Fundamental
Evangelistic Association
selected
articles from:
©FOUNDATION
A MAGAZINE OF BIBLICAL FUNDAMENTALISM
Dennis W. Costella, Editor; Karel Beyer, Production Manager; Matt
Costella,
Copy Editor
M.H. Reynolds, Jr. (1919-1997), Founding Editor
Urbana® 96
by Matt Costella, Staff Writer
©FOUNDATION Magazine, Jan - Feb 1997
Over 19,000 college students
from around the world traveled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to
participate in the nation's largest student missions convention known as "Urbana
96." Sponsored by Intervarsity, the triennial Urbana 96 offered the students an
extensive, overwhelming array of information during the five-day convention. From
convention speakers to over 200 seminars and 300 exhibitors, the students seemed to soak
in all the information they could before returning home and sharing their experiences with
families, friends and churches. However, although some of the teaching they received at
Urbana was biblical and Christ-centered, there was no shortage of anti-scriptural
instruction which most likely raised questions in the minds of many of the Urbana
participants. As a college student, I was amazed at the many inconsistencies that could
only have served to confuse the many young people who obviously desire to serve God in
every way they can.
It is not my desire to attempt to question the motives of the more than 19,000 young
people who flocked to Urbana 96 to become "fired up" for missions. No doubt
most, if not all of the students at Urbana, genuinely desire to become better witnesses
for Christ and to follow our Saviour's great command to go into all the world and preach
the Gospel. However, problems arise with some of the unscriptural teachings and attitudes
prevalent in the conference itself. A strong emphasis of the convention was placed on the
role of Generation X, as this current generation is called, and how it can successfully
reach the world for Christ. But if the object of the convention was to train and equip
college students to be better witnesses for Christ on their campuses and around the world,
one must question why so many worldly philosophies were accepted and even encouraged at
Urbana 96. One must also wonder why there was absolutely no warning given about
individuals or organizations that do not completely conform to God's Word.
Much of what was taught at Urbana was scriptural, but at the same time, no mention was
made of the importance of worshipping, praying and fellowshipping only with those
believers who hold uncompromisingly to God's commands found in His Word. There were no
warnings about the charismatic movement or the ecumenical movement, even though these
movements permeate "religion" and Christianity today. There were no warnings
concerning the dangers and false teachings of other "Christian" groups that
proclaim a false gospel. This mixture of biblical teaching and the absence of biblical
warnings about so many of the strange doctrines being introduced into the church today
must have been confusing to the students at Urbana 96. They obviously realize that there
are individuals, organizations and churches in the world that espouse false doctrine, but
these students most likely have no idea who these people are or what churches and
organizations they are biblically commanded to avoid. The impression I received at Urbana
was that everyone believes differently, and as long as an individual can say, "Jesus
is the only way to eternal life," then it is possible to work together despite any
other doctrinal differences. To my knowledge, almost all denominations or organizations
today that claim to be "Christian" can make such a profession. The difference
is, not all denominations or organizations believe that grace through faith in Christ
alone is sufficient for salvation. God's Word plainly says that we are to mark and avoid
all who "cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have
learned" (Rom. 16:17). Doctrine is important to God, and it should be important to
all believers today whether they are older believers or college-age believers. The
importance of sound doctrine was severely downplayed at Urbana 96. Everyone was on a
first-name-only basis--church and denominational affiliations were nowhere to be found. It
was clearly evident that the leadership of Urbana 96 did not want the doctrinal
distinctives of the articipants to get in the way of an all-inclusive unity under the
banner of missions.
Not only was the importance of biblical discernment and scriptural warnings lacking at
the convention, but some harmful ideas and philosophies of the world were taught. It was
sad to hear the leaders of Urbana's worship team, Phil Dyer and Alison Siewert, tell the
media in a press conference that reverence to God through worship is relative -- what may
be reverent worship to one person may not be reverent worship to another. It was
heartbreaking to attend a seminar entitled "How to be a Witness as a Scientist"
and hear Dr. Catherine Crouch, a physicist who just recently received her Ph.D. from
Harvard University, tell the students that it is perfectly acceptable not to accept a
literal six-day creation as fact. Finally, as a young person, I found it difficult to
understand how, through this conference, young missionaries today can be told that it is
not enough to trust God solely to lead into long-term missionary work for God. Leaders at
Urbana emphasized short-term missions trips rather than long-term commitments.
