Ministry in Daily Life

Speaking the Truth in Love

webteam@intervarsity.org — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Jonathan Rice

Speaking the Truth in Love

In the future, when Jesus reigns on the earth, when lions lie down with lambs, people will resolve disagreements by telling the truth in love. In those days, unlike in today’s world, love and truth will be harmoniously one.

In today’s world, many people talk as if truth and love are incompatible. In courtrooms and classrooms, in taverns and town meetings, truth and love are talked about as opposite values—truth being intellectual and rational; love, emotional and nonrational. More than just temperamentally different, truth and love, like adult siblings grown apart, are said to have gone their different ways. Nowadays truth disparages love for its sentimentality and naiveté, and love devalues truth for its intolerance and arcane scientism. Both accuse each other of incivility.

Even in our churches truth and love appear estranged. Today some Christians who see themselves as faithful to God’s true words in the Bible stand opposed to those who see themselves as faithful to God’s love within those words. Of course, such a separation of love and truth within the church is disappointing, for Scripture speaks of truth and love as harmonious, particularly in Ephesians 4:15, where Paul encourages the Ephesian church members (who disagreed among themselves about the unity of Jewish and Gentile believers) to manifest their oneness in Christ by speaking the truth in love.

Conflicts among Christians are not necessarily sinful. Indeed, conflicts rarely arise from people being intentionally malicious: most people would never spark a conflict for its own sake, never try to make trouble. What people typically desire is acceptance of their version of a truth. Still, a resolvable conflict can escalate into a sinful conflict with dreadful consequences—injury, murder, war.

Considering such consequences, it’s understandable why some people try to avoid conflicts by retreating into an ideological fortress that promises them protection. And it is even understandable, psychologically speaking, why many people ignorantly accept the postmodern notion that truth is a relative value—vacuous and suspended in amoral space, where no thought, word, or action has value in reference to an objective or revealed truth but all values are measured by the fluctuating standards of other relative values.

If, as well-known atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens argue, the notion of revealed religious truth is obsolete, then it may be reasonable to think that making truth relative—or even eliminating “truth” altogether—is responsible.

People have tried to eliminate the notion of objective truth. Sometimes they replace it with a less-trustworthy “truthiness,” but the human need for real truth won’t go away. So it’s been discredited and devalued instead, particularly in academia.

In the university, where evidences of postmodern thinking are most prevalent, truth—particularly religious truth—has been devalued to the status of civilization’s troublemaker. Dogmatic, intolerant, morally unenlightened, truth is now shunned as irrelevant.

Its equal rank among the classic virtues revoked, truth is now subordinate to mythic, romantic love. And the ironic but not humorous outcome of truth’s fall from honor is that love has become the new, absolute truth.

Now whenever conflicts arise between love and truth, both academic and popular cultures cheer for love. As it happens, truth has lost a lot of friends. If truth still matters, how can we reconcile love and truth so that we may speak the truth in love?

Looking to Jesus Christ provides us the best answer. In the Bible, we see Jesus living fully in this world. He didn’t exempt himself from the conflicts of an earthly human life; instead, he passed through conflicts provoked by the devil, religious leaders, and even his own disciples. And he experienced death on a cross, the most painful, humiliating conflict of all.

On the cross, Jesus reconciled all things in himself. In the death of Jesus, we see that our conflicts—our conflicts with God, with one another, and with ourselves—are healed and made whole through his uniting in himself both truth and love.

How did Jesus accomplish this reconciliation? Through self-surrender and obedience to his Father. By yielding his life to the Father, through surrendering his life on the cross, Jesus united love and truth in a sacrificial act of redemption, thus making possible our ability to speak the truth in love.

Jesus’ way of uniting truth and love on the cross can be our way of knowing love and truth in our own hearts, so that in the chaotic moments of conflicts, we don’t sin but act gracefully, truthfully, lovingly. By surrendering our wills to Jesus Christ, we will discover through his Spirit the unity of truth and love. By speaking the truth in love, we will manifest the values of God’s kingdom in this world.

