Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Urbana12

Dove Power: Advocacy the Christian Way

“What does it mean for Christians to do social justice advocacy as if God is real and Jesus is risen?” is a significant question. Anyone have example regarding how such social justice advocacy relates to (interacts with or even been played out in) their research, field and/or higher education in general? Once again, thank-you to J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media for his Urbana12 series. This post in original form (12/29/2012) can be found here. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.

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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.

What does it mean for Christians to do social justice advocacy as if God is real and Jesus is risen?

Alexia Salvatierra is a Lutheran pastor and director of justice ministries for the Southern California synod. She also works for World Vision and the Christian Community Development Association.

Alexia tells us that in the last ten years, evangelicals have come to realise that the gospel also includes calls to justice. Micah 6:8 is on everyone’s lips, “love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with our God.” The church often gets confused about what it means to do justice. Christians often don’t do advocacy, often because typical advocacy tactics can feel wrong to Christians, she says.

Why advocate for justice? Christians should be compelled by the love of God and the compassion of Christ, feeling other people’s hopes and dreams. Like Jesus, we need to look at people to experience empathy. [Read more…] about Dove Power: Advocacy the Christian Way

The Intersection of Church and Business

J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media continues his Urbana12 series. This post in original form (12/28/2012) can be found here. As some of you know, the seminar is part of the Business Changing the World Track. Thank-you Nathan! Great to have you contributing material to the ESN Blog. Your work is much appreciated.. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.

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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.

Dayspring Technologies' All-in-One Team
Dayspring Technologies’ All-in-One Team

Speaking today are John Greenhill & Chi-Ming Cheng of Dayspring Tech, a web and mobile app consultancy.

“How can Christians bear witness to the reign of God in a for-profit business?” they ask. Ministry is usually considered a non-profit endeavour. They’re not here to talk about personal discipleship in a place of business (which is good), but how businesses themselves can bear witness to God.

These issues rise to the fore when you start making basic decisions in your business. This sometimes requires us to expand how we think of business; it also requires us to expand the meaning of the word ministry.

John was an aerospace engineer coming out of school in ’87 — not a typical ministry education. He wasn’t doing ministry training, translation, or languages. He sometimes wondered how his passions fit together, but he came to discover the broad varieties of living out the gospel in a discipline. We should be encouraged by the variety, freedom and possibilities that are available to us.

John shares a quotation from Amos 5:15, “Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square.” The gospel must be worked out in our lives and it is not isolated, but it works itself out in the public square and everywhere else. It applies all the time, everywhere, in all arenas. How? That’s what this talk is about.

Chi Ming is speaking now. He starts out with a story of the first time he spoke on business at a seminar for InterVarsity students. His session was double booked with one on relationships. He spent that hour session with an audience of two. Today’s group has around 60 attendees.

Chi Ming’s web and mobile app company, Dayspring Technologies, is in San Fransisco. It was founded 15 years ago by 3 church members. The company has 16 employees and $1.7 million in revenue. Recent projects include an entrepreneurship mentoring platform for the US State Department and the ImageNations group. They have also recently worked on a household budgeting app. Recent partners and clients include Accel, KPCB (VC), MercyCorps, North Face, PJCC, UCSF.

What does this have to do with announcing the kingdom of God? [Read more…] about The Intersection of Church and Business

Find Your Voice and Own It: Women and the Academic Life

Thank-you to J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media, for venturing into and reporting on Women and the Academic Life as part of his Urbana12 series.* We’re looking forward to your responses to this material — any seminar participants with thoughts to add? Note: In addition to ESN’s mentoring resources, be sure to visit The Well – a website designed to support women in graduate and professional schools and women faculty as they seek, in their full and complex lives, to be followers of Christ. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.

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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.

What can Christian women expect from an academic life, and how can they flourish despite the challenges they face among families, churches, and university culture itself? Addressing this question is Dr Janet Clark, vice president and dean at Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto.

Dr Janet Clark, vice president and dean at Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto, addresses Women and the Academic Life at Urbana12.

