January 2010 Editor's Note

Editor’s Note:

I had the privilege to attend the Urbana ’09 conference this past year. I was struck, first, by the number of students involved…and it was a low turnout year. Secondly, I was struck by the amount of diverse organizations represented. As an exhibitor for Latin America Mission, I was awed by the unique and also more general ministries represented. Some of my heart broke as I realized that collaboration can be very difficult with such diversity and sheer number of organizations. As time went on, however, I saw the very collaboration I longed for, despite diversity, become something to serve future missionaries and the world of missions.

Every organization at Urbana recognized the desire for qualified missionaries to go with their programs. Each organization believed in their mission statement and saw the value of their work, but the spirit of competition was not there. In fact, I sent people to other booths and some people came to ours based on the recommendations of other organizations.

One of the most significant discoveries for me at this conference was that an entire field of ministry was not well represented. A number of students bounced from booth to booth looking to be a part of a sustainable agriculture ministry, working alongside groups of people in the majority world. To my knowledge most of them did not find an organization that used sustainable agriculture as ministry. I had to direct them to an organization not even represented at Urbana this year. Mission leaders and university leaders must see this developed interest in students who want to serve God this way and begin to partner with indigenous people that might be able to teach these future missionaries how to do sustainable agriculture in their contexts.

In this issue of DMR you can read a couple of reviews of some of the plenary speakers at Urbana. Of course some were better than others, some touched the reviewer differently than the messages of others might have. James Pluddemann of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School just came out with the book, Leading Across Cultures, and discusses the collaborative, global efforts in missions and how work in an increasingly multicultural missions team. A number of talks by Michael Oh on Itunes University are memorable yet teach on being forgettable. Finally, a review of Spiritual Intelligence, by Alan Nelson was just released on January 10. Nelson discusses the need for a spiritual intelligence in Christian formation.

2010 will likely see growth in multicultural ministry teams as will many years for some time. Collaboration is an amazing thing, but it also comes with some unique complexities. Adaptability and flexibility are some of the most valuable traits for a missionary and they will certainly be employed in the upcoming world of missions and cross-cultural ministry. With some spiritual grounding, current missionaries can navigate these complexities and usher in the forthcoming generation of missionaries, like those found at Urbana or any of the other regional missions conferences that the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) holds.