andy moore

I went to Urbana in my role with IFES, with jobs to do and people to meet. I went with an uncanny ability to block the sound of God’s voice, to keep me from being distracted from the work I had to do. Slowly I realised this had become a reflex action in many of the contexts in and through which God has been trying to speak to me.

God made me realise how hard my heart had become to the gentle touch of his Spirit.

Following Urbana, God opened my eyes to see this, and is now gently breaking my heart with a desire to see His glory in my life and in the lives of those around me; the ones I love, and the ones he is calling me to love.

Praise God for his patience and persistence with us.

The story continues…

Came across a brilliant post by The Simple Pastor this morning, looking back at the power of Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, and the hunger for a similar “visionary dreamer” for today.

It was Martin Luther King’s description of the black community being ‘an island of poverty in an ocean of material prosperity’ that gets the pastor thinking; both that today’s prosperity is still not shared equally, but also of the truth that ‘many are drowning in the ocean of material prosperity’.

They’ve swum in it and the tide has carried them out into the ocean and there isn’t the strength to reach a safe shore. When so many are drowning in debt, drowning in self-indulgence, drowning in depression and anxiety, drowning in our own fat, drowning in greed there are too few voices that can be heard that say, ‘I have a dream.’

This year in the UK we will have an election, we will hear from those who aspire to govern us, but what I want to hear and what I fear I will not hear, is a dream. A dream of a society that turns its back on the god of the individual and seeks the solace of community, a society that ends its fruitless pursuit of self-interest and seeks the harvests of partnership, that rejects the sour dreams of happiness through acquisition and discovers the sweetness of generosity and sharing. A society more interested in the quality of life than the quantity of wealth.

I will add my ‘amen’ to that!

You can read the full post here.

My sister, Hannah, has safely arrived in Zambia for her 6 month African Quest with the charity Soapbox.

The ministries we are likely to be involved in are “St Anthony’s Children’s Village” (orphan care centre), “Eagles Wings School” and “Lifeline Zambia” (HIV/AIDS home based care project). Our studies will include Basic Christian Doctrine, African Culture and a week long course with the African Quest founder, John Miles. On Sundays we will be involved in local churches.

I guess my biggest prayer, that I’d ask you to join me in, is that God will equip me, and the others on the team for all He has prepared for us to do over the next few months.

You can follow her blog, which I guess will be updated infrequently during the trip, at: http://hannahafricanquest.wordpress.com

Dear friends

This week’s prayerline comes to you direct from the last day of Urbana 09, InterVarsity’s 22nd missions conference, in St Louis, USA. Over the last five days, 17,000 students, staff, supporters and missions agencies have gathered here to worship, pray, and consider the theme ‘he dwells among us’.

A few weeks ago we asked you to pray for Urbana – that delegates would be challenged by the spiritual and physical needs of the world. Thank you for your prayers – God has been mightily at work here. We have been challenged to see mission as incarnational, following the model Jesus set before us. Thousands of students have committed or re-committed their lives to Christ, thousands more have declared their intention to serve in cross-cultural mission.

Now please join us in praying for everyone who has heard God’s call on their life this week – that the seeds sown here at Urbana would be nurtured in the coming days, weeks, months and years. Please pray that God will raise up workers for his harvest. nd praise God with us for the faithful service at Urbana of staff, organisers, speakers, volunteers and so many more. To hear more about how God has been working in the lives of IFES delegates here at Urbana, we invite you to take a look at this short film.

Thank you for praying with us in 2009; we look forward to seeing what God will accomplish through the prayers of his people in 2010.

Andy

Andy Moore
IFES Global Communications

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The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is a fellowship of students, staff and supporters right around the world. A third of a million people praying, working and giving to see a vibrant gospel witness on every campus in the world.

It was chilly again in St Louis today, as the Urbana ‘tribe’ went about their daily routine of bible study, teaching, worship, seminars and receptions. Everyone seems to be figuring out quicker ways to do things now – quicker to file in and out of the massive Edward Jones Dome, quicker to find the way to food at mealtimes, quicker to connect with people and get talking. Urbana is getting efficient!

But amidst the growing speediness of the day, there is more and more that is drawing us to stop and think deeply. In the morning bible study, which focussed on John 2:13-25, Ramez Atallah reminded us of the enormous shifts that have taken place in how we think about mission over the past few decades. He recalled the courage and risk-taking of Rene Padilla, Samuel Escobar and John Stott at the Lausanne Conference in 1974 which encouraged evangelical Christianity to move  beyond the past injustices of the missionary movement and seek to engage in holistic mission. He asked us to pray for next year’s Lausanne Congress in Capetown – “that it would challenge the Christian world to reach out with a holistic gospel.” Ramez also challenged us to guard our integrity in mission, amidst a results-driven culture.

