By Jonathan Rice

Developing World Changers

Susan Griffeth was an InterVarsity student at the University of Illinois in Chicago in the late 1990s before moving to Mongolia to care for orphaned children. “What she’s doing is truly Mother Theresa-like,” said Shannon Marion, associate regional director of InterVarsity’s Great Lakes West region.

Mike McIntyre was an InterVarsity chapter president at the University of North Carolina in the late 1970s before graduating from law school and establishing a law practice. Since 1996, he has put his InterVarsity leadership training to work serving the citizens of North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress.

The Reverend Doctor C. T. Vivian was an InterVarsity student at Western Illinois University in the 1950s before serving on the staff of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For over three decades, Reverend Vivian has worked passionately for human rights and ethnic reconciliation around the world.

Each of these remarkable individuals exemplifies InterVarsity’s vision to develop world changers. “We yearn for our students and faculty to make a difference not only on campus now, but also in the world for decades to come,” said InterVarsity’s president, Alec Hill, in a recent staff publication.

These days Christian students from different doctrinal backgrounds agree that many of this world’s social institutions need fundamental change. So it comes as no surprise that InterVarsity students around this country are passionate about social justice. Many InterVarsity students who observe their society from a biblical perspective find that few social institutions demonstrate the values that Jesus says are integral to the kingdom of God. Our students have learned that a personal witness for Jesus must also include a social witness of the gospel. Such a witness, insist our students, should be expressed through both deeds of righteousness and clearly reasoned, biblical teachings.

Having been challenged by InterVarsity staff to live as Christ’s witnesses, numerous InterVarsity students, eager to sow godly values in secular institutions, are now preparing for vocations that call them to serve in places desperate for God’s love—vocations such as an engineer, a teacher, physician, and pastor that sometimes require them to reside in a country half a hemisphere away from their family and friends. Such is the passionate and sacrificial attitude of these otherwise ordinary students.

Of course, passionate self-sacrifice for a cause is not a new story. From ancient times people have sought to change the world through religious rituals, political revolutions, and cultural ideologies. But rituals, revolutions, and ideologies never seem to permanently affect the human condition or go to the heart of a society’s problem. And though for short periods in particular places some people do change their minds, a society’s turnaround is typically short-lived; while the banner for a better future is briefly held high, the gravity of sin drags down people’s most resolute, self-willed aspirations for righteousness. When humanity’s homemade solutions do not remove society’s root problem, the symptoms of social illness return in more virulent forms.

Along with many other people, InterVarsity shares the vision of seeing societies changed for the better. But our vision is not derived from a particular school of political theory or cultural ideology or even any popular theological emphasis. Our ministry on campus is a response of gratitude for the love God has given us through Jesus Christ.

InterVarsity helps prepare students and faculty to go out into the world to love other people, particularly the poor and marginalized, and to help change this world for the better, primarily because God first loved us. Why do InterVarsity-trained world changers seek salvation for the lost, reconciliation for the brokenhearted, and justice for the oppressed? Why? Because God does.

InterVarsity students believe that God’s mission in this world is the transformation of individuals and societies and that God uses ordinary-but-transformed people to participate in his mission. InterVarsity asserts a biblical gospel solution that goes to the heart of humanity’s problem and changes non-believers to disciples of Jesus and disciples of Jesus into world changers.

For the sixty years of InterVarsity’s existence, we have not been ashamed of this gospel solution, for it is the salvation of everyone who believes in Christ. InterVarsity staff have dedicated themselves to helping students understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ leads not only to personal change but also to social transformation. Today on over 565 campuses across this country, InterVarsity staff encourage students and faculty to resist conforming to the ungodly values in this world and to instead conform their whole persons—body, mind, spirit—to the character of Jesus Christ. InterVarsity staff teach the members of their campus chapters, through Bible studies, conferences, and missions projects, how to integrate biblical values into their daily lives, sensitively share the gospel with everyone, and participate in God’s mission of transforming people’s hearts and a society’s soul.

Our leadership training helps students and faculty become world changers who can, if God so calls them, minister to orphaned children in Mongolia or serve in the United States Congress or challenge a nation to embrace racial reconciliation. We are grateful to God for using our alumni to help further God’s mission of world change. By God’s grace, we will continue to develop world changers.