The Bible teaches us to speak the truth in love. Here are some biblical principles to practice today:

Ask God to help you discern the truth.
Surrender your will to Jesus Christ.
Listen actively, empathetically, and respectfully to the other person’s idea, story.
Know what you believe and why.
Communicate your truth in simple, clear terms.
Stay connected to the person. If you are both Christians, pray together.
Be willing to change.

Truth and love can be held together through God’s grace. In Christ’s life and death, we see his will yielded in obedience to God.

Through such obedience, Jesus brought together truth and love. We too can express the unity of truth and love by yielding our lives to Christ and applying practical biblical principles that show our generation what the kingdom of God is truly like.

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Following God in Career Choices

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

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Marc Baer

Following God in Career Choices

At the beginning of the school year, when students consider the choice of a major and a career they may pursue after graduation, Hope College history professor Marc Baer offers guidance on how to follow God through our career choices.

To answer the question, “What is Calling?” recognizes two different types of calling for the Christian. All believers share a primary calling to love God and follow Him. I experienced that when I was 25, a few weeks after I had passed the comprehensive exams for my PhD program.

I had grown up in a non-believing family, completely outside the church. I wasn’t seeking salvation: I had no sense I needed it. But I was challenged by an undergraduate student to read the Bible, and over many months I encountered such profound truths that I was simply overwhelmed.

Don’t forget your neighbor
In addition to our primary calling to love God, we have a secondary calling to love and serve our neighbor, according to the Greatest Commandments that Jesus introduced in Mark 12:28-31. Our secondary calling is usually related to our job or career. Each secondary calling is different.

How does God call us to a vocation? Here are some examples from the Bible:

God calls us directly: Abraham and Paul.
God places a desire in my heart: Isaiah (“Here I am; send me”).
God takes some people along a path they would not have chosen: Daniel.
God offers an attractive option: Stephen was called as one of the seven in Acts 6.

Pay attention to others
In the case of the latter two calling examples, notice the role of others. Very often God uses other people to call us. If you read the 22 personal narratives of living out the Christian faith in the academy included in Paul Anderson’s Professors Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of Christian Faculty, you’ll find many who heard their call through a professor who knew them well.

We may be God’s agents in calling someone. Consider the British abolitionist William Wilberforce. God used three different men to call Wilberforce: the prime minister, William Pitt, who was a non-believer; John Newton, Wilberforce’s spiritual mentor; and John Wesley. In the early 1790s Wesley wrote Wilberforce to encourage the younger man to hang in there in leading the campaign against the slave trade:

“Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God is with you, who can be against you? Oh, be not weary in well-doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall banish away before it.”

This was the last letter Wesley ever wrote; he was 88 years old and died six days later.

Another case, closer to home for me was Herbert Butterfield, an eminent early 20th century Cambridge University historian and Methodist lay preacher who had neatly divided his world between the two until he was asked by his university’s divinity faculty to give a series of lectures on Christianity and history. He told his eventual biographer he trembled “at the thought of proclaiming before a university audience what he considered to be the ‘intimacies’ of religion,’ things he had only uttered previously in the seclusion of Methodist chapels.”

Even at age 49 Butterfield was intimidated by the anti-Christian bias of his colleagues. But he accepted, thereby uniting his spiritual and professional worlds, and out of the lectures came a path-breaking book, Christianity and History.

Os Guinness thought after his conversion that he should be a pastor. A 10-minute conversation with a service station attendant caused him to understand his work was outside, not inside the church, and he became a public intellectual.

Let someone, besides a parent, know you well. In fact, let several people know you well. Consult them. Turn your face to God; pray really hard; read the Bible deeply. Read Christian writers as well.

Know thyself
And read yourself. Look for these six signs:

Passion: What motivates you?
Talent: Understand your gifts, and then seek work that matches them well.
Life experience: Think of John Bunyan or Alexander Solzhenitsyn in prison.
Opportunity: Is there an open door?
Community: Listen to the voice of others.
Joy—not happiness; joy.

As Dallas Williard puts it in Divine Conspiracy, “The deepest longings of our heart confirm me in my original calling.”

Calling—because it is so vital—presents us with moral challenges:

First, our work should not drive us: Vocation is not about doing, but being.

