Urbana '06: A Radical Re-Shaping of My Worldview
I attended InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's huge, once-every-three-years conference in St. Louis in the last few days of December '06. This was my first time attending Urbana, and I can say that I'll make every effort to be at every Urbana that happens for the rest of my life.
"Urbana" is a huge missions conference that attracts a lot of attention in the evangelical world. It used to be held in Urbana, outside Chicago. This last time they outgrew the facilities in Chicago, so they moved it to St. Louis. This year it was attended by 22,500 people, the majority of which are college students. People from all the states and provinces of the U.S. and Canada were there, as well as representatives from over 50 countries. About 300 missions organizations and 25 seminaries sent representatives and recruiters.
Attendees stayed at various hotels all around downtown St. Louis, MO, basically taking over the downtown area. Our daily schedule was pretty intensive, but highly worth it. Every morning there was a bible study on the book of Ephesians, followed up by a morning session of worship, preaching, and an expository on Ephesians by Ajith Fernando, the director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka. The morning session was followed by lunch and two seminar sessions, where you could pick from a list of about 30 seminars to attend. After this was dinner and then the evening worship/testimony/preaching session. Good stuff.
My experience was really eye-opening. Since it was a missions conference, the focus was on the global church, and how christianity is "done" in other countries.
The biggest lesson I took away from it was a refreshed view of the global church. My whole life I've seen the U.S. as the center of Christendom, as the "city upon a hill" as far as world Christianity is concerned, regardless of whether or not we're officially a "Christian Nation". I was floored--humbled--to find that this, in fact, isn't the case anymore. America has about 100 million nominal evangelicals, and this number is decreasing annually. Africa has 360 million evangelicals--more than America--and China now has about 100 million christians. This last fact was really encouraging for me because I remember, about ten years ago, thinking how futile it was to send christian missionaries to china when they faced violent opposition from the government. Apparently it was worth it. The most flooring statistic I learned was that, on average, there were 36,000 new converts a day in Africa last year. On average, the "Western Church" lost 6,000 people a day. Africa is, or soon will be, the center of Christendom.
Check out this video to totally blow your mind on the global situation of the church (at least, it blew mine). It's long but it's worth it:
http://www.urbana.org/u2006.mediaplayer.pop.cfm?gotosession=3&clip=132
I was very amused by the way the guy refer's to what we might call the "Third World" as the "Two-Thirds World", totally mocking the condescending nature of the West's outlook towards so-called "underdeveloped" non-western nations. After all, they're the majority.
The focus of the conference was putting faith into action, combining gospel truth with virtuous acts. There was a huge focus on the AIDS crisis in Africa and how Christians can, and are, responding to it. There were great teachings on racial reconciliation and urban ministry. I'll post more when I have time to write on them individually. Until then, I suggest making plans for Urbana '09.
"Urbana" is a huge missions conference that attracts a lot of attention in the evangelical world. It used to be held in Urbana, outside Chicago. This last time they outgrew the facilities in Chicago, so they moved it to St. Louis. This year it was attended by 22,500 people, the majority of which are college students. People from all the states and provinces of the U.S. and Canada were there, as well as representatives from over 50 countries. About 300 missions organizations and 25 seminaries sent representatives and recruiters.
Attendees stayed at various hotels all around downtown St. Louis, MO, basically taking over the downtown area. Our daily schedule was pretty intensive, but highly worth it. Every morning there was a bible study on the book of Ephesians, followed up by a morning session of worship, preaching, and an expository on Ephesians by Ajith Fernando, the director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka. The morning session was followed by lunch and two seminar sessions, where you could pick from a list of about 30 seminars to attend. After this was dinner and then the evening worship/testimony/preaching session. Good stuff.
My experience was really eye-opening. Since it was a missions conference, the focus was on the global church, and how christianity is "done" in other countries.