When Janet went to Urbana as a young person, she wondered if she would have to give up her academic interests to be part of God’s mission. And she was willing to do that. After attending Urbana, she moved to Borneo, where she lived and served for a decade. When she moved back to Toronto, she had a chance to reconnect with her love of the academic world.

Janet polls the crowd. About half of the attendees are gradstudents, a third are in gradschool, and a handful are in the middle of PhDs.

“If you have a love for learning, a love to teach, and an academic yearning, if you are being drawn to a missional life, these things are not necessarily incompatible,” Janet says. [Read more…] about Find Your Voice and Own It: Women and the Academic Life

Making Cross-Cultural Relationships in a Globalised World

J. Nathan Matias (@natematias), Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media continues his Urbana12 series. This post in original form (12/30/2012) can be found here. Thank-you Nathan! Great to have you contributing material to the ESN Blog. Your work is much appreciated.. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.

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This weekend, I’m at Urbana, a gathering of Christian students interested in the work of the church worldwide. Over the last few days, I have been blogging seminars, in which a speaker gives a talk to around 50-60 participants.

It’s easy to develop romantic excitement about a cosmopolitan lifestyle, especially at a vast international gathering like Urbana. What practical steps can Christians take to learn about and meet people from other cultures and places?

Paul Borthwick
Paul Borthwick

Our speaker, Paul Borthwick, teaches missions at Gordon College and has a website which features only one phrase: “listening to the world.” His latest book, How to be a world-class Christian, is a practical guide to maintaining a feet-on-the-ground perspective and a global vision. Paul shares eight basic exercises to keep our vision for the world growing.

Compile Information. Carry out a study of the basics of missions. Read about the great commission, and work out the reasons you have for serving the world. For example, some people have read through the Bible and circled every part where the rest of the world is mentioned.

We need to change how we see others if we’re to relate well to people from cultures different than our own. Paul asks us how our relationships would change if we imagined that every person was created in the image of God. When Paul lived in Boston, this thought changed how he treated other drivers. Biblical information like this changes the way we look at the world, he says. [Read more…] about Making Cross-Cultural Relationships in a Globalised World

What I Remembered at Urbana 12

Last month’s Urbana 12 taught me a few things — for example, on a panel of three people, it takes a long time for each panel member to answer each question from the audience. The more important lessons, though, were reminders more than anything else. Three lessons, in particular, have been helpful to me as I’ve been processing God’s messages to me through Urbana 12.

Every person serves God in a unique way.

There is no one career that all Christians have to follow. Since I’ve been going to Urbana, I have seen powerful testimonies and performances given by lawyers, missionaries, rappers, actors, dancers, poets, painters, and even professors. All are serving Christ in unique ways through different professions. In the past, this has been a difficult message for Urbana to convey, since the featured speakers have so often been cross-cultural missionaries involved in full-time evangelism or church planting. The Emerging Scholars Network works hard to communicate the message that becoming a professor is also a way to serve God, though we are also quick to affirm that it is only one way of many.

Further, each person’s journey is theirs and theirs alone. Academics, like many other professionals, are often tempted to compare themselves to others in the same field. This can lead either to despair — “He’s two years younger than me and already has three books published?” “She and I graduated together, but she already has tenure?” — or to arrogance — “That’s right I have three books published. What’s your hold-up?” “I earned this tenure through blood, sweat, and toil, and don’t you forget it.”

Comparing yourself to others is an easy way to go crazy. Each of us has different gifts, abilities, and responsibilities that enable us to serve God in different ways. Public recognition for these efforts is fickle and ultimately meaningless, like “chasing after the wind.” Further, Mark Washington (who leads InterVarsity’s MBA Ministry) reminded me that so many people put forth a public image that bears little resemblance to the turmoil in their real lives. The appropriate measure for our lives is our relationship with God and our relationships with other people. Are we loving God? Are we loving our neighbors? Those are the important things to measure.  [Read more…] about What I Remembered at Urbana 12