Second, our work should not trump family. A healthy sense of calling ought to lead to wise choices via good boundaries.

Vocations, careers, jobs, and work flow from the primary calling. Although our secular-minded friends, family, and neighbors wish it were not so, there is no calling without a Caller. Because there is a Caller, you have a calling.

^{Marc Baer is ��ñ��’s faculty adviser at Hope College and teaches courses in modern British history. He also teaches a senior seminar called Exploring Faith and Calling. This article on calling is condensed and adapted from a presentation at “Flourishing in the Academy,” the national gathering of ��ñ��’s Emerging Scholars Network at the 2008 Following Christ conference in Chicago. A transcript of the complete talk is posted online.}

^{If you’re exploring God’s calling for your life, you may want to check out ��ñ��’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference in St. Louis, December 27-31,2009. In years past God has spoken to many Urbana attendees about their life’s calling. For more information, go here.}

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Remembering Pete Hammond

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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Alec Hill, president of ��ñ��

Remembering Pete Hammond

Pete Hammond was a unique human being. Friend. Mentor. Entrepreneur. Author. Rascal. Anyone who ever heard his laugh will never forget it. And Pete laughed a lot.

I first met Pete in the fall of 2000 when he and I were speakers at a Business as Mission conference in Seattle. After he sat through my ethics seminar, I listened to him exposit Hebrews 11. How could anyone, I wondered, find so much humor in that text? Afterwards, we had coffee and a friendship was born.

That’s how Pete operated. At ease with nearly everyone, he searched for a common interest, and then he used it as a relational seed. From there, he watered the ground with visits, calls, and notes. His capacity for connecting with people was almost endless.

Pete’s care for others was perhaps best illustrated at ��ñ��’s 2007 Fall Leadership Meeting. At a dinner for forty senior leaders, the outpouring of love for Pete was simply overwhelming. By my estimate, nearly half of those present said things like: “But for Pete, I would have left the Fellowship years ago.” “When I was down-hearted, Pete came alongside and lifted me.” And, “Pete championed multiethnicity at a time when it wasn’t popular to do so.”

Pete wore many hats during his four decades of service to the Fellowship — regional director, director of Evangelism, director of Ministry in Daily Life, and Interim vice president of Advancement, to name a few.

As significant as Pete’s contributions were within the Fellowship, I suspect that his greatest impact was external. Everywhere I went, key Christian leaders seemed to know ��ñ�� through him — Christianity Today, Presbyterians for Renewal, various marketplace ministries, Christian colleges, the Billy Graham Association.

As Pete moved towards retirement, he and I went on several trips to transfer some of his key relationships to me. Everywhere we went, faces lit up as he entered the room.

Pete brought joy. And a tad bit of mischievousness. I will never forget our visit to a dear friend who runs a tourist attraction in Alabama. Pete jumped on a motorized toilet seat. I followed and the race was on. Pete always claimed that I won by cutting him off, but I dispute his recollection.

When the love of Pete’s life – Shirley – passed away in October 2007, he grieved deeply. After six decades of being in love (including 49 years of marriage), Pete’s soul had a deep hole.

Pete’s passing is bittersweet. On the one hand, he is now with the Lord. Reunited with Shirley. On the other hand, I – like many others – will sorely miss him. He touched my life in ways I’m only now beginning to realize.

A memorial service for Pete Hammond was held Saturday, January 10, 2009, at Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin.

A Service of Remembrance was held on Monday, January 12, 2009, at the National Service Center. To listen to or download the audio from that service click here.

Obituary from the Wisconsin State Journal

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From the President

A World Away from Wall Street

webteam@intervarsity.org — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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Gordon Govier

A World Away from Wall Street

From his office overlooking Ground Zero in New York City, Jimmy Lee is still close to the Wall Street world where he worked for many years. But now his focus is on different worlds: the worlds of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Jimmy is Associate Vice President of Regional Coordination & Strategic Planning for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC). He is a key leader in helping to coordinate the efforts of GBC’s corporate members to address three of the world’s most serious health problems.

GBC works closely with the United Nations, as well as with the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Since 2001 GBC’s membership has gone from 17 to 230, as attitudes toward corporate social responsibility have changed noticeably.

