The Institute (協会)

Jubilee Breakout Sessions--Cultivating Imagination for Living Missionally

The breakout sessions at the Jubilee conference demonstrate the best in what the story of creation-fall-redemption-restoration (CFRR) invites college students into--a life characterized by mission, not living for comfort and ease. Because "the Kingdom" is not wrongly equated with "the Church" the organizers at the conference compiled a wonderful list of options for students to attend. If you take CFRR seriously you don't want to just engage a broken world you actually understand that God has raised up the church to send people out as agents of transformation, restoration, redemption. True agents of spreading shalom.

Here's just a sample:

**"Identity Matters: The True Voice of Culture, The Truth of God"--this was a challenging seminar to orient students towards their identity in Christ as the basis for understanding everything else about their redemptive role in the CFRR story.

**"What We Can Learn from African Christianity"--because Christianity now has it's largest synergy in Africa and Asia, it's VITAL for college students to see that Christianity is not about the American church but the global manifestation of world-wide community of believers being led today primarily by Africans (and others Asians, and Latin Americans). I really wish I could have attended this one. So much to learn!!!

**"UnChristian--Christianity's Image Problem...and Why it Matters"--this session explored the implications of the book UnChristian and gave challenging pictures of how the unchurched view Christian from the relationships they have with people in the church.

**"Living Out Faith: One Well at a Time"--the folks from Blood:Water Mission were there to help students see that they can participate in restoring clean water and clean blood to areas of Africa burdened by the HIV/AIDS crisis, drought, unclear water, etc.

**"Caring For God's Creation: How to Involve Your Campus In Environmental Stewardship"--As the title suggests, students are encouraged to be transformers of culture in their campuses and lead NOW because their role in the CFRR narrative begins NOW; and because Christians are on campuses, not for themselves, but to bring shalom to the campus NOW--to be agents of redemption on the campus NOW--not to withdraw only to create an alternative society.

**"Seek Justice, Rescue the Oppressed"--The folks from IJM were down to do their thing helping students see that their vocations can be instruments of justice and can be used to fight for human rights around the world.

**"Sabbath-keeping for Dummies: Sabbath Rest, Recreation, and Re-creation"

**"'It's the Culture Stupid!' Making a Difference in the Culture Industries (Media, Art, and Entertainment)"

**"Loving Homosexuals As Jesus Would"--Chad Thompson tells his own story and teaches student to positively bring Truth to the gay community in with love, respect, and dignity.

**"Developing World Design"--for engineers and architects who want to be transformers and redeemers of culture.

**Various "Africana" and "Latino" sessions for those groups to explore the dimension of living CFRR as minorities in a Anglo-dominated culture and specific nuances of CFRR within their respective communities. I went to one combined "Africana/Latino" session that also had a surprising number of Anglos who are burdened about the struggle living in the dominant culture and to address issues unique to their respective communities.

These are just a few. There were also sessions on discerning the future, sexuality and relationships, philosophical trends, transforming education, art and imagination, Christianity and science, transforming law and medicine, careers in professional athletics, politics and ethics, and more.

As I mentioned earlier, this is the best synthesis of introducing students to the various dimensions of loving God and loving neighbor, orthodoxy and orthopraxis, church and kingdom, piety, social justice, and redemptive mission all within the context of creation-fall-redemption-restoration.

I especially love that Jubilee demonstrates that the Gospel applies to every area of life in the topics of the seminars, panel discussions, and breakout sessions. Every area--from you identity in Christ to HIV/AIDS and environment. Forgive me for being biased but it seems cultivating a Christian-world-and-life view is the best holistic understanding of what it means to be world Christian.

This is the conference to take the college students in your churches to if you want to them see the cosmic implications of the Gospel and work of the church in world.

And for you Pharisee-types who are thinking, "social gospel," you-got-the-wrong-conference. There some mainline conferences I could point you to for that.

Fellas, I think I'm gonna to create a section again for missional college ministries on this blog (from churches or parachurch groups) so if you know of any or know of any conferences that take CFRR to mission on the college campus, and later vocationally, send me the links I'll list them--especially, if there are any conferences coming up. I don't think CCO is only group doing this, and I'm kind'a out of the college ministry loop, so any info. any of you can give would be great as I develop and new learning curve in this area. I have no idea about all that's out there!

Posted by anthony at February 21, 2008 10:44 AM | TrackBack