The biggest lesson I took away from it was a refreshed view of the global church. My whole life I've seen the U.S. as the center of Christendom, as the "city upon a hill" as far as world Christianity is concerned, regardless of whether or not we're officially a "Christian Nation". I was floored--humbled--to find that this, in fact, isn't the case anymore. America has about 100 million nominal evangelicals, and this number is decreasing annually. Africa has 360 million evangelicals--more than America--and China now has about 100 million christians. This last fact was really encouraging for me because I remember, about ten years ago, thinking how futile it was to send christian missionaries to china when they faced violent opposition from the government. Apparently it was worth it. The most flooring statistic I learned was that, on average, there were 36,000 new converts a day in Africa last year. On average, the "Western Church" lost 6,000 people a day. Africa is, or soon will be, the center of Christendom.
Check out this video to totally blow your mind on the global situation of the church (at least, it blew mine). It's long but it's worth it:
http://www.urbana.org/u2006.mediaplayer.pop.cfm?gotosession=3&clip=132
I was very amused by the way the guy refer's to what we might call the "Third World" as the "Two-Thirds World", totally mocking the condescending nature of the West's outlook towards so-called "underdeveloped" non-western nations. After all, they're the majority.
The focus of the conference was putting faith into action, combining gospel truth with virtuous acts. There was a huge focus on the AIDS crisis in Africa and how Christians can, and are, responding to it. There were great teachings on racial reconciliation and urban ministry. I'll post more when I have time to write on them individually. Until then, I suggest making plans for Urbana '09.
posted by david t at 7:16 PM
8 Comments:
I wish that I could have had more time to debrief with you in person ere we parted! I hope that you're being hyperbolic about your worldview being "radically reshaped" -- I think that you had enough going on already. Maybe "reconsolidating" would be better, although I think that that word has way more morphemes than are good for it. Speaking of hyperboles, I'm finding a lot of them irritating lately -- especially the highly-overused adjective "incredibly". It renders me well nigh incredulous at times!
Oh, by the way, I'd really like to get some serious criticism (in the scholarly sense of the word) on my essay "The Blind and the Blind" ere I foray deeper into the places where few dare tread. Actually, there's a lot that I am not touching on, since this is, after all, the internet . . .
Hi Mom!
. . . but, if you look closely, you will notice that I have implicitly begun to open a veritable Pandora's box of possibilities that might give even iconoclastic Postmodernists pause. We'll see how much I get to in this essay, but I doubt if it won't be controversial.
Yeah, maybe it was a radical reconfirming of the ideas I'd been pondering over the last year.
Racial reconciliation? AIDS? Darn Emergents....
This comment has been removed by the author.
Apathy towards the AIDS crisis? Denial about the need for racial reconciliation?
Darn Calvinists.
(previous post deleted because i spelled "apathy" wrong)
Last time I checked the Church doesn't have the cure for AIDS...or racism.
Maybe racism but it will never end. It seems that many social justice Christians always want to institutionalize sin and not look at their own personal sin. Most of the AIDS crisis can be cleared up by keeping your pants on. But the mission of the church isn't to cure AIDS; the personal sin in peoples hearts must be dealt with first.
The dichotamy between "personal" and "institutional" is primarily a western distinction.
Most cultures around the world see the two as interlinked; if a man from one tribe murders someone from another tribe, yes, he committed a sin himself. But he also committed a sin on behalf of his people.
Certainly God doesn't draw the distinction as hard lined as you do; he holds us all accountable for the sin of Adam and Eve even before we are born. The descendents of Jacob, no matter how stupid or ungodly they are, will always be privelaged over the descendents of Esau.
Solomon, despite being a miscreant, was blessed because of his namesake--because of who his father was.
This plays a huge roll in racism, where many arrogant white people are inclined to say "I never did anything to them. I didn't enslave any black people". It doesn't matter. The white race sinned against the black race, and has done everything it can to keep from having to make amends.
Brian, you keep making comments like "Racism will never end. Social injustice will never end." as if that makes it any less worth fighting.
Do you believe you'll ever be perfect? I don't think you will be! I don't think any of us will be in this lifetime. So why keep fighting against sin if we'll always keep falling?
Racism and institutional injustice are social sins, and the Gospel is just as effective in fighting them as it is personal sin.
Post a Comment
<< Home