Connecting two different worlds
“I had no conception that a job like this existed when I was a college student at Cornell,” Jimmy said. As an undergraduate, Jimmy led Cornell’s ��ñ�� chapter as president for two years and also spent two months one summer on an ��ñ�� Global Project in South Africa. “��ñ�� opened my eyes to issues of social justice,” he said. “It’s difficult for me to see me making the decisions that I have made without understanding the way that ��ñ�� has shaped my understanding of who I am, and what God cares about.”

He earned a sociology degree at Cornell, found a job on Wall Street, left to get an MBA at the University of Chicago, and then went back to Wall Street. But he also spent some time working with World Vision’s New York office. And he says that his current job brings his backgrounds in business and humanitarian relief together in a very satisfying way.

A passion for justice
Through his work in the business world, Jimmy has discovered that he is gifted in business strategy and planning. But in college, through his involvement with ��ñ��, Jimmy also discovered a passion for economic and social justice. “That’s how I see AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria,” he said. “For me they are not public health issues but issues of economic and social justice.”

The 230 members of GBC include some of the world’s largest corporations, and they have tremendous resources that could be brought to bear on solving world problems. Jimmy feels privileged to be in a position where he can help alleviate suffering on a large scale by marshalling the resources of the business community. “I do sense that when we do things well here, we are able to direct energy, talent, and resources to help people in real physical and economic need,” he said.

Jimmy is helping change the world for the better, on a scale far larger than he could have imagined as a student at Cornell University.

^{Photo: Jimmy Lee with colleagues Richard Holbrooke (GBC CEO), Barbara Holmes and Priya Bery, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.}

UPDATE 2013: Jimmy Lee is now executive director of Restore NYC, which works with the victims of human trafficking, and was profiled by Christianity Today.

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FC08 Prize Winners

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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FC08 Prize Winners

The integration of faith and vocation, the foundation underlying ��ñ��’s Following Christ 2008 conference, was promoted at the conference in the Bosscher-Hammond awards competition. Twenty-five semi-finalists received free registration to the conference, December 27-31, 2008, in Chicago. Three winners of the award were announced on the final day of the conference.

The winners each offered a unique proposal for expressing their faith through their occupation to the benefit of others.

A team from Baylor University, led by engineering professor Walter Bradley, proposed a plan to develop more economically beneficial uses for the coconut. Noting that coconuts are abundant in many of the poorer regions of the world, the Baylor team believes that the application of engineering, distribution, manufacturing, and business resources can develop markets that will improve the financial yield from the shell, the husk, and the inner parts of the coconut.

“It is exciting to think that this abundant renewable resource has been provided by God to help the poorest of the poor, if we can just see the value that God has put into this fruit and figure out how to get that value out,” their proposal said. “We set out to discover the technology that would allow us to start a triple bottom line company called Whole Tree, Inc. around coconuts, one that would make a profit, make a difference in the lives of people most in need, and be good stewards of our planet.”

Stephanie Gehring’s goal is to write orthodox theology in the form of poetry. “As an artist and a Christian, it is part of my practice of belief not to ask questions as though they have no answers,” she wrote in her application. “The balance between clarity and mystery is one I’m struggling to find.” Stephanie recently received an M.F.A. degree from Cornell University.

A public health initiative in the state of Arkansas focused on working with both white and black churches in an effort to improve information and motivation related to healthier living practices. Two important principles in Karen Hye-cheon Kim’s proposal were, “God cares about your health and we cannot be healthy by our own strength.” Karen works for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and has also won government grants for her initiative.

Each of the winners received a $2,000 prize.

The competition is named after Peter Bosscher, a former professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who passed away in 2007, and Pete Hammond, a former senior staff member and vice president at-large with ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship who passed away in December 2008. Both men committed their lives to the integration of faith, learning, and practice. Bosscher was the organizer of a chapter of Engineers Without Borders on the UW-Madison campus. Hammond founded and led ��ñ��’s Ministry in Daily Life Resource Group, originally known as Marketplace.

Two more reports on Following Christ 2008 are online: Honoring God at Work and Human Flourishing.

