What does it look like to minister in a time of increasing marginalization and change?
What help does InterVarsity offer the university and the church in the U.S. and around the world in this season?
I have reflected on these questions over the last few months since becoming president. The reality is we live in vortex of great change—politically and culturally, in the Church and in society. Our ministry—which equips the next generation of university and church leaders–must respond with faith, hope, and love.
For InterVarsity, there are four passions that give me hope and capture my imagination in this season. I believe GFM has a special role in each.
1. Proclaiming Christ and His Word
We believe the Gospel is still good news. We are committed to faithful, consistent, contextualized evangelism to every people group on campus–including graduate students and faculty. Why? Because we love them, and we love Jesus. I love to hear stories of faculty coming to faith (often through the witness of students) like at Rutgers University last spring.
While many in the church see faculty as threats to biblical faith, we see them (and those preparing to become faculty) as people God invites to become his followers.
While many in the church see faculty and graduate students as too busy or too disinterested to respond to a gospel invitation, we have seen a 15% increase over the last five years of those in this sector of the university who are coming to faith.
I am so thankful for the ways that GFM has deeply invested in grad students and faculty and not given in to pessimism.
You have created context-appropriate ways to challenge graduate students and faculty to be evangelists in their settings. You continue to press deeply into the evangelistic task. What lessons in contextualized evangelism and faithful witness should GFM be sharing with the whole fellowship? What stories could you be sharing to encourage us all in the task of witness?
2. Passion for Reaching Every Corner of Every Campus
We believe students and faculty need vibrant witnessing communities in their context. Even though we currently serve more campuses and support more chapters than at any time in our history, we feel holy discontent. We can celebrate that our faculty work is at an all-time high (up 23% over 5 years!), but we still serve less than 2,000 of the over two million faculty and administrators on campus. We are jealous for God’s glory to be known in every community on campus. InterVarsity has a unique role to play in reaching grad students and faculty.
No other ministry reaches out to graduate students like we do. (The other campus ministry presidents have told me that they do not have an intentional strategy or focus for graduate students.) We know that no one else is reaching faculty in the same way we do. Other ministries use faculty evangelistically or use faculty to create places to think about faith/learning.
We invest in faculty as disciples, learners, evangelists, and community members.
We do this because they shape ideas and culture, create tools used to analyze the world, and develop technologies that change our reality. We long for them to them to do this in ways which honor God and contribute to human flourishing.
We also do this because of their long-term influence in the university.
Undergraduates often engage the university as consumers. Faculty engage the university as citizens. I saw the long-term impact of faculty as a Harvard undergraduate. Two Christian faculty reached out to me. They had served for decades at Harvard. They were a constant bedrock and support for the undergrad chapter at Harvard, while students and staff would come and go.
Yum-Tong Siu was a math professor, who invited me to his church. When I came on staff and was rejected by my parents, Yum-Tong and his wife Sau-Fong supported me, and 22 years later continue to be ministry partners. Yum-Tong also agreed to be the first Faculty sponsor of the Asian American chapter which I planted.
Jim and Vera Shaw were long-standing faculty at Harvard. I remember them taking me out to eat at the Faculty Club, and asking me how the chapter was doing. I remember them coming to weekly chapter meetings. I felt their care and partnership for the decades following, as Jim would often send me handwritten letters telling me he was praying for me and my ministry.
3. Passion to Serve the Global Church
We believe that global problems require global engagement. I rejoice at our growing commitment to serve with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). We have so much to learn from other student movements (and the church) around the world. We also have a lot to offer. Vinoth Ramachandra (the IFES Secretary for Dialogue and Cultural Engagement) identifies GFM as a treasure within the IFES. No one else is doing graduate and faculty work like we are.
Bob Trube and Don Paul Gross helped bring a university-sized vision and concern to the global fellowship through their leadership in the last IFES World Assembly. I know that the Caribbean and other IFES movements have invited GFM staff to help them think through intentional ministry to grad students and faculty. I am so thankful you have said “yes” to those invitations. I hope to see more GFM staff go overseas to serve through InterVarsity Link or through short-term projects.
I am convinced GFM has a unique contribution to make in world missions because graduate students and faculty have a unique contribution to make. The church needs their insights, expertise, and wisdom as they engage key issues in its mission: confronting racism and ending poverty; answering what it means to be human or what it means that something is true; exploring how best to steward resources or how best to remediate the effects of systemic sin. These challenges require interdisciplinary wisdom, intellectual rigor, and Spirit-inspired insight. We are uniquely positioned to help graduate students and faculty do this.
4. Passion for Vocational Stewardship
We believe that our greatest impact may be through the lives of our world-changing alumni who are working in every sphere of human endeavor. Around the world, I am seeing a renewed commitment to invest in the vocational stewardship of all Christians. I am grateful for Pete Hammond’s leadership in this area in the 1980s and 90s, and I am thankful for the way GFM has carried this crucial value in the present day.
In addition to reaching Ph.D. students, universities award over 600,000 Masters degrees each year. I am so thankful for our growing work in the professional schools, and I am conscious of how much more we could do. Who else will prepare these leaders to influence every sector of society in law, business, healthcare, government, education, journalism, politics, and beyond? Most local churches do not have the expertise or resources. We do, so we must.
Even as you do that, I am grateful for a renewed interest in vocational stewardship among undergraduate staff. More urban programs are building vocational stewardship as their primary emphasis (e.g., NYCUP and BayUP). This is a place where I believe GFM can provide thought and spiritual leadership. More global programs are built around vocational interests (e.g., TURBOCAM in Romania working with engineers and a project in Shanghai working with MBA students.
I wonder what GFM staff could accomplish by investing in urban or global programs designed around vocational stewardship and the discipleship of the mind? No other ministry could (or would) develop projects like these. We could if you would.
The GFM Impact
These four passions are critical to our future, and GFM plays a critical role in each of them. As our restructuring continues, I hope some GFM staff will seek non-GFM leadership positions. We need the leavening of GFM throughout the Movement.
I am so proud of what GFM has accomplished already. I am filled with anticipation at what you will accomplish in the days to come.
The church, the university, and the world need your distinctive witness.
