Mike’s Sea2sea Blog

Plenary Session Urbana09

It’s been a long time coming, but I know that I need to provide a source for people interested in following ideas and messages that came from Urbana 09. Here are 4 themes that emerged as important for me:

Empowered

A trendy word in many different communities, but I’ll tell you what I mean in this context:  there were women and men of all kinds of different cultural backgrounds who discovered in Christ a whole new dignity and worth. This was beautifully illustrated by testimony after testimony: for example a Korean-American missionary who lives among the Japanese shared how he had to forgive them for past crimes and overcome his cultural prejudice…and now reaches out to them in genuine love.  Rwandan Antoine R., forgiving the Hutus now sitting on a reconciliation council… so extreme…but perhaps my favourite was a girl who discovered she could be a “proud Latina in Christ” on her missions trip. (Cheryl Bear from Manitoba gave another stirring example – this came out through several female testimonies).

What I loved was the boldness, confidence in the words of all these believers! It was not a boastfulness that came through, but a joy of their authority in Christ to live and serve as he leads them. Ultimately, it was obvious that this was not an “American” or “North American” evangelical Christianity that we were celebrating, it was the fragrance and life of Christ taking root in all peoples. It really did feel like revolution. All these people, strength enough to forgive horrible injustice, serve out of love for Christ, free to be who God made them to be……perhaps I am jealous for a better identity than the one marred by sin that is me by nature (and works easily enough in some settings -white, educated North American male).  What does it look like for my own love of others to be shaped only by the love Jesus had for me, for my confidence to stand up and be counted to be shaped by the dignity Jesus has given me as someone deputized by him to transform the world! (Favorite passage comes to mind “But you have made me as strong as wild ox. You have anointed me with the finest oil.” Or Jeremiah’s commissioning “Do not say ‘I am only a child…Look, I have put my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you to stand up against nations and kingdoms.”

Incarnational

Ramez Atallah’s understated messages on the model of Jesus in missions had great power, and is worth using for small group discussion and study. (Catch the parable he uses at the beginning of the intro message, as well as the final story at about the 14:50 mark). The idea of how we influence our world by “moving into the neighborhood”, intentionally loving the people we live among, was emphasized. But this never seemed to be diminish the importance of the proclamation of the gospel, or degenerate into a sheepish “lifestyle evangelism”, but instead was a call to suffer with those in the margins, become a blessing to those around us, and even care for the world in which we live. (A great skit about what keeps us in North America from incarnational living was called, “Fences“)

Missional

There was a great encouragement that I sensed throughout the week, partly hearing from one of our Alliance International Workers Gerald Hogenbirk. I asked him what he would say if he had a chance to all the students finding their seats. He said “Oh man, I’d say ‘Go for it! Don’t worry about what anyone says that might deter you from doing what God is putting on your heart…Don’t be afraid! Just do it. It will be the greatest thing.” (I’m paraphrasing here, of course). Messages that spoke to me on that level:  Creation Care, by an incredible woman who herself is living out a dream God gave her years ago as a graduate student, the brief challenge at  the very beginning of Urbana by Jim Tebbe.

Prayer

Well, the thing that seems the easiest, yet we all know is the hardest – prayer. I told it many times by now how God anointed one of our Toronto pastors, Sunder Krishnan, with a powerful message called “Pray Big, Pray Bold.” This was particularly a challenge to our mindset about prayer, moving us away from only asking for our daily blessings while ignoring the much more exciting and inviting purposes of a God who is redeeming the world. The key passage is a prayer of the early church in Acts Chapter 4 (verses 23-31). The following day, amidst 60 or so other seminars (every afternoon had many seminars to choose from) about 700 students filled to overflowing a room where Pastor Sunder gave a seminar on the same subject.  What was it about a message on praying according to scripture that captivated the hearts and minds of so many people? Let’s not discuss it for too long – take advantage of opportunities to pray for God-sized breakthroughs now with a friend!

An additional observation was that whenever I asked students what their favorite thing about the conference was, the most common answer by a long shot was “The manuscript Bible study in the morning”. I initially expected “the preaching” or “the music”….WHAT? The Bible study?  I couldn’t believe it. The part of the conference that meant getting up early, walking 20 min in the cold to sit at a round table with 10 or so peers to read a passage, take turns commenting on it and applying it…. And now, a month later I have heard of groups in many of the churches that sent students to Urbana where small group bible studies are starting – using the same “Manuscript Bible study” pattern established by the good people of Intervarsity.

To paraphrase I mentor I came into contact with while at the conference: “God is on the move…..”

Me and C.S.