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The Legacy of a Visionary

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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The Legacy of a Visionary

Pete Hammond exemplified ��ñ��’s commitment to campus ministry in creative and unique ways. We are grieved at his passing but thankful that his ministry touched and enriched so many lives. Pete Hammond died last week at his home, at the age of 72.

Pete joined ��ñ�� staff as an area director in 1966, working in the southeastern U.S., and he was one of ��ñ��’s early advocates for multiethnic ministry. He also became the director of Evangelism and served as vice president at large.

Ministry in Daily Life
His life touched almost every aspect of ��ñ��. But most of the last two-and-a-half decades of his career, until his retirement in August of 2007, were dedicated to helping men and women discover their ministry roles through ��ñ��’s Ministry in Daily Life.

President Alec Hill recalled an evening in 2006 that was arranged for ��ñ��’s regional directors to express, in anticipation of Pete’s retirement, their appreciation of his many years of ministry. Staff member after staff member told stories in gratitude for Pete and the meeting lasted far longer than the allotted time. “So many people stood up to tell of how Pete helped to change their lives,” remembered Alec.

Senior vice president Jim Lundgren voiced what many people felt when he said, “Pete walked with me at crucial times in my life, and he’s part of the reason I’m still at ��ñ��.”

At that same meeting, Tom Boyle, director of Staff Development and Training, said, “I have a vivid memory of first meeting Pete Hammond in the fall of 1977 at ��ñ��’s Bear Trap Ranch. Pete made a comment that raising kids was easy—all you have to do is the right thing, day after day. That was the best advice my wife and I ever got for raising our kids.”

Visonary Leadership
Paula Fuller, ��ñ��’s vice president and director of multiethnic ministry, thanked Pete for his enthusiastic support for minority students. “If it weren’t for you, many of us wouldn’t even be in the room,” she said. “Bringing black and white students together in Mississippi in the sixties was courageous, bold, and visionary.”

“Thank you for teaching us to be appropriately reckless for the kingdom,” added John Terrill, then director of ��ñ��’s Professional Schools Ministry. “You inspire us to take good risks.”

“You’ve probably done more than any other person in the last 30 to 40 years to represent ��ñ�� publicly,” summed up vice president Barney Ford, ��ñ��’s director of Advancement. “You’ve done it well, with great diplomacy.”

Pete and Shirley
In response, Pete had said, “Whatever that is true in what has been said about me today is mostly about the people in my life.” He thanked a number of former and current ��ñ�� colleagues for their influence. But his greatest thanks went his wife Shirley. “We’ve been together a lot longer than our 49 years of official marriage,” he said. “And I’m hoping for a lot more.”

But many more years together on earth was not to be, for after an extended illness, God called Shirley home to heaven in October of 2007. So it is with a mixture of sadness from our own loss and confidence that Pete and Shirley are in heaven that we accept his death and thank God for his years of friendships and life among us.

Pete’s vision, character, and passion have inspired ��ñ�� staff for a generation. We shall always remember him with fondness and respect, and we commit ourselves to perpetuating his legacy by continuing his vision for changing people’s lives through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

_A memorial service for Pete Hammond was held Saturday, January 10, 2009, at Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin._ The family requests memorial gifts be directed to the Stewardship Commission of Christ Presbyterian Church.

Obituary from the Wisconsin State Journal

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Creating Culture

webteam@intervarsity.org — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Creating Culture

Former ��ñ�� staffer Andy Crouch wants to know, what do you make of the world? In his new book, Culture Making (July 08 release from ��ñ�� Press), he challenges Christians to move beyond the “culture wars” and simply condemning, critiquing, copying or even consuming culture. Instead he unleashes a stirring manifesto calling Christians make something of the world—by creating culture.

Andy skillfully unpacks the complexities of how culture works and gives us tools for cultivating and creating culture. Basing his call firmly in keen biblical exposition, he asserts that creating culture is not just something we can do, but something we should do as outlined in the scriptural narrative, the life of Jesus and God’s call on the church.

“I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first-century American Christians need to read more,” says Lauren F. Winner. And James Emery White declares, “[Culture Making] offers a fresh voice with trenchant thinking, forcing you to blow the dust off the mantle of your own settled proclivities.”

