The SUMM is UofN Student Mobilization Centre’s core training for all YWAM staff and students serving university students. (UofN Code: STU/HMT 293). The following is a rationale and purpose statement for the next SUMM in North America, scheduled to begin on December 27, 2012 at the URBANA Student Missions Convention in St. Louis, MO.

Mobile SUMM North America 2012-2013

During 2011, we convened two Consultations, on in Northfield, MA and one in San Francisco, CA, where we met leaders representing several new YWAM campus ministries which have emerged in the past few years in North America. The universities in North America represent a particularly urgent context with strategic importance to the future of the Western missions movement and the need for partnership with the new majority Church outside the West. It is time to cultivate and assist those new ministries and equip leaders for greater effectiveness and growth through collaboration and pioneering new ministries.

The SMC’s commitment to student involvement in world missions will be evidenced not only in the curriculum of the SUMM, but also through active mobilization and prayer with potential student volunteers at various campus events during the North American Mobile SUMM.

Since 1986, SMC’s Field Ministry Internships (FMI), the principal program of the SMC, has mobilized students from over 100 different colleges/universities onto 75 internship teams in over 35 countries. We have mobilized students, as learners and not experts, for every sphere of society. To date, the FMI program has been designed by and directed by SMC leaders. Beginning with this SUMM, we are making a change to the FMI program.

Participants in this Mobile SUMM will not only practically experience the mobilization process at events, they will also be involved in the planning and coordination of FMI field projects for which they are recruiting students. Every SUMM participant will identify Field Partners (YWAM and non-YWAM organizations) to help them design and register their own internship programs for students in 2012 & 2013. During the SUMM, we plan to have 100 internship FMI Field Partner Hosts and their Field Projects posted on the SMC website.

We are championing university students to serve Christ’s Great Commission through their life-work. Students and Associate Field Partners are challenged to partner together in the next major wave of collaborative missions and holistic witness in and from university communities worldwide.

North American Mobile SUMM Context: 

Today’s university students are more diverse, more pluralistic, more internationally aware, and more cross-culturally connected than previous generations. Students travel abroad and study abroad more than any previous generation. The number of internationals studying in the United States has more than doubled in the past twenty years, from 325 thousand to well over 700 thousand today, most of whom are from nations in the 10/40 window. Those seeking to plant churches among unreached peoples ought to make ministry to these strategic persons a priority. International concern about human tragedy and injustice, such as impure water, human traffiking, and HIV/AIDS orphans, have captured the conscience of this generation. Today’s students, both Christian and non-Christian, are seeking to make a difference and they are seeking a vital community that shares their concerns. Christian students, many of whom have desperate need for family and community, are at the same time seeking God for his justice and his mercy to be extended through a shared vision of a community and through their own life’s work.

North American Mobile SUMM Strategic Objectives:

This twelve-week interdisciplinary course emphasizes the impact and strategic importance of the mobilization of students toward their life work and calling. It is the SMC’s objective to recruit, equip, and place student volunteers ready to practically serve communities caught in a cycle of poverty resulting from unproductive worldviews. International Student Ministries (ISM) are a priority of the SMC. It is our objective to help North American YWAM centers within reasonable reach of university communities to adopt this priority. In addition, we will be encouraging YWAMers and former YWAMers currently enrolled in university to form missional communities with fellow students. It is the aim of the SMC for students to learn more deeply the importance of a biblical worldview, their calling from God, and what it means to love our global neighbor. Participants in the SUMM will therefore:

• Examine and practice teaching how God’s calling relates to the destiny of nations.
• Research the migration of students, the growing international student population, and learn how to equip university students for effective witness in their generation and in various areas of society: arts, business, education, government, media, science and technology.
• Gain understanding and practical knowledge of university student ministries as a mission strategy with particular application the variety of cultures in the North American context.
• Study the historical and biblical basis of university student ministries,
• Learn how to lead an intensive and integrated discipleship and outreach experience, and
• Gain practical instruction for pioneering and leading a campus ministry and for leading Field Ministry Internships.

We accomplish our objectives through a four-part strategy, which will be applied to this SUMM:

• We Gather - We will gather students & leaders from university communities in several North American cities through mobilization events.

• We Train - We will further develop curriculum through contextual and practical research in university communities in North America.

• We Send - We will recruit students for 100 different service projects related to global human need, their individual fields of studies, and their future influence in the spheres of society. Students will have opportunity to participate in short-term outreaches, serve long-term field projects, and discern their life-work and calling.

• We Network - We will cultivate missional collaboration and partnerships with various organizations, churches, and agencies in and around university communities in North America for the purpose of mobilizing an emerging generation of student volunteers serving Christ’s Great Commission.

North American Mobile SUMM Plan:

This Mobile SUMM in North America will visit several cities to observe and serve some of the most effective campus ministries and leaders. The SUMM mobile community will participate in and/or help organize mobilization events in several cities, including St. Louis, MO for the URBANA 2012 Intervarsity Student Missions Convention (Dec. 27-31, 2012). Every SUMM participant will enroll with the expectation of participating as one of the YWAM international exhibitors at the URBANA 2012 event. (SUMM tuition fees will include URBANA 2012 exhibitor registrations fees.)

SUMM Staff:

SUMM staff assignments are limited to those who have completed the School of University Ministries & Missions -or- current YWAM staff with a Four-Year College Degree and Student Ministries Leadership Seminar (STU 195). All staff members for the North American SUMM will make a full 12 month commitment, in order that they may serve as participant mentor/overseers for SUMM Field Assignments.

SUMM Values:

The Foundational Values of Youth With A Mission are integrated into the teaching/learning experience in a variety of ways. The Values we find most closely relating to the School of University Ministries are:

1. Godly Character & Servant Leadership: SMC seeks to build Godly character and demonstrate principles of servant leadership; humility and integrity are essential to produce in the student a trusting relationship with God.
2. Championing the potential of young people: The SMC seeks to mobilize today’s university students recognizing this population may be the most potent missionary force on earth.
3. All ministries and functions are equal in the Kingdom of God: the SMC course seeks to promote calling in relation to a broadened understanding of the character and ways of God to reach and teach all nations;
4. Commitment to the Word of God: SMC is committed to the authority of the Word of God, to seeking to know and hear God’s voice, and to a lifestyle of intercessory prayer.
5. Visionary: Students come with a desire for revelation of how their field of study in university (other than the UofN) relates to God’s call on their life. The SMC curriculum is designed to foster the development of that vision.
6. Great Commission & Discipling Nations: Believing that the Gospel of Jesus can transform not only individual lives but the structures of society, SMC is dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission to disciple all nations.
7. Hospitality: The Biblical meaning of hospitality is ‘friend of the foreigner’. God has always instructed His people to love and care for the strangers and sojourners in their land;
8. Communication: SUMM participants will communicate and methodically follow up with students and leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures. Participants will articulate succinctly and clearly what today’s students need to be able to serve as missionaries in a 21st century mission field, emphasizing YWAM’s commitment to the Christian Magna Carta and a spirit of collaboration in response to dramatic shifts in the Church globally and extraordinary economic and societal crises. Communicating to mobilize students on cross-cultural, serving-learning experiences is an integral part of YWAM’s discipleship of students in every campus ministry location.

If you or someone you know would be interested in the SUMM course in North America or another part of the world, or if you can host the North American Mobile SUMM for a campus event at one of the cities we plan to visit (St. Louis, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, Richmond, Atlanta), or if you know of an organization leading a project that needs interns to serve and learn for a few weeks or a full semester, contact us. We’ll be really glad to help you connect with this exciting series of events.

#2
A “New” Kind of Church Minister: George Isley
My pastor, George Isley, who went to be with the Lord five years ago, modeled a kind of leadership in the Church that is, from my perspective as a missionary of 25+ years, too rarely seen. One of George’s classmates, Dr. Don Lundgren, Missions Minister at College Church in Northampton, MA, said George had been [...]

#3
Introduction to Missional Collaboration
As I develop a new training course on Missional Collaboration for the University of the Nations, I will be unveiling several aspects of the course through this blog. Today’s post originates from one of my papers and in response to an article on the Trinity by Mark Avery, professor of a course on Collaboration at [...]

#4
New, Old Meaning for Hospitality
Hospitality has taken on fresh meaning to me lately. I’ll explain. I understood hospitality to be mainly “friendship with the stranger,” and NOT primarily how to set your table to impress your dinner guests. Welcoming strangers, radical as that view seemed, isn’t broad enough. Recently, while doing some research on church eldership, the word hospitality [...]

#5
Table Fellowship
Our table is the center of our home. It’s the place our family comes together, the place we welcome friends, neighbors, and strangers. We invite others into the kitchen where we chop and sauté vegetables, bake bread, stir sauces, pour the fruit of the vine (juice or wine, you choose), and prepare to savor the [...]

#6
History: Adoniram Judson
In September 1809, college student Adoniram Judson began to ponder seriously the subject of foreign missions. At the age of twenty-one, he had just finished his first year of theological studies at Andover. Judson read a sermon which was preached in the parish church of Bristol, England, by Dr. Claudius Buchanan. Buchanan had been a [...]

#7
Calling: What I’m looking for…
U2 singer songwriter Bono expresses a spiritual yearning in the 1987 album The Joshua Tree hit single: “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”  New Musical Express (a pop music mag in the UK better known as the NME), points out that the popularity of the song may be due to the way it showed [...]

#8
Easter Note: Holiness is Intimacy with God
“What language should I borrow, to thank Thee dearest friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.” This line comes from “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” a 12th century hymn by Bernard of [...]

