Listen to Dennis Gaylor’s interview with Eric Treuil from South Central Chi Alpha’s webinar.
Why a Disciple-Making Cultureby Dennis Gaylor / July 19, 2021Related Posts
Back to Normal, I Don’t Think So
According to the Springtide Research Institute, which surveyed 2,500 members of Generation Z (ages 15 to 25) in February 2021, the report warns religious leaders, teachers, and parents there isn’t going to be a simple “back to normal” approach for young people after COVID 19 pandemic. Rather we should all be looking for ways to help them experience “the new normal.” Josh Packard, the executive director of Springtide says, “It is not going to be easy for young people to pick up where they left off. There’s a whole lot of things they missed, and they need help processing that, to make sense of it and understanding their lives.”
He listed the missed things: graduations, proms, summer camps, athletic competition, dates, college orientations, religious youth group retreats, school concerts, first jobs, and suggested we can help young people grieve lost milestones and relationships.
“Gen Z lost touch with faith communities during pandemic but kept their faith, study says” by Jana Reiss, Religion News Service, May 31, 2021
The Global Campus is the Future of Mission
International students here in America and in countries around the world are the key to global mission. Here’s why:
- Global Growth
The growth in the number of international students is explosive. There are five million international students in the world.
- Global Reach
- Change the university, change the world.
- Global Unreached
Two thirds of international students in the US come from the 10/40 window.
- Global Culture
The global campus is not an American melting pot, nor a Canadian mosaic; instead, it is a global kaleidoscope, in dizzying technicolor. . . . On the global campus, International students—like their domestic peers—are marinated in a global youth culture: selfie-liked identity, app-abbreviated relationships, 15–minute YouTube heroes, tweet size thoughts. On the global campus, trends are transferred and new ones are started. The
future is being shaped here and disseminated around the world by pixel, and by hand. . . . The worldview that permeates the global campus is a kumbaya of undocumented human goodness and a trust in human ingenuity, with little memory of our histories. On the global campus, young hearts and minds are being shaped, and not in the image of God.
- Global Ministry
China has one and a half million students overseas; but it has half a million foreigners studying in China (as many as in Canada). The top two nationalities of foreign students in China are South Korean and American.
- Global Impact
Most international students who come to faith on our global campuses will return home. Their journey mirrors the shift in the distribution of the church—West to East, North to South. International students transcend both worlds . . .
- Global Missionaries
Churches in the sending countries must send some of their young Christians here as imbedded student missionaries.
- Global Campuses
Oxford University reports that, “student mobility is shifting from a largely unidirectional east–west flow to a multidirectional movement and encompassing non-traditional sending and host countries.” International education is becoming polycentric. Global campuses are becoming a worldwide phenomenon.
- Global Workplace
On the global campus, the primary focus is work. Students are to succeed when they graduate, so they often left home and crossed the world. . . .We need to teach global students about the power and virtue of the gospel to shape all aspects of their work and the societies their work will build.
- Global Future
The church has not been immune to building its own towers. The city of man is built from the ground up. But the city of God comes down from Him. God is re-gathering the nations, drawing their brightest hopes for the future, to a global campus near you. He wants to reveal Himself to the next generation of every nation.
An article condensed from “Ten Reasons Why the Global Campus is the Future of Mission,” by Alexander Best. Posted July 27, 2019, The Exchange.
2 Comments
This is great! Thanks for sharing Dennis.
This is a great conversation between two great men. Dennis, thank you for everything you have done for campus ministry and for writing the history of Chi Alpha!