A model of his premise, Crouch’s landmark book is sure to be a rallying cry for a new generation of culturally creative Christians. To find out how you can join the culture makers, visit www.ivpress.com.

Andy Crouch talked about making culture at the spring staff conference of ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry. To hear or download the three audio sessions from Andy Crouch, visit Intervarsity’s audio resources page.

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Decision-making in the Presence of God

webteam@intervarsity.org — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Decision-making in the Presence of God

The school year is coming to a close. Students are deciding what they will be doing during the summer. Regina, a graduate of the University of California–Davis, thought she might participate in an ��ñ�� Global Project in East Asia. God brought her to the point of considering this program and then guided her to her final decision. In the following selection, Regina relates the process in her own words.

“I graduated in the summer of 2007 and started a job on a local newspaper. On February 29, 2008 my editor called me in and said the paper was losing money and could not afford to keep me. So, at the ripe age of 23, I began drawing unemployment compensation.

“At first I was depressed, but after a while I began to get excited to see what God would bring next. I learned about a new Global Project (GP) in East Asia and thought the loss of my job might be God’s plan to get me to that country, not just for the GP, but to stay on and work, using my foreign language skills. This tapped into my father’s dream for me that one day I would get into University of California–Berkeley graduate school in East Asian Studies. Spending a year overseas would definitely polish my resume for Berkeley.

“I talked this out with Fred Wagner, the GP director, and at the end of the phone call he prayed for me that God would give me a love for the people of this area of the world. God began to answer his prayer as I gradually began to think of my motives for wanting to go on this trip. Did I really love the people, or was I just in love with my well-planned future? Then, last weekend I had an experience that further changed my thinking.

“I participated in Journey to Mosaic, a four-day bus trip sponsored by my church. We were paired with someone of another ethnicity and traveled from Oakland to the California Central Valley and then to Los Angeles. At each stop we immersed ourselves in the history of Latinos, African-Americans, Native Americans, or Asian-Americans, and discussed the role of the Church within these people groups.

“The experience was earth-shattering. Two years before I had participated in a five-week ��ñ�� Urban Project. We spent time in the inner city seeing the depth of poverty that exists right at our own backdoor. I ended up feeling disillusioned, powerless to address the divisions of race and cycles of poverty, and disappointed in the absence of the Church from these issues.

“But Journey to Mosaic changed everything. I met a bus-load of Christians serious about the plight of the poor and oppressed, and striving to live out Jesus’ teachings on those issues. We connected with agencies who were putting faith into action. My disillusionment was being overcome by a rush of hopefulness. I now have a strong desire to get involved in expressing God’s heart for the poor.

“Now I’m at a crossroad. My interest to go to East Asia is receding, replaced by the desire to spend two years working with an inner city ministry. Frankly, I’m a little scared to talk to my parents.”

The comments continue a few days later:

“I spoke to my parents and I can’t believe what God has done. My father told me that I’m only young once, so I should go ahead and work in the inner city for couple of years. I’m excited to see where God will lead me during the next two years.”

Fred Wagner was interested to see who would be on the team that he was taking on the GP to East Asia. He thought that Regina would be a great addition to the team, particularly with her language skills. But, as he says, “As we pore over GP applications our sovereign God has plans for these students, and we can’t always discern what he is doing.”

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Urbana 06 Challenges WMU Art Student

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Kristine Whitnable

Urbana 06 Challenges WMU Art Student

Bette Lau is completing her education as an art student at Western Michigan University (WMU). She attended Urbana 06 where the Lord gave her a burden for people suffering from the AIDS epidemic in Africa. As she thought about the horror of their suffering, she was moved to prayer. Though she felt hopeless in light of the many problems created by the epidemic, Bette wanted to do something more.

As she prayed, she thought of organizing an art exhibit centered on the theme of AIDS awareness. Bette saw two good outcomes of the exhibit: viewers would become less complacent towards the plight of people with AIDS and funds would be raised for those suffering in Africa.

