This past December, I took part in Inter-Varsity’s triennial Missions conference, Urbana in St. Louis.  It was exciting and exhilarating to be part of a group of 16, 000 people!  I attended Urbana in 2006 as a student, but this time I attended as a Campus Staff Minister, though there was a significant change in role, it was clear that God has some special things planned for me.

There are so many stories I could tell, but I will share three of my highlights:

CSLT

My role at Urbana was as a Canadian Student Leadership Track Group Leader, meaning that I would walk alongside and shepherd Canadian university student leaders as they participated in this leadership track. Through a set of unexpected circumstances I was assigned to two other campuses before being assigned to a group of 6 students; 5 from Laurentian and 1 from Waterloo.  Though I spent less than a week with these students, each one is imprinted on my heart. Walking alongside these students as they encountered Jesus and how He may be calling them to serve Him was exhilarating, and served as a reminder of why I love ministering to students. Each day I spent with these students, God showed me new ways He’d been ministering to me and preparing me for moments like these.

Jessica and Laura, two students from Laurentian offered these stories, click here to read them.

PRAY BIG & PRAY BOLD

There were so many wonderful performances, bible expositions and talks at Urbana, most of which can be viewed online at www.urbana09.org. However, the one talk that really inspired me was Sundar Krishnan’s Pray Big and Pray Bold. Sundar talked about the power of intercessors and encouraged us to pray to a sovereign God, a God who we believe can change things.  He gave us an example by sharing how he prayed for a pastor who had been imprisoned; his prayer not changed how I saw intercessory prayer, but it also gave me a new perspective of my current situation and vision for the future.

To see the video of Sundar Krishnan’s talk, please click here.

A RENEWED CALL

Though my role at Urbana kept me pretty busy, I was able to catch a few seminars in the course of the conference. One seminar I attended was one lead by TV Thomas, who I had met last summer. The seminar was called “South Asian Mission Goes Glocal”, the title intrigued me and I was curious to see what TV had to say, so I went.  I came right after a discouraging session of the CSLT, and wasn’t sure what to expect. TV started by telling us the history of South Asian Mission, and though it was one of the first times I’d heard this history, many of the things he mentioned gave vocabulary and meaning to some of previous experiences in South Asian churches. He then told us the present and gave his predictions for the future of South Asian Mission. While discussing the present, he mentioned something that haunted me; South Asian students in North America are less likely to hear the gospel than their peers in their home countries. Basically stating that students in these home countries (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh) have more missionaries intentionally sharing the gospel with them than students in North America. They are amongst the largest group of unreached people groups in North America! After hearing this piece, I felt convicted that I was called to this ministry for a reason, and saw that there were ways that as a South Asian person that I could minister to South Asian students. I felt a renewed call to student ministry and with it a call towards healing in my ethnic identity. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this seminar would greatly influence events that would take part in the weeks and months following Urbana.

Though each of these highlights were significant in different ways, each served as visions for what life as a full-time Campus Minister could be like.