 Christ is focus of Urbana mission convention By Chris Brown Correspondent The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 1 Posted January 24, 2001
For more than 20,000 students, missionaries and others attending the triennial Urbana Mission Convention Dec. 27-Jan. 1 in Urbana-Champaign, the answer was unequivocal: Jesus is the Son of God, the way, the truth, and the life. Historically, the Church has stood firm on this belief, that salvation is in Christ alone. Speakers and seminary leaders at the mission convention challenged contemporary culture and the emergence of a new belief system that depicts all religions as valid paths to God. During the convention, which is one of the most successful mission-recruiting gatherings in the world, nearly 3,000 students said they will definitely enter mission service and more than 5,500 said they will probably do so. Urbana speaker Vinoth Ramachandra, a staff member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, spoke on the uniqueness of Christ. Jesus is unique, Ramachandra said, because he, as the savior of the world, was killed as a common criminal. Ramachandra said the fact that Jesus died a criminal’s death was nonsense to many in the first century. The saving message of the cross was subversive because it bypassed all the philosophies of the ancient world and went straight to a crucified Savior, he said. Ramachandra described three ways that the gospel of Jesus Christ remains unique. First, he said, the cross subverts all other salvation stories. Other beliefs hold that salvation is being freed from the world, that life is somehow evil, and that to be saved is to be in one sense less human. By contrast, Ramachandra said, Jesus came to us as God incarnate, suffered as we did, and through his salvation enabled humans to become more human, not less. Second, he said, Jesus is unique because he subverts the way of thinking that came out of the last 200 years of history. In this thinking, self is emphasized, and the philosophies of Marx and others focus on how humanity can find fulfillment in itself, Ramachandra said. Jesus, on the other hand, exposes and judges sin and teaches that humanity doesn’t have the answer within itself and that every human method to find fulfillment or God will never work. Christ makes us truly human, and satisfies that longing, he said. Third, Ramachandra said, Jesus subverts the postmodern view that there is no ultimate truth. The problem with this, he said, is that humanity is left totally alone, wandering through vague “spirituality” and “virtual reality.” In Christ, though, God takes us as we are, changes us and gives us a definite truth (himself) to follow, Ramachandra said. Ramachandra and other Urbana speakers called on Christians not to see the world as a battlefield against opposing views, but as a mission field. Ramachandra said the Church first lives out its mission by loving one another. The unity of the Church shows by its actions what life in Christ is like, he said, adding that the Church furthers its mission by being willing to die in order to bear fruit. Barney Ford, director of Urbana 2000, said convention participants contributed $1,034,822 to mission organizations around the world, including the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. An offering raised $911,000 and money saved during a fast raised an additional $123,822. “Our challenge as Christians is to reach across cultural and economic barriers to bring love to people and to bring the gospel of the Lord Jesus to them,” said Ford, who is chairman of the executive committee of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Urbana is sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in the United States and Canada. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had one of the largest denominational contingencies at the convention: 842. Another 891 students registered as Presbyterian but not as PCUSA. |
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