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TechnoratiI kind of held my breath when he (Muriu) said, well, does this mean we shouldn’t go, that we don’t need Western missionaries? How is he going to answer this? And he said, ‘Of course, there’s so much need in the world. There’s so much hurt.’ So clearly, whatever we motivate all these students at Urbana and InterVarsity will certainly not be enough to address all of the need, so there’s certainly no shortage at all.
CP: Did you have an Urbana or Urbana-like experience before?
Hill: I did not. I came from outside in year 2001. I came to Urbana in 2000 but I was being interviewed. When I came in 2000, I was stunned.
Is this your first [Urbana]?
CP: Yes.
Hill: Isn’t it just remarkable? You walk in and you just go; it’s like an oasis of people. We call it discipleship of the mind …. Then there’s just the ethnic diversity, there’s the global diversity. There’s also within InterVarsity an appreciation of the complexity with the issues. You won’t find a lot of simplistic answers. You’ll find people who are very thoughtful and reflective and who bring the gospel to bear on the particular problems. We really are a university culture.
CP: Are you looking to draw more international students?
Hill: One of the things that Jim Tebbe was clear to say is that this is a North American missions conference, this is not a global missions conference. This Urbana has spawned like 20 other conferences like Urbana in other countries. That would be antithetical to our value to make this the global convention for missions. We are doing a North American student missions convention. And we’re glad to have the guests come in. We’re much happier to see Brazilians in their context do their event and we then send our representatives there.
CP: Can I get an update on the new expansion model for InterVarsity?
Hill: We’re in the first phase and we have 12 “chapter planters” – what we call them – who went on campuses this fall. The idea is that they will work rather quietly in this first phase and they will find missional Christians, as we call people who want to build and grow, and disciple them and train them. And then in the second phase, that can come either later this year or early in the second year, they go public and do the large group. So far, we’re very pleased.
You heard Nick [last night]. When he was an undergraduate at Western Michigan, he started Bible studies in his dorm and he had 30 guys. Then he moved to another dorm and did the same thing and then he had 60 guys. This was a student. So when Nick is 23, he goes off way away from home and starts this chapter at this school that didn’t have a campus ministry.
We hope to do 100 of these over the next five years. So it’s a major initiative for us. But we’re in about a quarter of the campuses that we want to be on and this is a step in that direction.