#9
Henry’s Hawai’i
Sitting here warming in the sun and listening to the gentle spash of the waves along the jagged lava rock of the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i, I find it difficult to believe this is where a tsunami slammed the small shopping center along the shore on March 11, 2011. That contrast [...]

#10
Holiness is MORE than Intimacy with God
At Easter I wrote about Holiness, that holiness is intimacy with God. (Here’s that post.) I described how Bernard of Clairvaux’s 14th century hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, was a personal and public pre-Reformation plea for intimate relationship with Christ. I return to this subject because I did not adequately describe the beauty and [...]

#11 Special Tribute:
It Happened at a Haystack
I first learned of the monument on the Williams College campus in 1988 while researching student missions. In 2006, I joined several student ministries leaders from across the nation at the 200th anniversary of the event that led to the establishing of this memorial. Do you know why there is a monument on the small [...]

Thank you for a great year! – John Henry

‘… Yet if the gross national product measures all of this, there is much that it does not include. It measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It pays no heed to the intelligence of our public debate, nor the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit, nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be a part of it.’

Robert Kennedy, US Senator;
Kansas city, 1968.

Amid all the protests of 2011, Robert Kennedy’s words are a timely reminder of what is really important for the citizens of a nation. Of course, the famous words of Jesus of Nazareth are most appropriate for the citizens of his kingdom.  Jesus instructed his disciples by telling a story about a king that went on a journey. He told them to “Occupy Until I Come.” He told them to stop concerning themselves about when the end of the world would come (hello 2012!) or when the world would somehow suddenly have justice (hello “Occupy”). Instead he told them to remain faithful and fruitful in their life and work.

Ps. 90:12 (Message) reads:  “Teach us to live wisely and well!”

Before this New Year begins, stop a moment to consider making these three things your priorities for 2012. I’m convinced by doing so, we will avoid the dead-ends of life, such as climbing the corporate ladder, joining a protest movement, or sitting in a religious sanctuary waiting for the return of the king. Instead of measuring our bank accounts or the days until Jesus returns, we can choose to measure what is really important.

1.  Be Creative. 

Eleanor Roosevelt said it well, “‎Do one thing everyday that scares you.”  Invest the time to do that big project you hoped to do “someday.”  I’m not getting any younger. I’ve been around the world several times, but I still have very big dreams. So, this year I recommit to getting some big projects started and some smaller projects accomplished. This year, I recommit to closing the door and shutting myself off from distractions so I may finish my book manuscript and seek to get it published. I also recommit to a radical redesign of our student outreaches. By the end of 2012, I commit to identifying 100 Field Projects for student outreaches doing things like volunteering in orphanages and clinics in China, helping start businesses in the Middle East, and teaching forgiveness in war-torn cities of Africa and Ireland.

What about you? Stop dreaming and start doing.  There’s no better time than now.

If you have dreams, or ideas that you think would change the world for the better, write them down.

^“And then God answered: “Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.” Habukkuk 2:3 (Message)

2.  Enter the Story

The thought of making New Year’s resolutions is a bit annoying. Lose weight? Pay off debt? If you are like me, you can get a bit overwhelmed with the realities of life. Paying bills, family pressures, deadlines to meet, and the barrage of bad news and suffering we read about and see on the nightly news, it’s too much to handle. And yet, this is our reality. It’s a drama playing out in our lives and the lives of our families and neighbors. Some may seek escape from the pain with a diversion. That diversion may start as a harmless hobby and become an obsession, a wall around your heart to protect you from seeing and hearing the suffering all around. Whether you drown your sorrows with a six-pack of Budweiser, smother the pain with another brownie, or  resolve to lose the weight, fit in those jeans, and buy that new car, you may have lost something important along the way. You’ve lost your story.

This year I am committing to enter the story more fully, to listen, and pay greater attention to the drama playing out all around me. I recommit to engaging with the grand narrative through prayer.

“Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.” Matt. 26:40b-41

When we are wide awake, we can learn the art of storytelling. I recommit to learning from the stories of the Bible. But I want to learn from the stories playing out on the world’s stage, in my neighborhood, and in my family. I also want to learn from the great fiction writers. Their stories may not be “true,” but it’s “truth.”

3. Enjoy God’s Presence and Listen to His Voice

If you are reading this post, you are likely “connected” to Facebook or Twitter and the expanding blogosphere. I’ve found it tempting to get distracted, to check Facebook before reading the Bible in the morning. True, God can speak to you through a friend’s post. However, you need your time with the Father. In order to share the good news of the Father’s love with a hurting world, you and I need to first enjoy his presence. I recommit to time with my dearest friend, my hope, and my king in 2012. I love his presence.

Though I may experience pressures and fears of failure, and though I may not have a lot of money, I know I have a calling from God to fulfill. He’s my source and my supply. He does not call the qualified; he qualifies the called. The concern for paying bills and raising funds sufficient to accomplish all that God has called me to do may weigh heavy on my, but when I am in his presence there is joy and hope with faith to fulfill all he asks of me.

Whether you are rich or poor, we all have the same precious and practical asset. It isn’t money or even knowledge; it’s time.  I read recently that time is the currency of the most successful people in the world.  My prayer for you in 2012 is that you really live in the time you have this year, that you really live each day before the face of God.

Oh! Teach us to live well!
Teach us to live wisely and well!
Come back, God—how long do we have to wait?—
and treat your servants with kindness for a change.
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
Make up for the bad times with some good times;
we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime.
Let your servants see what you’re best at—
the ways you rule and bless your children.
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us,
confirming the work that we do.
Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!

^{Ps. 90:12-17}

 - John Henry

P.S. We’re making changes to internships, helping Field Partner organizations register their own internship program and student outreach opportunities on our website. Soon, all Field Projects will be posted on the site. We are seeking 100 Field Projects. Know of a project that needs some short term assistance? Go to: www.studentmobilizationcentre.com

SMC Objectives:

1. To foster missional partnerships, placing interns to serve field projects worldwide.
2. To recruit and place students and staff ready to serve and learn a biblical worldview as a missional strategy worldwide.
3. To establish an international coordination office, including guest house, study center, and library.

At first I feel Christmas pressure, a negative reaction to the appearance of Santa in shopping malls. Have you noticed he’s earlier every year? What are they going to do, have him sit on pumpkins next year? I react to the World’s Way trying to press me into it’s mold. That first wave of pressure makes me resist shopping. So I put off shopping to the last week or so, until after a careful look at my budget. It’s not that I don’t want to give gifts; I just want to give freely, and without all the commercial expectation.

The Appearing of Christ at Christmas

That early phase of unholy pressure begins to fade as the date draws near. My heart warms to a different expectation. I begin to hope for the appearing of the Christ of Christmas. But then I notice the World’s reaction. Here in Madison, the Freedom from Religion foundation objects to a Christmas tree on public property and so they protest by placing a fake crèche and a baby girl doll and Thomas Jefferson figurine in the Wisconsin State Capitol. Sadly, those who reject Christ are stuck in a world without hope, a Darwinian world where survival of the fittest remains the ultimate value. The hopelessness of a purely materialist worldview will drive people to seek significance and happiness in material things, including saving the planet.

Then, the deep hope of Christ’s appearing takes new root again in my heart. Slowly, subtly, I find the grace to celebrate the birth of Christ. I realize that the expectation of his appearing is not complete in merely remembering that manger scene, where the Son of God was born 2000 years ago. He has come. He is Emanuel, God with us.

The expectation of Christmas, the Advent season, is his appearing AGAIN. He is coming. And all creation is longing for his appearing. That same longing is for the appearance of the sons of God, the Body of Christ. Not only will Christ Jesus come, he will set all things right.

Because we received the free Christmas gift

Meanwhile, the sons of God, those of us who have received the free Christmas gift of faith, are urged to “appear” with Christmas gifts. We’re called to make things right, reconciling relationships of all sorts, in his Name. We’re called to reconcile all relationships, beginning with our relationship with Him.

We “appear” as “Sons” when we love God and our neighbors. The Christmas season is the time to be reconciled with family, with our community, and with our nation (despite political differences), It is the time to be reconciled with our world. It is wrong to reject the world, the world to which Jesus was sent, because he loves the world.

Receive and Give the Free Gifts of Christmas

This Christmas, we can receive again the free gift of our world and we can choose to love it. We can love the amazing creative structure of our world, and we can help reconcile the mis-direction, the way of the World.

This Christmas, may you enjoy the wondrous appearing of Christ again in your family, in your world. Have a blessed Christmas!

And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. (Luke 19:13 KJV)

This call to “occupy” is not new. Jesus of Nazareth told a story to his followers to encourage them, especially the ones who were asking if the kingdom would appear right away. They asked, “Will we live in a world with justice and mercy today?”

Interestingly, the people in the story actually “hated” the king. According to the Message, a popular common language translation of the Bible, those who hated the king…

“…sent a commission with a signed petition to oppose his rule: ‘We don’t want this man to rule us.’ (Luke 19:14 MSG)

What does it mean “to occupy”?
Well, according to this ancient use of the term, it refers to good stewardship. Those who were faithful to what the king entrusted to them, those who increased the King’s wealth, were given more than they already had. And to those who did not faithfully invest his wealth, the king took away everything.

Why was this the story Jesus told when asked if he was going to establish his kingdom now?

Perhaps the cry for justice in the heart of every generation can help us understand.

Most people do not want a king. They do not want to serve another, to be faithful to the cause of another. Most would choose not to trust a leader. While crying out for justice, they would reject the most faithful, the most merciful, and the most just leader the world has ever known. Few would see the importance of their own faithfulness.

