College Ministry and Global Transformation

One of my favorite sub­jects to talk about is the strate­gic nature of cam­pus min­istry. As I was read­ing the most recent issue of Books & Cul­ture scar divx

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, one pas­sage from a book review popped out at me:

I saw a strik­ing pat­tern in these books [Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty and Democ­ra­cy in the Glob­al South: Africa chil­dren shouldn t play with dead things down­load /Latin Amer­i­ca/Asia] that the edi­tors and authors did not men­tion: a dis­tinct source for much of the more prin­ci­pled evan­gel­i­cal social and polit­i­cal engage­ment across the regions. Repeat­ed­ly, the lead­ers of para­church min­istries and reform-mind­ed NGOs that worked on behalf of the poor and the vul­ner­a­ble, who spoke up for human rights and elec­toral reform and against cor­rup­tion and auto­crat­ic rule came from two sources: stu­dent Chris­t­ian move­ments and the world­wide net­work of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers affil­i­at­ed with the Lau­sanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­ge­liza­tion. Inter-Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship joined the Peo­ple Pow­er move­ment in the Philip­pines, while Cam­pus Cru­sade played a cen­tral role in the for­ma­tion of the Cit­i­zens Com­mit­tee for Eco­nom­ic Jus­tice in South Korea. Like­wise in South Africa, it was the mem­bers of Youth Alive, the evan­gel­i­cal stu­dent fel­low­ship start­ed in Sowe­to by Cae­sar Mole­bat­si, who drove the Con­cerned Evan­gel­i­cals move­ment to resist apartheid in the 1980s. The Latin Amer­i­can The­o­log­i­cal Fra­ter­ni­ty, an evan­gel­i­cal net­work with strong ties to both the Lau­sanne Com­mit­tee and the Inter­na­tion­al Fel­low­ship of Evan­gel­i­cal Stu­dents, fig­ures promi­nent­ly in pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic evan­gel­i­cal work across Latin Amer­i­ca.

INFEMIT [the Inter­na­tion­al Fel­low­ship of Evan­gel­i­cal Mis­sion The­olo­gians] itself is a prod­uct of this net­work, which might help explain these authors’ inter­est in high­light­ing this strain of evan­gel­i­cal social thought and action. But it is indeed sig­nif­i­cant. Lit­tle could the Anglo-Amer­i­can founders of the Lau­sanne and cam­pus min­istry move­ments have imag­ined that their empha­sis on thought­ful Bible study and a “whole gospel for the whole world” would help ani­mate demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments around the globe.

source: “Now What? Revival­ist Chris­tian­i­ty and Glob­al South Pol­i­tics” by Joel Car­pen­ter. Books & Cul­ture March/April 2009, page 36.

If you want to change a cul­ture, change its cam­pus­es. They are the steer­ing wheels of soci­ety.