For this midyear Inside GFM, I want to offer a simple encouragement about our daily work and also share a few reflections about the Black on Campus movement.
Vocational Stewardship
Josh Harper (who gives leadership to some new “marketplace ministry” initiatives within the missions department) sits on the national Discipleship Steering Committee with an eye toward equipping staff to incorporate vocational stewardship as a major theme in our discipleship on campus. He’s working on a report and emailed me this week asking what projects or efforts have we started in GFM in this area this year. Here is what I wrote him:
It is a little tricky to answer this question as it relates to GFM. Really, all of our staff are expected (and equipped) to make vocational stewardship training/encouragement a core part of their ministry with all of their students every year. It’s what we do. One way we see ourselves is this: we invest in future professionals while they are in graduate school so that they will go on to flourish in their vocations and have a redeeming influence in their vocational settings. While we put a premium on preparing future professional academics (since many will be working in our—InterVarsity’s—mission field), we also are shaping future lawyers, business persons, healthcare professionals, educators, public policy experts, etc.
When it comes to faculty and administrators, we have a special and critically important case: these comprise the one group of people that InterVarsity is commissioned to work with directly over the course of their vocational careers. Equipping and encouraging faculty toward faithful vocational stewardship and faithful witness in vocational context lies at the heart of our faculty ministry, whether on a more individual basis (staff strengthening faculty one-to-one) or a more corporate basis (connecting faculty into communities large or small).
I went on to mention some projects/programs like Wendy Quay Honeycutt’s Passion Talks at Stanford or Hank Tarlton’s Veritas Riff in the Triangle last Spring or the upcoming Believers in Business Conference for MBA students in NYC overseen by Mark Washington (who, btw, did a great job directing the Business Track at Urbana) and more.
Rehearsing our attention to vocational stewardship reminded me of the value of our mission and made me proud that we in GFM are in the vanguard within InterVarsity when it comes to this emphasis. It made me thankful for each of you and what you do!
Black on Campus
Like you, I’m sure, I have been thinking and learning a lot over this last year about the swirl of issues encompassed by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Black on Campus movements.
At Urbana, I so appreciated how we engaged with some of these issues in the plenary sessions on December 28. (I realize that a number of us where not present, but hopefully you have accessed some of the sessions on line). The scriptures that day called us to grapple with what it means to submit our whole lives in obedience and faith to the good authority of Jesus.
In the morning, Christina Cleveland discussed the powerful us/them dynamic in human relations and invited us to think afresh from a kingdom perspective about who we include in our “us.” And if we enlarge that circle, we find ourselves encountering some whose stories are quite different from our own, whose vantage points differ, and whose voices differ. The simple but demanding challenge of the day for me was this: will I choose to listen, and when I experience dissonance, will I lean in further and say “Tell me more,” and will I choose to believe my fellows and even stand with them.
In the evening, we practiced this posture by listening to the story of the young church planter from Iran who had faced hostility and imprisonment from authorities in her country and by listening to Michelle Higgins, who told us how the churches of Ferguson were seeking to confront the systemic injustices that have so longed injured African Americans in her community. (BTW, Michelle will be the featured speaker at the GFM Northeast BSAP Conference this April). And we had the opportunity to worship in an African American key!
So I was surprised by the wave of negative reactions from some quarters, people upset with InterVarsity for publicly expressing common cause with the BLM movement. Like most people, I thought of BLM as a broad thematic justice movement concerned with many expressions, including ones on campus; I was not aware of the specific website with its more controversial elements.
But upon further reflection, why should we be surprised? Racism and ethnocentrism are pernicious and persistent, embedded in hearts and entrenched in structures. Even in my heart, even in our organization—and that despite our ardent desire and efforts for this to be otherwise. We fight against spiritual forces that we hardly understand, as Paul taught us. So I have been trying to rehearse my convictions and ponder my questions before the Lord (and with friends on this journey), especially in relation to our calling and mission field:
- We pray for and seek the shalom of the university, so if numbers of “us” on campus speak out with lament and frustration about not experiencing shalom, then we must pay attention and stand with them as we are able.
- We seek to motivate students and faculty to engage the campus for the sake of witness and renewal: with all of its messiness, that is what many students (and faculty) are doing!
- We seek to add a Christian perspective and voice into the mix, e.g. affirming the call for social justice and human flourishing, fostering civility and mutual respect, working toward reconciliation, modeling love for neighbor, demonstrating faith, hope and love.
- We wrestle with the complexities: over-reaching demands encountering over-entrenched powers; disdain for hate speech clashing with respect for free speech; desire for safe spaces in tension with a robust marketplace of ideas; conservative convictions colliding with liberal values; black lives in relation to all lives…
Within GFM, as we pursue our own multi-ethnic growth aspirations, let’s keep leaning in to listen, learn, think, dialogue, pray, and act in the midst of this dynamic period. And above all, let us love one another and love our neighbors as Christ has loved us. And let me know if you would like to have some conversation about these matters—I am game!