Most did not, and still do not recognize him. He hid his identity in his humanity. Born in a little corner of a Roman Client State, Palestine. Entrusted to human parents of a middle eastern tribal people, Israel. Jesus was born a king. And only young shepherds and angels knew it. A few odd astrologers too.

Jesus, the son of God, preferred to be addressed as “son of man.” He occupied a human body. And, even after being rejected and killed by those to whom he came to love, he did not reject his creation. Raised in a resurrected body, he occupies that body today.

And he will return, no matter how many Freedom from Religion petitions are circulated, or similar petitions rejecting leaders. No matter how many continue to hate the thought of anyone being their leader, Jesus will return as king.

Have you been “occupying” in anticipation of the king’s return? Have you been faithful with what he has entrusted to you?

He is coming soon. In this Christmas season, may we all occupy our human bodies, our neighborhoods, and our world with the same attitude that Jesus did. Though he was privileged, he became a servant of all.

Have a blessed Christmas!

Watch the Video and go to Perspectives.org to find a class near you.

Field Ministry Internship - Health Care India 2007

In order to become a Field Partner with SMC, your organization must be leading (or in partnership with an in-country organization) a Field Project, which will at least:

• Have a history (at least 2 full years) of serving the poor, excluded, and/or vulnerable people for the purpose of alleviating poverty or reducing vulnerability.
• Be registered as a legal entity in your country of operation. (Note: We understand that the Field Host may not qualify. For this reason, we encourage the Field Host to place students with legally registered organizations.)
• Provide opportunities for the intern(s) to practice and/or research components of your Field Project related to the intern’s field of study.
• Provide the intern a weekly schedule, including participation in your community/team practices of worship and intercessory prayer, and community living work duties. The FMI intern will function in the regular schedule as if he/she were a member of the Field Project staff team.
• Be personally available to the intern(s) for advising, including at least a (one-hour) One-on-One interview at regular weekly intervals. You will agree to offer timely and candid feedback on the quantity and quality of the intern’s work.
• Provide a short online evaluation on the intern’s performance at monthly intervals (after every 30 days at your location) and upon completion of the internship term. All hours accumulated by the intern will be signed off by the Field Project Internship host supervisor.

What SMC Offers:

• We offer you the widest possible participation in the internship program decision-making. We want you to actively engage in the process. We agree to actively recruit qualified student interns on your behalf if you allow us to post your Field Project opportunity on the SMC web site and at various mobilization and recruiting events throughout 2012 and 2013.
• With your help, we are creating a registry of 100 Field Projects for university student internships to be displayed at YWAM International’s URBANA 2012 Exhibit. Registration as a Host for student interns is just $50 USD until June 1, 2012. After that date, the fee will be $100 USD.

Ready?

CMSA 2011 Team

The CMSA team meetings were met with a strong unity and excitement . All came to agree to CMSA ‘Vision 725′. The 725 stands for the universities in South Asia.

In partnership with Dr. Robert Enright, licensed psychologist and professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc., and Grace Network, the Student Mobilization Centre is seeking students and volunteers to help teach Enright’s Forgiveness Education curriculum to primary school teachers in Liberia.

Despite fourteen years of civil war, the future of Liberia is not without hope. The children of Liberia are the future. What is desperately needed in Liberia right now?

Liberian pastor Josiah T. Cheapoo, Sr., President of Grace Network, and Norm Bucholtz have a plan. Josiah and Norm are leading this two week outreach in January 2012. And Norm has 5 years experience teaching forgiveness education. Last January 2011, Josiah and Norm went to Liberia to teach this extraordinary curriculum. As a result, they have been invited to teach forgiveness education in every school in the country, both public and religious schools.

To complete this challenge, we need to teach teachers who will teach both children and other teachers. This strategic plan will begin with this first team of up to ten participants teaching teachers in Gbamga, Liberia.

Who should apply?
Education, Social Work, Psychology, and Youth Workers and students.

If you know someone that may be interested, please use our social networking links (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) at the top of this email notice. Thank you!

Request More Information

To learn more through reading books about missions, past and present, from a Christian theological perspective. And that learning is incomplete until it is operative in our changed behavior (motivating actions, decisions); learning is more properly  and biblically understood to be discipleship. That learning, that discipleship, must become an integral part of the fabric of our dispositions, what Aristotle and Aquinas called habits. We are forming a community of missional learners, whose rhythms of life and ministries are bringing change to our wider community, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

We meet in Madison, Wisconsin (though some are now also meeting with us online). We currently meet in the offices of Youth With A Mission’s PHOS House on the corner of Langdon St. and Frances St. adjacent to the University of Wisconsin Campus.

This monthly book discussion group began in the summer of 2006. Since then we have read and discussed over 40 volumes. On occasion the authors of the books have honored us with a presentation of their book. For a complete listing of the books we have read, visit our Missions and History Book Reader’s Blog.

You are not required to read all the books to participate. This group is ideal for anyone, particularly christian leaders desiring to learn in a small community of fellow readers.  Students, business people, government officials, pastors, and faculty are all welcome.

Post a comment with a request to attend our next meeting. Even if you cannot attend, we’ll add you to our list and keep you posted on the next gathering.

http://missionandhistorybookreaders.wordpress.com/

Though part of a “warm” fellowship, many Christians have an internal war and their secret prayer is “please God, do not send me to hell.” Christian children often wake in the morning worried that the rapture had already happened and that they were “left behind.”

The predominant experience for too many is fear, which instead of producing spiritual growth results in a cycle of fatigue and burnout. Then depression.

Many who graduate from college, even Christian schools, end up as atheists. In the past, perhaps after a few years, they come back to faith, often to bring “stability” to their young families. However, most in recent years are not returning.

The young man who reported on this experience at the MLC meeting realized he was never discipled. Thankfully, he was liberated into an intentional process of learning, but he had to first recognize that he could not do the basic things of a vital Christian life. He did not truly know the Lord. He had much to unlearn as well as much to learn.

How about you? Does the experience of true transformation only happen after being pushed to a place of weakness?  When did you learn to hear God’s voice? Have you learned to hear the voice of the Spirit?

I believe the most transformation comes when we are in obedience to what we know is God’s desire; it may be even in the simplest things, like reading the bible. Discipling others and being discipled in accountability is a process of obedience and immitation. That is how we learn to do the basics (following the example of others.)

As we form Missional Communities in formal and non-formal settings, we must consider the importance of the culture of our own formation.

These are process questions from Mike Breen at the MLC event:

As we are becoming disciples with the life-style of making disciples, we must understand that belief is more caught than taught.

• What is the culture that formed your early Christian experience?
• What worldview, what language and practices, formed you?
• Where and what is the formative culture of your life?
• How has it influenced the forming of your faith?

Let’s hear from you. Feel free to respond.

I was only a child, but I could hear the pain in his voice. I do not blame my Mom or my Dad. I learned over time that both of them were just kids that grew up and had kids. They divorced. At the time, it felt like the end of the world.

The world around us is changing. Change often comes suddenly, like a gut-check. For many, change comes when a loved one dies unexpectedly. For others, it’s the loss of a job, changing a home town or school.

Change can shake us to the core, making us feel powerless, wondering if anything will ever return to normal. There’s something change does NOT do, however. Change cannot necessarily rouse us from our slumber or cause us to grow up out of our immaturity.

Yes, we all face dramatic personal shakings. However, too many continue to live in denial, never changing themselves. They live as though somehow everything is going to get better, like it was before, if they just hope for it. Or they spend their lives blaming others, think OccupyWallStreet, and seeking a way to hang their troubles, like a Scarlet Letter, on someone else.

The shakings that happen in life will not necessarily change you, unless you allow yourself to be stirred deeply at the core of your being. Change, real change, is not what happens TO us, it is what happens when we choose to do FOR others.

Change does not come when we complain that the world has gone wrong; change comes when we become world changers.

So deep personal change must occur, in spite of all the changes that happen in our surroundings. If we fail to allow our hearts to be stirred, choosing to change from the inside out, we will not have a positive influence in a rapidly changing world. And change is happening like never before.

Few people in history have ever lived through the kind of dramatic global and cultural change taking place during our lifetime. Jesus of Nazareth announced major change for the Israelites; he told them their Temple, the center of their culture, was going to be destroyed. They could not accept it; and they sent him to the brutal public and painful death of crucifixion. The Temple was destroyed, and everything changed. But too few living in Israel understood the importance of the changes taking place. Too few allowed their hearts to be stirred.

Jesus warned that they should “flee to the mountains”, but too many held out to protect their precious Temple, even fighting each other when the Romans surrounded the city just before they burned the Temple to the ground. After the destruction and the fire ended, Roman soldiers entered the temple to harvest the gold much of which had melted and seeped between the stones in the floor. Yes, as Jesus foretold, “not one stone” was left unturned. The city of Jerusalem could not be recognized after the destruction. People could not imagine anyone living there. Change.

It appears today that the very fabric of modern society is collapsing. Have the foundations been destroyed? If so, what can be done?

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3

This video outlines the changes occurring today, especially how they relate to the church. Watch it and let us know what you think.

John Henry

Since the summer of 2006 a group of friends in Madison, Wisconsin have met monthly to discuss books we have read related to Missions and History. Recently we decided to create a blog to list the books we have read and make comment on them. The initial work of posting all the books, over 40 in all, is now accomplished. As time allows we will post comments about each of the books. Take a look and consider reading one or more of them. I highly recommend everyone of them for anyone interested in university missions.

http://missionandhistorybookreaders.wordpress.com/

John Henry, SMC International Leader

“Significant advances of the church have not been the result
of our own decisions about the mobilizing and allocating of resources…The significant advances in my experience have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge. God opens the heart of a man or woman in the gospel. The messenger (the ‘angel’ of Acts 10:3) may be a stranger, a preacher, a piece of Scripture, a dream, an answered prayer, or a deep experience of joy or
sorrow, of danger or deliverance. It was not part of any missionary ‘strategy’ devised by the church. It was the free and sovereign deed of God, who goes before the church…this mission is not ours but God’s.” (1995:64)

In this respect, we can see that significant missionary advance is not primarily a human enterprise. We should be fully and actively involved in missions. However, we must reorient our posture, because it is not God’s Church that has a mission. Instead, it is God’s Mission that has a Church.

