The good news: some of the most significant advancements in the history of world missions happened when college students caught the vision for taking the gospel to unreached nations, and it looks like a passion for missions is on the rise among students again. "There's a growing confidence that 2006 could be a marker year for the rebuilding of the student missions movement," Ryan Shaw says in the article. He's the director of Student Volunteer Movement 2, a network of churches and agencies promoting student involvement in world missions. And Paul Borthwick says, "Students these days have grown up with a global church consciousness. They have an empathetic understanding of different ethnicities and cultures. Their global consciousness and their own histories of brokenness enable them to humbly relate to people in different countries and from different cultures." Students seem to be particularly passionate about addressing issues of social justice and getting involved in pragmatic actions to alleviate poverty.
Now for the bad news. According to the article:
Unfortunately, many students today exhibit theological confusion. "Too many college students are not convinced about the exclusive claims of Christ and the eternal lostness of humanity," says Terry Erickson, InterVarsity's director of evangelism. "Students today are more grace-oriented than truth-oriented." Erickson notes that young people on missions trips today may not be articulating the gospel's promise of eternal salvation through Christ's death on the Cross as clearly as they are demonstrating their concern for social justice and compassion for the poor.
We have to pay attention to the word God speaks as well as the world God loves. When it's God's call students are responding to, it's this dual duty students will respond with.
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