Journey to Urbana 09
A year ago, I felt God really pushing me to see we could bring students from Ontario Alliance churches to Urbana.
Urbana is a student missions conference put on by Inter Varsity every 3 years, and has a long history of being very focused on challenging the next generation with a biblical and spiritually vital message of the power of the gospel, and the call for us to carry it into the world. Speakers throughout the years at Urbana have been evangelists like Billy Graham and Luis Palau, pastors and writers like John Stott and Rick Warren, and church leaders from around the world, like Ajith Fernando (Sri Lanka) and Ray Aldred (First Nations, Canada). And of course, many, many missionaries; Elisabeth Elliott (always challenging), David Adeney (China -wrote a great book), Samuel Zwemer (Middle East and the Muslim world) to name a few.
BUT SO WHAT!
“We are praying that this convention might be just the beginning of a mighty missionary movement on the part of thousands of Christian students throughout North America. We hope that we may be an instrument in God’s hands, not only as a home mission, preaching the Gospel to America’s college students, but also as a foreign missionary recruiting agency … supplying a stream of trained missionary candidates, a pool of consecrated manpower for the evangelization of the world.” (original founders of Urbana conference, 1947, following first Urbana)
The reason I am booking bus seats and hotel rooms, and sending emails, etc…is because, like these pioneers who had vision, I believe the gospel is the only remedy for what is destroying us.
Put yourself into the story found in the Toronto Star, September 5th (A27), about Dakota Hunter, who lived in Nelson House, a community in northern Manitoba. When Dakota was13, he started to take tae kwon do “and took to heart the message of his instructor…who told him to listen to his enemeies and let them be tough”. CBC came along and did a documentary about this young lad “trying to stay at peace with himself among the turbulence of growing up native in a northern Manitoba band”. He was known as a good kid, raised money for cancer research, part of a local group respecting traditions (Lance Runners), and trusted in the area to babysit or do odd jobs.
But bullying from increasingly aggressive teens could not be escaped. Gang life was too pervasive a force in the area. Two other young men (one of whom used to be a close friend) who wore the colours of a certain gang, showed up in the middle of the night to his house
“..they weren’t welcomed in. Dakota’s sister saw her younger brother’s reaction as he noticed the two boys and instinctively shrank from the doorway. A moment later he faced them directly..”What are you doing here”….the two young men suggested Dakota take a walk with them. He refused. One of them called him a [coward] but when he didn’t respond …they left….but less than 20 minutes later, her brother was heading out the door.
”I’m going for a walk”.
“An hour later his sister went looking for him, and instead found RCMP and other people. “How fast can you drive to Thompson?”. By the time Tiara made it to the regional hospital an hour away, her brother was dead, 2 days after his 17th birthday.
“…Tiara Hunter’s anger still festers…..”
Do you not feel that? Grief, pain, …. Lord, how must you feel about this?
I know that it’s complicated. But after you add up all that’s wrong, and you consider the best intentions of briliant minds, I have no confidence in the solutions that will be proposed. Who can bring healing to the hurt in this community? Who can bring real peace to Tiara Hunter? Who can bring reconciliation between teens at war, in places where opportunity is missing and despair abounds?
I am passionate for the church to get the picture of God’s love for the Hunters, and for the gang members who committed the crime, which comes from God’s word and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Only Jesus can bring lasting real change, and he has chosen to do it (really, this is how he has chosen do it) through people who themselves were rescued from a disastrous past (and headed for a disastrous future) – you and I.
And so who will go? As teachers? As doctors? As servants? As friends?
Who will pray passionately, deliberately and with perseverence for God to do something new?
Who will commit to a plan or project and see it through, no matter what the cost?
It may take a lifetime. It may take a life.
But He will equip that person (those people) with what they need to bring changes within hearts, and not only that, but will spark within those he loves the resolve to stand against the tide of hate, and inspire them to build tangible structures which demonstrate his love and mercy to all.
This is why I am excited to bring students to Urbana 2009 - the seemingly impossible places of pain in our world will become places where Jesus can demonstrate his redeeming love and mercy, through the unremarkable (to some), yet totally consecrated people that he calls his own.
Psalm 126:6 ”They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.”