Every church community must recognize the Lord Jesus, not merely for their own salvation and acceptance, but for their orders and instructions in His Mission to all people.

If we properly understand our Identity as “members” of the Church, we will then fully participate in our Responsibilty in Christ’s Mission.

A brief summary report by John Henry.

A big “Thank You” to Tim and Karol Svoboda and the team at YWAM San Francisco for extending their gracious hospitality in the Gold Rush City and the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Thanks especially to Karol who was so engaged in hosting us that she rarely sat down, let alone sat in on our meetings. Bless you!

I must apologize to everyone for the delay in writing this summary report on our consultation. Thank you all for coming and participating. For me, the meetings and conversations kindled new and growing friendships. I must admit I did not keep very good record of all that was said. I invite you to pass along your notes if you can complement what you see here. In any case, I came away with an expanding vision and a deepening sense of the call of God to the universities, especially as they relate to the cities.

We began our meeting with a report on the history of student involvement in missions and a report on a book I recently read, Desiring the Kingdom, by James K.A. Smith.

Exegeting the City and the University – Tim Svoboda

Tim, you gave us an excellent picture of the contrasts, the “Geek”/Silicon Valley with its algorithms on one side and the artists/wealth and wine community on the opposite side of you. You helped us feel the tensions between Berekley, and its Prophetic voice, and San Francisco, with its extending of Mercy without boundaries, which may have a tendency toward anarchy. I wish we could have stayed longer to experience the small, organic church life, the marina, and the multi-lingual mosaic of peoples, the Vietnamese, Yemmeni, Cambodian, and Afghani, etc.

As I was departing the city at the end of our consultation, I was struck by the story of William Taylor, the Methodist preacher, who in the 1850′s wrote the book, “Seven Years of Street Preaching” and how hundreds would come hear him sing on the streets and then preach. Though his church is now a law college, I am also moved by the continuing story of how a Hastings Law College student, Randy Shaw, applied his studies to reality in the Tenderloin. The start reality of the story is both at your front door and inside the Ellis room where institutionalized poverty and homelessness now costs over 1 billion, with several non-profits enriching themselves off government system.

Yes, I was struck by the thought that God may intend for the Bay Area to be ground zero and the epicenter of the next major move of missions and the transformation of a Church caught up in the Fourth Wave of Missions. I was struck with the thought that it may all begin with students, prepared to act “Because Justice Matters” and collaborate, because they are equipped with tools unlike any previous generation. Perhaps, God in his mercy is calling for a new generation of followers to get their own “better cut of steak,” like NYC Tenderloin’s “Clever or Cleaver” Al, without the extortion and beatings, of course.

Perhaps God is calling for a new engaged church community, those Donald McGavran would say are not “birds of the same feather” and do not “tend to flock together.” The newly engaged church with a broad vision for the city must include students in university, especially the vastly different demographic of today’s universities. (i.e. Berkeley Enrollment: African American 3.4%; Asian American 45.7%; Latino 11.5%; White 31.7%)

Amid the wasteland of broken dreams where 11,000 people live in SRO’s and where police are social workers, God still offers hope and a future. The YWAM community and the Ellis room is not only a peaceful place to drop in: it’s also a peaceful place for guests. The Ellis room is a beautiful “third-space” between the streets and a 10×10 over-priced single, where conversations can lead to relationships and relationships can lead to prayer.

The Ellis room and the ministries of YWAM San Francisco are ripe with opportunities for university students like Randy Shaw. However, I believe God may be calling a different generation of Christ followers to leave the lecture halls of universities to enter a live-learn laboratory of urban life. Yes, the city is a funnel for 360 discipleship, your 1 year program in 4 phases of 3 months each. However, there are many more learning-serving internship experiences that may be also be honored in academic institutions, as Doug Batson so adroitly told.

I came away from our meetings with some action items and some books to read. Among them, I am committed to read The University and the City (1988). Tim, you are modeling the way by asking the right questions to exegete the city. And you began a process I will continue when you began to exegete the university.

Theology of Evangelism & Place

Tim, you and Karol and your team are helping provide a “Theology of Evangelism and Place”, which will be most readily adopted by university students. Church folk, even YWAMers, may be a little slow to see and hear, smell and taste, the gut level “pull” of the gospel to the city. However, students will need far less convincing; they will respond as you (and we) present a gospel big enough for the city, living as stakeholders and adding value to the city.

What is missing in university community? Yes, they are transient neighborhoods.

There are few automobiles, particularly on campus. Everything is roughly in walking distance. The are institutionalized young adult free agents cloistered in a tightly defined neighborhood. The contrast of the diverse typically cloistered university to the diverse un-cloistered urban community must be examined. We must come to grips with the fact that we are, most of us, not insiders; we are outsiders. As with any missions endeavor, there are implications and consequences for the missionary. Tim, you said it well: “If you are an insider, it’s because you are a resident and have a theology of place.”

And then you asked, “How does a city transforms a university?” and, inversely, “How does a university transforms a city?” Hmmmm….Good questions. “The world is the domain of the university, not just the city,” you added. Yes, in the origins, the university would pick up and move if they did not receive the benefit of the city. However, the earliest prototypes of universities were on the frontiers where the need was great. Today’s urban centers are areas of incredible need, including the spheres transportation (GO), communications (PREACH), and cultures (ALL NATIONS).

What I saw in San Francisco are myriads of opportunities for students in the Bay Area’s 200 colleges/universities looking for ways to apply their studies to reality. Everything from urban agriculture and art to law and economic development, from health and beauty to medicine and social work, every field of study has application in the city. There’s opportunity to study and serve as we all exegete the city, including issues related to the Poor, Suicide, Church, Media, Family, Prisoners, Muslims, Government, Business, Gutter Punks, Homeless, Drug Addicts, Migrant workers, Elderly, Street Kids, Handicapped, Arts, Education, Prostitutes, Sports, Middle Class, Unemployed, and Hindus.

Opportunities for University Students

I came away with some important words ringing in my ears, “The weakness in YWAM is the need for a central database.” That statement is something I have been giving a lot of thought to. How can we connect students in universities outside of YWAM with the myriad of opportunities for student internships/outreaches both at YWAM ministry locations and at partner organizations around the world? I have been working furiously to answer that call through our new web site and Salesforce.com cloud-based database. The programming I am doing (way over my head, so I hope to get some expert help from Kyle and Angie) is linking many-to-many applicants-to-projects, all though a web-based applications and approval system. To see the new SMC web site (embedded applications not all operating yet), go to http://www.studentmobilizationcentre.com.

Tim mentioned another book, Salt & Light, about Knoxville, TN and how partnerships have formed across the entire city. This approach, city leaders setting the stage for collaboration, is necessary to begin the mobilization of students into city projects. What kind of partnerships can be created for internships? One of the partners can be the university or college. For example, Grand Canyon College wants to plug their students into internships. Their goal: “Break their hearts for the city.” Another example: Westmont Urban College, which offers internships in city, and their professors visit YWAM. The city is divided up according to majors, partners, etc.

For SMC’s Field Ministry Internships (FMI) teams, students participate in five phases, including: 

1. Orientation (mini-DTS type; one-week),
2. Enculturation (history of project, leaders and cultural background),
3. Assessment (listening, observing, and interviewing while serving the project),
4. Ministry (serving the project while writing a research paper or proposal for ministry related to the students’ field of studies), and
5. Debriefing (final 3 days of reporting and celebrating). – initial times

Note that FMI students are not experts. They serve as learners, with the accompanying vulnerability. In so doing, the students observe, listen, and interview leaders and clients of a project in order to discern, while on the ground serving, how their field of study may best be offered as a research or proposal for an extended ministry project. The posture of a learner is fundamental to FMI. YWAMers who work with FMI student teams are few and far between, however this kind of ministry project with students could help us “get YWAM out of YWAM.”

How to Mobilize a New SVM – Doug Batson

Doug Batson, Human Geographer with US Gov. DOD, and Analyst for Turkic Speaking World spoke about adult continuing education, which he did mostly while with the Department of Defense DOD. Doug notes that missionaries (and missionary candidates currently in high school) are a traveling constituency, like the thousands of soldiers and family members he has helped to earn college credit. Doug suggests an approach to education that examines and addresses global needs, which thereby can fuel a new Student Volunteer Movement. What would that look like…tens of thousands from North America every year? Doug writes:

“Today, millions of 18-23 year olds pursue an increasingly costly campus-based undergradaute education with decreasing relevance to globalized business environments and their own life goals.  Many believers would rather choose the mission field as a place of Christian service, learning, and building relationships, if only that were a valid option.  Good news!  With the right counsel, it is a very valid option!  Via exams and portfolio assessments (not on-line courses), young adults can serve Christ cross-culturally and, as a by-product, earn a B.A. degree from a State University in the same 4-5 years, and for the same $40,000-$50,000 charged by traditional  institutions! How?  Through assessments of relevant learning acquired from missions fields:  foreign languages, cross-cultural communication, comparative religion, social sciences, administration and leadership.”  

