separated by geographic and language barriers celebrate together? They pray for each other; prayer knows no boundaries. Students love to use technology; Skype calls on the Internet are common. And sometimes students even cross borders and meet together in person.

Tania Andrade, an ��ñ�� Campus Staff Minister at California State University San Marcos, did all three last year, at the invitation of students from Compa, the IFES affiliate in Mexico. “I love that the students were the ones who took the initiative,” she said. “I was really excited.”

Tania already had connections and relationships with Compa staff and students through summer projects and other joint activities, and that made the meeting easier in spite of potential language issues. A group of three ��ñ�� staff and five students crossed the border at 5 p.m. on a Friday night and met together with the Compa students and staff at the home of a ministry supporter.

They ate dinner together, worshiped together, and connected with Compa student groups in Veracruz, Mexicali, and Tecate via Skype. During the Skype calls, prayer requests were shared back and forth and then they prayed for each other.

“Every Skype call we had, we could tell that they genuinely cared about each other,” Tania said. “We learned a lot about Compa’s ministry and were inspired by their creativity.”

During the evening the students and staff also broke up into groups and prayed for some of the cities most impacted by recent earthquakes: Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Morelia. During the worship time together Compa students led some of the songs and ��ñ�� students led some. “It was also cool for us to sing a song in Swahili,” Tania said. “It was a beautiful moment for us to praise God as a global God!”

Participants in World Student Day learn about how God is moving around the world, in ways that are different from where they are. They also learn about their unity in the faith. “It’s a great experience of seeing the greatness of God and the church coming together,” Tania said.

Find out how you can participate in World Student Day.

News Keywords

IFES

International Fellowship Evangelical Students

Compa

Prayer

Skype

Reflecting God's Character

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 15:54:43 +0000

News

Reflecting God's Character

Dr. Denis Mukwege, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018, is a graduate of ��ñ��’s sister movement in Burundi, where he did part of his medical studies. He was awarded the Sakharov prize by the European Union in 2013 and was shortlisted for a Nobel Prize in 2016.

��ñ�� is a charter member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which formed in 1948, and later included Union des Groupes Bibliques du Burundi. IFES General Secretary Daniel Bourdanné said of Dr. Mukwege: “He is a model to me of Christian engagement in society. He selflessly brings the character of God to these broken people.”

Remembering Gwen Wong

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 17:50:40 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Remembering Gwen Wong

Gwen Wong was ��ñ��’s second Asian American staff member and was known throughout her adult life for her love of teaching inductive Bible study. She was also known at one time for her fastball. She left this life for her heavenly reward on September 21, 2018. She was 94 years old.

Gwen was introduced to inductive Bible study at ��ñ��’s Campus in the Woods in Canada in 1945, while a student at the University of California—Berkeley. She decided to attend Biblical Seminary in New York to learn how to teach inductive Bible study. To raise money for tuition, she spent the summer of 1947 as a pitcher for Chicago’s Bloomer Girls professional softball team.

Gwen felt that God had called her to work with students in China, but when she graduated from seminary China was closed to missionaries. She accepted Stacey Woods’s invitation to join ��ñ�� and pioneer student ministries in what was then the US territory of Hawaii, as a step towards China.

After four years on US staff she moved even closer to China in 1952 when Stacey Woods sent her, through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), to pioneer student work in the Philippines. Joined by her friend and coworker Mary Beaton, ministry in the Philippines flourished.

Seven years later, Gwen and Mary left ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship Philippines in the hands of the leaders they had mentored and moved on to other assignments. Stacey Woods later described their work as “a classic example of the New Testament pattern of those who could found a work and then move on, instead of following the disastrous pattern of so much missionary paternalism.”

Working with IFES, Gwen continued student ministry and teaching inductive Bible study in Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and other parts of Asia. However, she did not think of herself as a missionary. In a 2015 interview she said, “I just thought of myself as an ��ñ�� staff member.” In the photo above, she is shown with Robert Finley, ��ñ��’s first evangelist, who also ministered in many parts of Asia after leaving ��ñ�� staff.

In 2010 Gwen was honored for her pioneering work with ��ñ�� at a meeting of ��ñ��’s Asian American Ministries staff team. Lisa Espineli Chinn, former director of ��ñ��’s International Student Ministry, grew up in the Philippines and views herself as part of Gwen Wong’s legacy. Her older sisters were part of the campus Bible study led by Gwen.

“Gwen truly knew what student initiative was, what empowering national people meant,” she said. “Gwen left the Philippines in the hands of indigenous leaders and it is still a thriving student movement to this day. We owe her a great debt of gratitude.”

You can read more about Gwen in this 2010 article on our website. A memorial service was held October 13, in the chapel at Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers, donations are being accepted for ��ñ��.

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inductive bible study