The focus of the day began to shift to money: how to give, what to give, stories of those who have given sacrificially for mission. In the evening meeting, after talks from Shane Claiborne and Oscar Muriu, Urbana was called to contribute to an offering. The target total for the offering is $1m, which will be given away to mission causes, including future IFES mission conferences.

I’ve been trying to make these blog entries fairly generic: to give a taste of what’s going on here to anyone in the IFES world who would have liked to be here. But I guess it’s also OK to write as myself, as one individual among thousands.  I have been finding the sheer spectacle of Urbana – crowds, technical wizardry, big personality-driven moments – amazing but hard. I find it hard to meet with God in carefully orchestrated ‘moments’. So tomorrow my challenge to myself is this: shut out the spectacle, and seek God with all my heart and all my soul.

It’s the first full day of Urbana 09, and already it feels like everything is settling into its rhythm for the week. In hotels across St Louis, students and staff began their day with manuscript bible studies, before gathering back at the Edward Jones Dome for the morning session with teaching from Ramez Atallah, and more audio-visual treats and thought-provokers. The teaching revolved around the story of Nathaniel’s conversion in John 1: 43-51, concluding with this thought: “Go and make known the one who knows you.”

After an ingeniously planned lunch break (to make sure none of the city’s restaurants had too many thousands of hungry students arriving at once!) we were back into an afternoon of seminars, meetings and times for reflection. Delegates are invited to choose from a huge range of themes from Domestic Poverty to Environmental Stewardship, Business as Mission to World Religions.

By the early evening, the hallways of the America’s Centre were thronging with dinner-seeking students, and the catering operation to get 17,000 diners through in 2 hours had to be seen to be believed! We then gathered once again in the Dome for an eye-opening evening.

We heard the testimony of Cheryl Bear who is travelling around the USA and Canada in a motor-home to share the story of Jesus with all First Nations communities… Patrick Fung, director of OMF, shared his thoughts on living to be forgotten… Ruth Padilla DeBorst spoke passionately on forced migration, and challenged us: “love does not reach from afar – it demands incarnation.”… we saw a film on the statistics of trafficking and forced labour… York Moore spoke movingly about his ‘conversion within a conversion’ to the fight against modern day slavery at Urbana 2000… we witnessed a powerful dramatic monologue about Rahab… we left once again full of thoughts and challenges to bring before God… and Day 2 of Urbana 09 came to an end.

Since yesterday, the quiet streets of downtown St Louis have been undergoing a dramatic transformation. From all corners of the United States (and the world), thousands of students, staff workers, exhibitors, media and more have been arriving for InterVarsity’s 22^nd Urbana Missions Conference. Among them are 40 IFES delegates – here to teach, encourage, learn and grow in God’s plans for them.

It’s hard to describe how big this conference is. Main sessions are taking place in the Edward Jones Dome at America’s Centre – a 21-storey tall arena which can seat up to 67,000 people. Around 16,000 Urbana delegates gathered there for the first main session this evening but the space felt full as God’s people joined together in worship and thankfulness after some difficult journeys.

The theme of Urbana 09 is ‘He Dwelled Among Us’ – we’re exploring the idea of incarnation, of God ‘moving into our neighbourhood’ – and what this means for mission. After a rousing introduction from Jim Tebbe (Director of Urbana 09), Ramez Atallah took to the stage to explore John 1. His message for the week about incarnation is this:

• it is the means by which God reaches out to us
• it is the message God wants to communicate to us
• it is the model for how we should minister

As well as teaching and sung worship, the evening session included a fantastic word and movement piece based on John 1 by Urbana’s Theatre Arts team and film pieces by InterVarsity’s 2100 Productions. As the night drew to a close, thousands of students spread back out across the city to where they were staying with heads and hearts full of images, impressions and inspiration. Urbana 09 has begun.

It sounds a lot grander than the rather more mundane reality.

With heightened security at Heathrow – following a failed terrorist attack on a United Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit – and a generous helping of snow in Chicago and across the mid-west, our connecting flight to St Louis has been cancelled, and we now face the unexpected and exciting prospect of a night spent at O’Hare International Airport.

By this time I had anticipated having checked into our hotel and the opportunity to enjoy a restful evening in preparation for the start of Urbana tomorrow. Instead I am left wondering how our other colleagues from Oxford, and around the world, are faring in their travels.

Ah well, it’s adventures like this that remind me that life, despite our best plans, is often not straight forward for many of our IFES friends around the world. This is very little hardship compared to what some students will endure to get to Urbana, and the reality many face on a daily basis, for the sake of the gospel.

I wonder what lessons God might be teaching us through these minor inconveniences, and will be teaching us in these coming days.