• Offer the first fruits of one’s life to make Christ known where He is not
• Test one’s God-given gifts and talents in real-world environments
• Avoid student loan debt
• Become a local church missions catalyst and mobilizer—before age 30
• Choose graduate education based on reflections from a purposeful personal journey

Students may desire to go, but they are too often caught in debt trap, and therefore, despite their best intentions, often do not get involved in missions.  There are currently 1,000,000 students in North American colleges every year. If 10% are evangelical enough to desire Christian service, then that’s quite a few candidates for missions mobilization!

Doug suggests a plan to move these missionary candidates from institutional structures of universities to a Christian missional community, with options to gain academic credit, saving thousands of dollars, through testing. Some institutions will recognize genuine learning and offer transcripts with minimal expense. Should we present an alternative to earnest missionary candidates currently in high school? Should we help them save 4-5 years, and $40 to $50 thousand dollars for education and career training? For many parents and many forward thinking high school students, this will be a very attractive option.

Goal: Minimize Tuition cost and residency.

Doug listed three regionally accredited secular state colleges/universities that require have no residency requirement:

1. Excelsior.edu – part of SUNY system
2. Thomas Edison State College – tesc.edu
3. Charter Oak State College in CT

What would it look like ON a university campus?

Imagine a missional community of students with a few students taking courses, but with no intention of graduating. Those students could graduate with far less expense and far less time from Excelsior.

The plan would be different for every student, so making this work will require some basic information accessed perhaps by a web site and a deeper consulting service for those needed additional help. Here’s an example of College Level Examinations that Doug says every high school student could do…

1. Analysis and Interpretation of Literature. (6 semester hours.)
2. American Lit. (6 semester hours.)
3. British Lit. (6 semester hours.)
4. Gen’l Humanities (6 semester hours.)
5. UNC challenge exams. (pay $150 for proctor) NT & OT as Lit. 3 semester hours.

What kind of savings would this mean for a student/family? For 30 semester hours, it’s $10,000 = One year of college credits.

Doug suggests a supportive missional learning community could help prepare students for these exams.

Doug is a living example of this method of gaining credit. He has a Ph.D. and he’s never been a resident. Most all of his credits were gained through testing. He got 36 hours credit, saving $12,000, by taking German language tests while a soldier in Germany. He didn’t get German degree, but he said he didn’t need it.  Then he took the GRE Subject Test – Aptitude predictor in Grad School, testing content knowledge of a full grad degree. He asked Excelsior.com: “What if I took a GRE Subject Test and got a top half score? Would you give me degree?” They answered: “YES. We’ll give you 30 sem. hrs and a degree.”  He did it all for just $89.

Doug says this is a matter of educational justice. The University of the Nations does not have regional accreditation, but has excellent training. He asks: “Why shouldn’t UofN students be recognized for their knowledge of the subjects?”

Consultation Summary: Take Away Action Items

Most participated in our wrap up session, listing take away actions on PostIt Notes. That list is below. Thank you again for praying and participating in this important gathering in San Francisco. I believe God has already formed new friendships. I trust the fruit of our time will be new partnerships and a focused mobilization of university students.

The following is a summary of all action items:

Personal

• Continue study of Worldview/cultural studies.
• Spend more specific prayer time for campus-on campus.
• Read Salt & Light book re: Knoxville, TN
• Read University & the City book.
• Be a servant-hearted minister to current campus ministries.
• Be more intentional about prayer.
• Write a blog for student audience.

City

• Pioneer house of worship to strengthen and encourage campus ministries.
• Focus our outreach teams around prayer.
• Create a summer opportunity to immerse students in city-wide evangelism locally and overseas.

International

• Develop closer working with international bases for partnership, especially in Latin America (Mexico).

Campus

• Encourage campus groups in strengths to develop love of place and to engage.
• Develop alongside to provide symbiosis at UC Berkeley & YWAM
• Networking between campuses through quarterly combined prayer meetings.
• Evangelism & Service workshops held off campus in central location (maybe YWAM SF?) and/or Niko?
• Join in meetings of campus ministries alliance
• Participate in campus ministry activities whenever possible
• Survey: Inventory what’s present on campus (CM’s, service orgs, student orgs) What does each do? What are the gaps?
• Create a tool to assess campus issues and various projects
• Create database of projects
• Create a web-based platform to highlight and help students to find overseas ministry opportunities.
• Challenge students to take language courses to gain long-term affinity with that people group.
• Perspectives Course was originally designed for secular campuses, but gravitated to churches. Praying for it to return to campus, with result of sharing Christ.
• Presence on Campus; regular place, meetings, and exegetes campus.
• Present models for communities of faith, with best practiced on web site. Restart more on UW campus.

YWAM

• Start a UDTS
• Continue to pray for for the start of a YWAM engagement at Berkeley
• Launch DTS with focus on releasing students to support and strengthen ministry outreaches.
• Visit YWAM bases with university focus.
• Develop relationship with regionally close based (Tyler, CSprings, Denver)
• Connect base leaders to vision through regular SMC updates

Campus

• Christians and mission orgs= student-led and missionary mobilized prayer mtgs. & missionaries equipping supporting students in leadership& students leading other students on mission trips= Missional generation of influence.

Network

• Connecting students & Professionals
• Have a network of Christian professionals who would mentor/be available for students looking to go into that field. E.g. Med students connecting with Christian doctor once a month?
• Investigate running perspectives intensive Boise In mendecino (w/college credit)
• Maintain contact with this group of direction seekers: mutual prayer, shared resources.
• Adopt-A-People group incorporated into campus ministry. Many of us have been processing deeply the implications of a fourth wave of missions, which we believe will include a flourishing of missional communities, a fresh movement of church planting with missional focus. Our goal is to ride this wave of change by fostering missional communities in university settings. We believe these missional communities will be very strategic if they work in collaboration with global missions, leveraging the resources of universities and NGO’s, and churches of all kinds.

Could it be we need a fresh vision of education? We have been discussing the book Desiring the Kingdom by James Smith.

In his book, Smith has outlined an “anthropology of desire”, which may shake up your thinking about education, culture, institutions, spheres of society, and the discipleship of nations.

I promised a few questions in this final post about the book. I will in just a moment. First, I want to share a bit of my perspective as i read this book.

My focus and my interest in reading the book is to think through how Smith’s message relates to the call of God and the living witness of the gospel of God’s kingdom in every sphere of society in every culture. Education, most especially the university, is at the heart of this discussion.

Calling infers that human persons are responsive and responsible. Smith writes that we are “dynamic beings” and “desiring arrows” aimed at something ultimate, which in turn reflects the kind of people we desire to become. In my view, God’s voice, his calling, is never “heard” or responded to by anyone who does not desire God’s kingdom, his vision of human flourishing.

In my view, calling is meaningless if it is not responded to. And calling is not directed and fulfilled merely as individuals. We are, all of us, embedded in social relationships and institutions. Therefore calling is both vertical, directed in response to God, and horizontal, engaging our world and all our personal, social, political, and material relationships.

This is why Smith’s book is so important. He writes,

“Through practices, the self is shaped by, tethered to, and embodied in concrete social institutions.”

Therefore, there are no truly private practices; our hearts are constantly being formed by others, and the institutions we create, and in which we participate, especially our educational institutions.

In other words, culture is formed through practices, shaped by desire for a kingdom. Culture is more a verb than it is a noun. Smith writes, “Culture is not ‘out there’; it’s what we do.”

Institutions are cultivated through practices by a people seeking to address human needs, wants, and desires. At the most basic level, people have sought to meet bodily needs for provision and protection. At a higher level, people have sought to order their cravings for intimacy and the meaning of their lives. The result is our cultural institutions.

Cultural institutions have systemic power which gives them an influence that is far beyond what any individual may do to change it. On the other hand, cultural institutions possess a similar “hope for a future”, a similar telos, to that of individuals.

The main difference, however, is that our cultural institutions powerfully promote practices to point the desires of multitudes, and generations of people, toward certain ends, a certain vision of the good life. This “vision” is inscribed into the institution itself.

That specific configuration of cultural practices, which become our cultural institutions, function as “liturgies”, in Smith’s words. Those cultural liturgies are pedagogies, or methods of instruction, teaching people an (ultimate) desire, a desire for a kingdom. Smith suggests, “We need to ‘read’ these institutions and practices in order to discern the telos (future) at which they’re aimed.

So, rather than concern ourselves solely with ideas or beliefs bandied about in the universities, we ought rather to be discerning to what ends they are seeking to direct our love. We need to discern an array of “liturgies” that function as pedagogies of desire.

Okay, now on to the questions I promised. If our practices can become powerful cultural liturgies, shaping institutions and cultures, I suggest we take Smith’s (somewhat revised) “Practices Audit”:

1. What habits shape your actions and attitude?

2. What does your time look like? How much time is spent on what?

3. What is your most important ritual? Is it toward God’s kingdom or not?

4. What is most potent practice in university?

5. Do you have any “thin” habits that might really be “thick”?

6. Is worship a thick habit? How?

7. What competes for worship in your life?

Take some time to reflect on these questions, and let me know you did.

To close, here’s a great quote summing up Smith’s book: (it refers to a bible text, 2 Pe. 1, which I often quote):

“The end of learning is love; the path of discipleship is romantic.”

In a few months the two will be settling into married life, with daily chores, and other habits. Some habits are not bad at first. However they can grow in their influence, often with ill effects on cherished institutions like marriage. Shopping at the mall or jockeying a recliner in sweats for weekend football games are not harmful if we are attentive to their potentially destructive power.

In his book, Desiring the Kingdom, James Smith outlines how over time our rituals, especially our most cherished practices, help train our desires. Rituals mold and shape our worldview, our precognition of the world. Our daily motions and rhythms, our embodied routines, train our minds and hearts so that we develop habits. Habits are like attitudinal reflexes; they make us tend to act in certain ways toward certain ends.