WHAT IS REVERENT TO YOU MAY NOT BE REVERENT TO ME
The music used for "worship" at Urbana was a mixture of worldly music that
appealed to the flesh and Christ-honoring hymns. Nevertheless, even the hymns were
"updated" with a modern beat and "modern" language (words such as
"Thee" and "Thou" were changed to "You"). The rock band at
Urbana was known as the "Urbana 96 Worship Team," led by Phil Dyer and Alison
Siewert. Prior to each general session, the Worship Team performed for about 45 minutes
while the students filled the auditorium. The music was so loud at times that it was
difficult even to talk to the person sitting next to you without shouting.
Looking around the auditorium, I noticed thousands of students dancing in their places,
raising their hands, clapping and "groovin'" to the beat of the music. At one
point during the musical "worship," while the band was playing "O For a
Thousand Tongues," Siewert even encouraged the students to "feel free to dance
around, move a little bit." Sure enough, almost every student I could see was
"gettin' down and feeling the rhythm" of the music.
However, this was not the only form of worship during the convention. During the
opening general session, George Verwer, who pulled down his pants to expose his
"global underwear" at a previous gathering, encouraged the students to
"scream for Jesus" at one point during his plenary address. He yelled, "I
love people who scream [Verwer screams]! Why is it that you can scream for football, you
can scream for baseball, you can scream when you get excited at the Olympics, but you
can't scream for Jesus?" The entire arena suddenly erupted into a frenzy of screams
from the thousands of participants.
While sitting and noticing all the commotion going on, I could not help but ask myself
how this could be reverent and pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen Saviour Who is
to be respected and feared. While listening to the musical worship, all the hype and
commotion seemed to be nothing more than a massive, worldly rock concert with Christian
lyrics.
I had no idea if the musical worship at Urbana was even supposed to be reverent, so I
asked Siewert and Dyer in a press conference a question that yielded a distressing answer.
I asked, "Do you think reverence to God is necessary in musical worship [because at
this point I did not even know if they believed reverence was essential], and if so, do
you think reverence is relative: what may be reverence to one person might not be
reverence to another?" Siewert thought for a few seconds then answered, "Yes and
yes. We ought to approach God in reverence, but yes, reverence to one may not appear to be
the same thing as reverence to another. So, for a student to attribute worth to God may
mean jumping around and yelling and getting to sing something pretty zippy, where to
another person that might be sort of a shameless display of enthusiasm." Dyer added,
"I think that students are trying to define what exactly is reverent ... and they
want to make it relevant to what is reverent in this generation."
These statements are not only incorrect from a biblical perspective, but they are
logically flawed by any standard. Reverence, by definition itself, is not relative. It
never has been relative, and it never will be. Reverence is a humble showing of fear and
respect to God our Saviour. Why do students and student leaders of Generation X feel that
reverence is now relative? Perhaps because they have a false idea of what reverence really
is. The philosophy today is that as long as one feels that he is being reverent, or if one
feels as though he is worshipping God, then he really must be worshipping God reverently.
Regarding Christian music, many young people today claim that they feel they are not
worshipping God unless the music they are using for worship has a beat or a rhythm that is
pleasing to them. I have heard college and high school students say that hymns are fine
for some people but contemporary "Christian" rock music makes them feel as
though they are really worshipping God. They claim that hymns are "dead" and
that they do not feel as though they get anything out of them.