However, the idea of actually getting an art exhibit together seemed like a dream to Bette. In December 2007, a year after Urbana 06, the Lord reminded her of an art exhibit and challenged her to act. At first she was overwhelmed, and then she remembered what a fellow Christian artist had said, “Sometimes God calls us to something bigger than ourselves, and we just have to throw ourselves into it and see what he’ll do.”

So she prayed, “Lord, this is yours. And if you want to do something about this exhibit–then do it, and I am privileged to be your vessel.” Bette began the project by presenting the idea to students in art classes at Western Michigan University, and asking them to create a piece for the exhibit. To her surprise at least forty people indicated that they would contribute artwork for the show.

Now Bette needed a place to hold the show. She had been told that Henderson Castle, a local bed and breakfast, often held art exhibits. When she contacted them, they were excited to do something that included a social awareness element. The exhibit was set for April 4, 2008 and would be advertised in the local arts flyer.

As Bette thought about the exhibit, she had another concern, her fellow art students. They are often taught to compete against one another and use their art to get ahead in the world. Bette hoped that this show would create a sense of community among the artists as they worked together towards the vision of helping AIDS victims in Africa. She wanted the art students to have an opportunity to use their art for the benefit of others and to create social change. She soon saw evidence of this change of heart with many students being willing to help with the set up and logistics of the show.

In addition, professors in the WMU art department have been supportive of Bette’s efforts. One of them even assigned his students to do a piece that fit with the theme of the exhibit for a class assignment. Bette also had opportunity to share the gospel with her peers and professors. When they asked her “Why are you doing this?” Bette was able to boldly tell them, “I am motivated by the love of Christ and the call he has put on my heart to care for his people.”

At Urbana 06, Bette was given a burden for AIDS patients and the idea of an art exhibit. Through her obedience, the compassion of God is spread further through the power of art, the power to change and influence peoples attitudes and actions. When people came to this show, Bette hoped their eyes would be opened to some of the suffering in the world around them, and that they would be moved to do something about what they see.

Bette Lau, in her own words, at StudentSoul.com
Local coverage – Kalamazoo Gazette
More coverage – Mission Network News

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Urbana Operations Wins Kudos from Conference Professionals

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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Urbana Operations Wins Kudos from Conference Professionals

Jen Albrecht, Convention Facilities Manager for Urbana 06, ��ñ��’s 2006 Student Missions Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, has been selected as Meeting Professional of the Year by the Association for Convention Operations Management (ACOM). The award was presented at the ACOM Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday, January 12, 2008.

“I accept the award on behalf of my wonderful team of ��ñ�� staff and volunteers,” Jen said. “It was a challenging experience but the success of Urbana 06 more than compensated for all of our efforts.”

Jen was nominated for the award by Abby Podkul, CMP and Event Manager of the St. Louis America’s Center who wrote, “Jen’s leadership and management style was inspiring and rare.” She praised Jen for her professionalism, including her communication skills, flexibility and responsiveness.

Urbana 06 was ��ñ��’s first missions convention outside of the University of Illinois in 60 years. “Jen and her team had to learn how things are communicated and accomplished in our setting,” Abby noted. “All of her diligent planning and delegation among her team members paid off in that the convention was smooth, issue-free and fun. Jen was instrumental in creating the strong partnership between our staff and her organization.”

Abby also praised Jen’s ability to deal with everyone on a warm and personal basis. “Jen made a point of meeting as many of our staff members as she could and learned everyone’s names. She remembered personal details about us and inquired about our lives and loved ones when she saw us,” she wrote.

“We are thrilled that Jen’s diligence and competence are being recognized with this award,” said Jim Tebbe, ��ñ��’s vice president for missions and the director of Urbana. “It reflects positively on our entire Urbana team. And it also highlights the strong ties that ��ñ�� is developing with the St. Louis community.”

Urbana 06 was ��ñ��’s 21st student missions convention. Since 1946 Urbana conventions have challenged more than 240,000 people to participate in God’s mission.

^{Photo: Abby Podkul, Jen Albrecht, Kathy Steffen (Director of Convention Services, St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission) and Matt Brinkmann (Convention Service Manager, St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission).}

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Ministry in Daily Life

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