For example, most of us use a keyboard pretty regularly. So, where is “d” key. Do you know? Not so easy to say where it is, is it? But, your hands “know”, don’t they? How? By practice. rituals, routines, and exercises. It’s not reasoned thought that tells you where to find the “d” key.

Philosopher-scientist Blaise Pascal writes, “The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

There are different levels of habits according to Smith: thin and thick.

The thin habits are mundane, like brushing teeth; they are the instrumental things we do. Thin habits do not touch our identity, or our fundamental desire, our love.

Thick habits are meaningful, significant to identity. They are representative of our core values. Often, they are religious habits.

Cultural anthropologist Charles Taylor emphasizes that we understand before we “know”. And we love before we know. Ancient Christian ascetic tradition had the axiom: “Desire forms knowledge.”

So James Smith proposes: “We must shape desire in order to know.”

He continues: “What we do (practice) is intimately linked to what we desire (love), so what we do determines whether, how, and what we can know.”

Maximus the Confessor in One Hundred Chapters of Love, writes about the key to directing and increasing one’s desire for God; it’s in the acquisition of virtues.

How are Christian virtues acquired? Through concrete practices like confession, communion, prayer, service, etc.

According to research by Bargh & Chartrand, “the development of most acquired forms of automaticity (habits/virtues/skills) depends on the frequent and consistent pairing of internal responses with external events..over time, conscious choice drops out as it is not needed.”

In my final post on this book, I will ask several questions to help us think through the implications for our lives, particularly as habits and “cultural liturgies” relate to Christ’s mission. Of course, for those of us in university life, the implications are culture forming. Look for that final post very soon.

SMC Summer Internships

The Student Mobilization Centre is a centre of the University of the Nations, a ministry of Youth With A Mission. The SMC is not a local ministry; we are an international network of YWAM staff fostering the emergence of a new movement of university students serving Christ’s Great Commission through their life-work and calling.

Through our ministries, university students are challenged to lead the next major wave of collaborative missions by partnering with global projects with holistic witness in every arena of society and major field of studies. In addition, we are affirming and assisting the emergence of student missional communities in universities worldwide.

SMC Objectives

To recruit, equip, and place students ready to serve and learn cross-culturally.

We Gather - Students & Leaders through Consultations, Events, and Projects.

We Train - Developing curriculum through contextual research, and conducting seminars and schools.

We Send - Mobilize students into service projects according to their field of studies and the spheres of society. Our short-term programs, while bolstering long-term projects, serve the students as they discern their calling.

We Network - Cultivating missional collaboration in and around university communities for the purpose of mobilization of an emerging generation of student volunteers serving Christ’s Great Commission.

Immediate SMC Goals

Gather

• We will host Passion Points Conferences: 3-day events in 2013.
• We will host Consultations in Australia, Europe and Africa – By Sept. 2012.

Train:  We will post Best Practices and Curriculum Resources for all our SMC Programs and Courses on web site  by Mar. 2012

Send: We will send hundreds of Field Ministry Interns (FMI) by Jan. 2013

• Redesigning to attract non-christians
• Tie internships to UDTS outreaches
• Focus FMI for Thematic, Passion Points, Causes, and Projects in Society
• International & year-long projects: Megacities/Africa

Network:

• We will unveil a new Web-based Project Development Registration Process for Hosting FMI – By Jan. 2012
• Develop new Strategic Alliances/International Partners (Call2All-Students, UofN Colleges, YWAM CMI, Christian Colleges, Churches, National & International Student Organizations, IJM, etc.)

In addition, the new SMC Web Site will provide a collaborative information gateway for strategic networking.

The SMC offers student organizations and churches access to a missions networking centre where credit card payments, donations and field support can be channeled to mission projects globally. The SMC is providing a new framework for student groups and campus churches to cooperate with YWAM and other global partners and nongovernmental organizations.

The SMC represents a global Kingdom community for the emerging student missions movement.  Our goal is to provide the arena—the forum—where students who are embracing a missional life-style and life-work can learn from one another.

John Henry – SMC International Leader

I understood hospitality to be mainly “friendship with the stranger,” and NOT primarily how to set your table to impress your dinner guests. Welcoming strangers, radical as that view seemed, isn’t broad enough.

Recently, while doing some research on church eldership, the word hospitality emerged again. I thought a practical, personal, and local expression of hospitality helps us engage with Christ’s mission. It does and it should. However, it should not be limited to a ministry of elders.

Of course, Paul’s instructions regarding elder qualification, at first glance, is rather unremarkable: “Don’t get drunk.” I’m pretty sure that didn’t mean everyone else should get drunk.

The elder, besides being “apt to teach,” must be hospitable. Certainly it means elders should be friends to strangers, including strangers from distant cultures, as part of Christ’s mission. Perhaps the broader meaning is given if we drop a letter, “r”. It’s not merely welcoming the stranger; it’s welcoming the strange.

Hospitality has been reduced in modern times; it’s about folding napkins and making table decorations. The original meaning of hospitality is much broader, tied to Christ’s mission.

That little “r”
The challenge to my missional view of hospitality is that even “friendship with strangers” is too narrow a definition. Drop the “r” and you get “friend of the strange.”

Our modern definitions of biblical terms tend toward reduction, therefore “Mission” has been reduced to reaching every individual from every nation. Sounds like a broad definition, doesn’t it? However, reducing the kingdom message of Jesus to individual decisions has contributed to a church of spectators and a society that demands their rights at the expense of others. As a result of the modern interpretation of mission, the modern church formation and leadership has separated out the missionary to go do missions elsewhere, not inside the church structure or the culture in which that church has settled.

Paul was not a modernist. What Paul instructed Timothy and Titus, and the members of the early church, was a Missional meaning to hospitality, that elders were to welcome the “strange.”

Certainly, the gospel and the message of the kingdom of God is a “strange” message; it’s “foolishness to the Greeks” and a “rock of offense to the Jews.” God’s message is fresh bread from heaven; we’re called to live by every word that proceeds from God.

That message from God will tend to be “strange,” shaking us out of our complacency and our tendency to settle into the surrounding culture, protecting our position, our power, and our privilege gained.

Hospitality is a vital part of leadership of a church community because an elder must be careful to listen for the word from the Lord, even though strange to the ear or delivered through a strange means. The message may come through a prophetic word, a tongue to be interpreted or a vision of something like a “sheet with animals”.

The elder must be hospitable, protecting the freedom in the Spirit for anyone to bring a word and not be hindered, including women and little children. The elders must welcome that strange word and test it carefully as a community, always ready for that teachable moment led the Spirit of God.

Now, the table is set. This is hospitality. Enjoy the feast!

The answer simply is this: Habits.

Habits are what we ultimately value most deeply. Habits are love’s fulcrum, according to James Smith in his book Desiring the Kingdom. The fulcrum is the support on which the levers of our lives rest. Habits serve us or hurt us.

Desire for a vision must motivate our actions and our decisions by becoming an integral part of the fabric of our heart’s dispositions, those precognitive tendencies, which Aristotle and Aquinas called habits.

Our love is predisposed to be aimed in certain directions, which over time and practice become habits.

Good habits are virtues; bad are vices. We learn habits. They are not innate, not biological, but they are a kind of second nature, intricately woven into the entirety of our being.

Habits are like default, quasi-automatic dispositions, the product of long development and formation. Habits become our hard wiring; the way we function without reflection or cognition. Habits tend to fly under the radar.

Habits are the fulcrum of desire, the hinge that turns our heart.

How are habits are formed?
By practice.

This is why we must have a theology of embodiment. We must understand that we are affective, desiring animals, and embodied creatures.

Alongside a theology of embodiment, we need to present messages that will capture hearts, shock us at our gut, shock us out of familiarity, touch our center of gravity and identity, and our embodiment. The most effective discipleship, therefore, is the kind that sends us out of the classroom or the church building and into the world.

We feel our way more than we think our way through the world, because worldview is more imagination than intellect. Imagination runs off the fuel of images that touch our senses.

The result of a “come, follow me” discipleship approach is a more holistic, less dualistic picture of the world and of humanity. We learn through our gut; we are embodied.

As it turns out, I will offer two more posts: One to summarize the importance of what James Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom.calls Cultural Liturgies, and the Final post, a personal inventory questionnaire to help you make application.

We established earlier that we are not primarily thinking beings. At core, we are loving beings. Decartes, the French mathematician and philosopher offered a notion to help a divided and skeptical world a way forward. His philosophical notion, “I Think, therefore I Am”, centered and founded modern philosophy on human rationality. The problem is this: We are too easily deceived. Perhaps Cartesian philosophy is best understood as “I’m deceived, therefore I am.”

Yes, any vision of hope and a future that does not have at the center a faith-filled vision of Jesus Christ, our supreme God and king, the ultimate lover who demonstrated his love through the ultimate suffering at the cross, anything less is a distortion, a delusion, a deception. Our vision of hope for the future must be centered on the One who created us and loves us supremely. He holds the future.

So then, how can we present a picture of the good life, a vision of human flourishing, to students and university communities?

How can we “read” the different configurations and distortions of kingdom which is assumed by and often enforced by different cultural institutions and narratives?

How does love get aimed in different directions?

Most importantly, how can we assist a generation of students to aim their love at Christ and his kingdom?

Or rather, how is a vision of a good life in Christ’s kingdom best presented?

Do we use arguments or propositions?

How does a vision for Christ and his kingdom get infused in the hearts of students and faculty?

What “mechanism” could be employed to motivate them and help them govern their way of life, decisions, actions, pursuits, and relationships?

The.answer: the gut, the kardia, the heart.

I will wrap up this series by outlining how to do that in my next post.

We become a people who mimic, emulate, and reflect a particular vision formed by desire.

So, as James Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom argues, our ultimate decisions come from desire, not thinking. To be human is to desire a “kingdom”.

Every human being posseses some version of the kingdom. We posses a vision with an aim, a quest. And we are all groping, feeling our way to a future, a dream of utopia, a vision of human flourishing.

This deep vision is what pulls us up out of bed in the morning. We put on our armor and go out on our quest every day, whether we are a student, a baker, or a candlestick maker.

We are all “lovers”, but we don’t all have the same love. However, the great human tragedy known in the Bible as the Fall, when humanity failed to trust the good dreams and visions of our Creator, still didn’t take away our capacity to love. The Fall into sin and selfishness merely distorted our love, and with it, our vision for human flourishing. How is this great tragedy rewritten to end with good news?

I will attempt to answer that question in my final few post in this review of James Smith’s book.

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

Such a vision will always include implicit assumptions, which may include some kind of answer to the following questions:

What is a good relationship?
What is a just economy?
What play or recreation do we value?
How do we relate to nature and our environment?
What is good work?
What is flourishing family?
What, therefore, does it mean to be “saved”?

Everyone has answers of some kind tucked away in our hearts. Possessing a vision of a future is implicit in the fact that we are created in God’s image. Our hopes and dreams are what get us up out of bed in the morning. Our desire for a kingdom may or may not be the same desire, or the same kingdom, for which Jesus of Nazareth went to the cross. However blurred or distorted our vision may be, the fact that we have a vision is testament to God’s creative impulse within us.

The question we must ask ourselves in the quiet place is this: Does my heart pull me toward the One who created me for good?

Your answer will lead you to live a life worthy of such a calling.

This is a continuing discussion with thoughts stimulated by James Smith’s book: Desiring the Kingdom.

In the previous post we established the fact that we are creatures of desire. We are not primarily thinking or believing beings; we are primarily loving beings. We are created in the image of the One who is love.

Martin Heidegger, influential German philosopher, said we are essentially discovering beings; we are feeling our way around.

He apparently agrees with the apostle Paul, who said we are “groping”:

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:27, 28 NIV)

So then, we are not static, isolated, and primarily thinking being, who are individualistic at the core, merely perceiving people and objects around us.

No we “intend.” We are in motion over time in relationships with affective connections and interactions with family, neighbors, our community, our society, and our environment. We are creatures of desire who are moving in a direction compelled by our heart, our gut, which is the meaning of the original Greek word found in our Bibles, “kardia.” Our hearts are compelled in a direction, a telos or destination, of a perceived and believed and shared notion of human flourishing.

In the next post, I will discuss components of human flourishing.

So now I have a long history of teaching on calling, on four continents and over 20 countries. My learning, my understanding of God’s calling, came through practice, trial, experiment, and relationships with hundreds of students who are learning outside the classroom and on the field, loving and serving others.

What have I been learning? I have learned that I have more questions. I have learned that teaching and learning is not accomplished by talking, teaching, or even preaching. I see that we all need to fine tune our vision for teaching, and making disciples, especially disciples of nations.

What questions do you have about your calling? Those questions are being asked multiplied hundreds of thousands of times every day in university communities around the world. Too often insufficient answers are found in their classrooms, and in their churches.

This is the question I ask when I walk and pray on the university campus: How best can we reach, equip, and mobilize students? To what do we mobilize them? What targets?

In universities, we are taught that we are primarily “Thinking” beings, with human rationality as the basis of deciding what is valuable and true.

In churches, we are taught that we are primarily “Believing” beings, choosing to trust in God and believe his promises.

The trouble with both of these bases for our identity as human beings is that they place our ultimate identity as individuals, largely isolated from others in our thinking and believing.

What are we ultimately?
We are ultimately loving beings, designed by a great God who is love himself. He created us with desire, affection, and as the objects of his love. He created us in his image, with a desire for love and to give love.

Thinking-Believing-Loving

With French philosopher Rene Descartes, we were taught to doubt everything and we were given an identity founded on the phrase: “I think, therefore I am.”

This elevation of human rationality reversed what St. Augustine had ordered as the human way to faith: “I believe in order to understand.”

But Augustine had framed the faith at a deeper level. He wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” We are foundationally desiring beings, with affections, and love which seeks the ultimate object of love. We are created to love, especially the One who loved us first.

Where is love and how does love shape our identity and vision for humanity?

Love is not a list of abstract, disembodied concepts and values. We are fundamentally noncognitive, affective creatures. Our vision for life, the good life, is not a list of ideas or propositions or doctrines. Our vision for life comes from the heart, the deepest part of our being.

In my next post, I will begin to unpack that deep part of our human identity.

I’m writing from Kona, Hawaii where I am attending the University of the Nations Workshop, an international gathering of YWAM leaders. Before the Workshop we had Student Mobilization Centre leadership team meetings. I shared with that team a devotional with refections from James Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom. This is a portion of that devotional:

During much of August, I woke early to take my daughter Becca for swim team practice. She was not happy at first, having to be in the water by 5:30am, but before I left for Kona, she was adapting. As a father with some experience in sports, including early morning swim team practice, I’m aware of how this experience is helping Becca develop character. Her coach says she’s pushing the team with morning and afternoon practices now in order to develop “muscle memory.”

What does that mean?

With the next few posts, I wiill attempt to unpack the formation and re-direction of human desire, the shaping of habits, the establishing of institutions, and the discipling of a culture and nation.

Northfield Consultation 2011

Participants at CULTIVATE, our consultation on the Future of University Missions, were inspired to gather so close to the birthplace of the Student Volunteer Movement and just steps from Roundtop, the gravesite of D.L. Moody. The weekend was awe-inspiring and it was a joy to be with friends and co-laborers on the mission fields of the university.

Like so many other consultation gatherings we have had around the world, including N. American Consultations (’97 and ’99), Africa Consultation (2001), S.E. Asia Consultation (2003), European Consultation (2004), and South American and China Consultations (2005), the Northfield gathering-Cultivate! (2011) has helped us build friendships, partnerships, and some collaborative projects. At Cultivate, we met new friends and began the first steps to coordinate some new projects to reach students on campuses in North America.

Who Was There?

Eleven people attended the consultation. Here’s a list of those who attended, their backgrounds, and prayer requests:

• John Henry – SMC International Centre Team Leader – Madison, WI – with YWAM for over 25 years. For  the development of a new SMC/UofN course on Missional Collaboration, for next SUMM’s, for help with a virtual centre office via Salesforce.com, and for a new international centre for operations.

• Todd Johnson – Assoc. Prof. Global Christianity at GCTS. Worked with YWAM 33 years. Great Need: Two excellent missions profs at GCTS. Tim Tennent, now at Asbury. Another is gone. Todd is doing too much, writing, research, and teaching two courses a year. Need grad students to work with him.

• Deonn McDowell – YWAM Tyler – 23 yrs mobilization coordinator – 1994-5 met John on PHOS mobile team. SMC since ’97. Mentoring SOE students. Getting ready to lead an outreach to Israel in Fall. Wrote a book for young adults: Love Needs – Getting them met in the best possible way. Publication and outreach are prayer needs. And to get what God wants here.

• Justin Henry – John’s son – Sr. at St. Olaf College – History – Prayer for guidance, what next.

• Tae Oh Kim – YWAM Atlanta – Came to States 3 yrs ago in MD. Working with Int’ls at U of GA. Staff, but no students. Prayer: Focusing on family for God. Take good care and fruitful ministry.

• Jihoon “Peter” – YWAM Boston – CM in Korea since ’99. Called to Boston 3 yrs ago. USA needs missionaries. In Boston about 1 yr. Not yet sure what to do. Need H.S. to speak and lead. Call: Reaching out to international students in English in USA. Looking for better view of what God is doing and why he called us here to do CM. Experiencing culture shock working with YWAM in USA. Need courage…to overcome fear. Seeking strong confirmation from God.

• SuCheor Jang – working in MD. SMC staff. CM in Baltimore area. Worship meetings on Thursdays for UMBC and Towson. Prayer on Tuesdays. For Church, Campus, and Nations. Still few gather, but all you need is 2 or 3 and keep going. Now doing UDTS in YWAM Richmond with Tae Oh and UnJae (sp?). Next phase will be campus outreach. Planning outreach abroad.

• Daniel – UMBC – Music, Sociology, Psychology – working with 2nd gen Korean church. Seeking direction.

• Sungwon “Paul” Park: Work with Peter in Boston. From CM Seoul – Came 5 months ago. Learning English. First prayer request is surviving in Boston. Need money and ability to have conversation in English. Also pray that I am close with YWAM Boston staff, especially leader. Help the leader to understand CM more and release our team. Last week at MIT campus worship. God said “Your praise is received and your prayer is answered.”

• Ryan Dutra – Ryan’s wife Crystal is due in Oct. Just returned from 10 month trip to 11 countries. Learned about selves, how to be led by Spirit, and do a documentary. CM Pitt – mobilization, international students…but for now working with Pastors, churches, etc. Helping re-locate the base to the international heart of the city with a building with 100 rooms.    Need wisdom, timing, people to come help, build a team…near Carnegie Mellon and UPitt. 10 minute walk.

What Did We Talk About?

We enjoyed several short presentations including the following: Each of these short 15 minute presentations was followed by 35-40 minute process/discussion times.

What Was Memorable?

Our weekend was framed partly be the historic setting in which we met. The prayers of a brother and sister during DL Moody’s summer bible camp in Northfield, MA in 1886 led to the Meeting of Ten Nations and therefore the first 100 volunteers to sign the Princeton Declaration & launched the Student Volunteer Movement, which had over 100 thousand volunteers and over twenty thousand sail overseas. The place we met was awe-inspiring.

Memorable quotes: 

Sadly, I did not capture all the wonderful statements made at this gathering. We have yet to transcribe the video that Ryan Dutra took of each of the presentations. Look for clips of our gathering on our web site in the coming weeks. Here are a few quotes that were captured:

John Henry: “To be called to be with Jesus will always result in being sent out by Jesus.”

“The church on earth is by it’s very nature missionary.” (Vatican II)

“Western Christendom has been Christianity without mission.”- Wilbert Shenk.

Todd Johnson: Missions once was “from West to rest”, but today it’s all mixed up. And that’s good news for us.

More Memorable quotes: 

Todd Johnson:

• “Churches and our missional communities need to sing African, Latin, and Chinese worship from the new Majority Church.”

• “Resources for equipping us in community are best those who come from cultures that emphasize community.”

• “We need to sing African, Latin, and Chinese worship from the new majority Church.”

TaeOh Kim: “There is a lack of Christian education in Korean Churches USA. The Reasons Koreans come to USA: Education 47%, New Business 35%, and a Better Job. Ultimately it is for “my money” or “my children’s money”.  “There is a big gap between Koreans and Korean Americans (twinkies/bananas).”

Deonn McDowell: How do we help students really know God? We must model it. We must go to them. They are tired of being fake; they need authentic relationships.

Justin & John Henry: “How do we mobilize a civic generation, very different from the idealist Jesus Generation, who are concerned less about the inner life and more about public institutions?”

Phill Butler:

• “Before partnership formation meeting, you may need to have up to 50 one-on-ones.”

•  “Get to know the people who know your area of concern and learn from them. Ask questions.”

• “Become an expert to be credible so that you can begin to form a partnership.”

•  “To start, learn what’s going on. Calling or concern alone is not enough.”

• “We all believe in collaboration, but we don’t know how.”

• “Reaching internationals on campus requires partnerships with families and churches.”

• “No people group remains unreached where there is a working partnership.”

•“For the gospel to be believed, churches must work together.”

•“Transformation leading to working together is fundamental to the gospel message.”

• “We were designed by God for open, trusting and fruitful relationships.

What Questions Were/Are Being Processed?

As a result of this gathering, all of us have begun processing more deeply the implications of a “Fourth Wave of Modern Missions,” which some of us believe will include a flourishing of missional communities, a fresh movement of church planting with missional focus. The aim of this consultation was to consider how missional communities can be strategic if they work in collaboration with global missions, leveraging the resources of universities and NGO’s, and churches.

So What?

What was the result of this gathering? During the wrap up final session, we considered specific action items and possible partnerships to work together and create momentum in our ministries on campus and off. Each participant wrote on Post-It notes the various take away action items that God spoke to them. Then we posted them on several large flip chart sheets entitled: On Campus, UDTS, FMI and Outreaches, Seminars, and Other (gatherings and communications). We then closed with a prayer time over each of those major items and dedicated ourselves to complete the “easy wins”. Here are those items we committed to:

On Campus

• University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) – SuCheor Jang, his volunteers and new staff will lead intercessory prayer gatherings with Campus Worship participants. They will meet up personally before the fall semester and begin to regularly message all the campus leaders. They will talk about the urgent need for unity and collaboration. And they will help foster a prayer and worship movement on campus.
• Harvard, MIT, Boston University, & Berklee College of Music – Peter & Paul will do evangelism on campuses. They will begin Campus Worship at Berklee College of Music every Monday, at Harvard every Tuesday, at MIT every Wednesday, at Boston University every Thursday beginning in September.
• Meeting existing international student ministry leaders.
• Pittsburgh – Ryan Dutra will seek partnerships with churches and begin to recruit families to host international students. He will help organize a monthly international student dinner.

UDTS

• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) offers herself as resource teacher on Intimacy with God (Created for Relationship, Hearing God’s Voice, Intercessory Prayer, Meditation on Scripture, Nature & Character of God, and Love Needs), Also Spiritual Warfare, & Humanism. (Can teach 2 sessions of 6 sessions)
• SuCheor Jang (SMC MD), Peter & Paul (YWAM Boston), and TaeOh (SMC/YWAM Atlanta), will serve the next bi-lingual East Coast USA UDTS in 2012.

FMI & Outreaches

• SuCheor Jang (SMC – MD) will go with Summer 2011 UDTS from Richmond, VA
• Paul & Peter (YWAM – Boston) will take 3 week campus evangelism and English teaching outreach to Delhi, India in Jan. 2012
• John Henry (SMC Int’l Office) will coordinate FMI team leadership training for any who need it in 2012 & 2012.
• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) will attempt to go to campuses on outreach to Israel with SOE in Oct. 2011.

Seminars

• Deonn McDowell (SMC/YWAM Tyler) offering to assist with mini-DTS Seminar.
• Ryan Dutra (SMC/YWAM Pittsburgh) will run a seminar at a new church and possibly at YWAM base this winter 2011/12
• SuCheor Jang (SMC MD) will run a seminar on individual and group collaboration in UDTS.

Gathering & Communicating

• A Korean Ministry Staff Conference/Consultation in the USA – TaeOh
• Write Staff Job Descriptions for SMC and CMI North America – John Henry
• Meet with Boston and Pittsburgh YWAM leaders – John Henry
• Lead Consultations in San Francisco and Perth – John  Henry
• Lead Monthly Online Meeting for all SMC Staff – John Henry
• Complete MobilizeMe Documentary in time for Fall 2012 Tour
• Talk to Faithful and Like-minded brothers in MD for better collaboration and setting up a “capital” for prayer and worship gatherings to break the “viscious” cycle in Korean local churches.

School of University Ministries & Missions — North America

• Co-Leading Mobile SUMM in NE USA Fall 2012 – John Henry
• Staffing/Hosting for the Fall 2012 – Ryan Dutra
• Redesign Curriculum to include Partnership/Collaboration Model, Emphasis on Global Community, and Worship from New Majority Church – John Henry

What Questions are We Still Processing?

Challenges in Pioneering Campus Ministries: Where do we start? Who do we meet?

Campus Ministries is not familiar to YWAM leaders in USA. We need to communicate better. We need video clips with YWAM International Leaders declaring importance of Campus Ministries.

Do we keep international students, including 1st and 2nd generation Koreans, divided or should we intentionally combine them into the same gatherings, with all the accompanied cross-cultural challenges?

How do we help YWAM Leaders understand Campus Ministries?

• Too much expectation to stay in office and run program.

• Not understanding value of college education.

• Field based ministry requires time on the field (university)

• They think Campus Ministries is only Korean.

This is especially challenging for experienced YWAM Campus Ministries staff who are serving in a cross-cultural setting. (e.g. South Korean CM staff moving to USA to serve in CM in cooperation with a YWAM Base.)

Additional Deep Processing to Continue:

What great call/declaration for this generation?

How are students different today? How are they leading the way for a new era of missions?

How can we encourage Missional communities without controlling them?

Future Gatherings: 

Todd Johnson invited us all to the Conference at the 200th anniversary of first Christian missionaries in Boston: Feb 17, 2012. (Ryan has been invited to present a portion of the MobilizeMe documentary).

Next Cultivate Consultation – YWAM San Francisco – Sept. 13-14, 2011. Learn more. Join us!

I return to this subject because I did not adequately describe the beauty and purpose of holiness. There’s something else at work here. Holiness is also an outward response to that intimate friendship. To live in holiness, we must walk in holiness. The apostle Paul writes:

I am a prisoner because of the Lord. So I am asking you to live a life worthy of what God chose you for.  -  Eph. 4:1

Building on the foundation that I laid in the previous post: Holiness is more than intimacy with God. Holiness is both:

1. Personal intimacy resulting from relationship in righteousness through faith and
2. Public witness of ethical behavior. God’s people are called to represent God’s holiness to a hurting world.

Holiness is not merely intimacy; it is also action and ethical behavior within the community and with all people. Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright‘s book, The Mission of God, expains that holiness is manifest through ethical behavior, works of righteousness. The New Testament narrows it down to loving our neighbors. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you have fulfilled all the law and the prophets. Holiness, in contemporary language, may best be summed up in social justice. Paul writes:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:8-10

Please understand, you do not earn holiness through any actions of your own. Neither are you holy if you simply do good works of social justice. However, those who have been called to intimate friendship with God have no choice about whether or not they are to love their neighbor, through ethical behavior in and through their community and through acts of mercy and social justice among the nations.

To be sure, holiness literally means to be ‘set apart,’ to be wholly different. God is holy, completely different, other than all other gods. And God in Christ Jesus calls his people to be holy as he is holy. Israel was also called to be holy, unlike any other nation.

In his book The Mission of God, Christopher J.H. Wright outlines the nature of being “set apart”, the election of Israel. Israel’s election is:

• In the context of God’s blessing of “every nation”
• Does not imply rejection of other nations
• Not due to special features of Israel
• Founded only on God’s inexplicable love
• Instrumental, not an end in itself
• Part of the logic of God’s commitment to history
• Fundamentally missional, not just soteriological

When God accepts us and welcomes us into close fellowship with him through the blood of Christ, we are “MADE HOLY.” That holiness calls us to be wholly different:

Finally, brothers and sisters, we taught you how to live in a way that pleases God. In fact, that is how you are living. In the name of the Lord Jesus we ask and beg you to do it more and more.You know the directions we gave you. They were given by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God wants you to be made holy. – I Thes. 4:1-3