This entire philosophy and attitude is completely wrong and obviously dishonoring to
God. If a young person today thinks hymns are dull, boring or dead, there is a problem in
his heart that must immediately be corrected. The hymns written years ago by God-fearing,
God-honoring men and women contain biblical truths that should encourage and uplift any
believer who is in a proper relationship with God. The praise, glory and honor found in
the words of the hymns are meant to honor and glorify God; they are not meant to make us
physically aroused or excited. They are to be sung in humbleness and reverence before God,
realizing that the truths found in the hymns honor and glorify Him, not us. Reverence, and
therefore worship, is not intended to make us feel physically aroused or excited, but to
glorify our risen Saviour.
The philosophy pervading many college youth today that a believer is only worshipping
God if he really feels like he is worshipping is not scriptural. God's Word says that
believers are to worship Him in "spirit and in truth" (Jn. 4:24). Some
individuals might say that rolling around on the floor, screaming out loud or making
strange noises makes them feel as though they are reverently worshipping God. The
definition of reverential worship as given by the worship leaders of Urbana 96 allows this
kind of nonsense and opens the door to many other strange forms of worship becoming
prevalent in many charismatic circles today. Worship is spiritual communion with God, not
physical pleasure. To worship God in spirit is to spiritually uplift, glorify and give
praise to God our Creator and Saviour. To worship God in truth is to worship Him according
to His Word. If one worships God in truth, his worship will not conflict with the
commandments of God as found in His Word.
Please notice Genesis 22:1-12. Verse five of this text provides the first reference to
the word "worship" in the Bible. In the previous verses of chapter 22, Abraham
was commanded by God to take Isaac, his only son, to the top of Mt. Moriah and kill him as
a sacrifice to God. But notice what Abraham told his servants in verse five. He said,
"Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come
again to you." Did Abraham know that he was supposed to kill his son when he told his
servants that he was going up to worship God? He certainly did. Abraham did not feel good
about what he was commanded to do, but he knew he was worshipping God by doing it. This
portion directly contradicts those today who claim that they are only worshipping God when
they feel as though they are worshipping Him. Our good feeling does not dictate whether or
not we are worshipping God. Abraham passed God's "faith test" by desiring to
please God, not himself. This is true worship.
NO LONGER CREATION vs.EVOLUTION, BUT CREATION AND EVOLUTION
Prior to attending the seminar entitled "How to be a Witness as a Scientist,"
I was extremely interested in learning how a Christian could most effectively be a witness
and testimony to scientists who do not believe God's Word and who do not believe that God
created the heavens and the earth in six days like He said He did. I hoped the seminar
leader would encourage students who are saved to heed and believe the Bible no matter what
modern-day science claims to be fact. To my dismay, the entire seminar focused around how
to be humble, how to be concerned for justice and how to maintain an attitude of
servanthood as a scientist. These are all good qualities that should be heeded by any
Christian in any field of study, but with so much false teaching and anti-biblical
philosophy prevalent in the sciences today, it is important for Christian leaders to
expose these false teachings to today's youth and instruct them on how stand up for the
truths found in God's Word. The seminar leader, Dr. Catherine Crouch, failed to mention
any biblical references that pertain to science or how all the theories of evolution are
completely contrary to God's Word.
During the question and answer portion of the seminar following the lecture, I asked
Dr. Crouch the following question: "What advice would you give to either
undergraduate or graduate students on how to deal with professors who push evolution or
really want to teach it as fact?" Crouch gave the students a three-fold answer. First
she advised students to learn all they could about evolution from various sources. She
said, "There are lots of books out there written by Christians who are in science and
who don't reject evolution wholesale, you know, don't take a very strict creation view but
are also familiar with the limitations." She added, "So basically, evolution is
a very limited thing in terms of what's actually demonstrated scientifically. Most of it
is a hypothesis." Is most of evolution a hypothesis? No, the entire theory is a
hypothesis that is contrary to God's Word. Crouch said, "I believe, though I am not
one hundred percent certain about this, that it has not been demonstrated that species
transform into other species."
After opening the door to the idea that evolution might have some scientific
foundation, Crouch voiced her second statement of advice to the students. She said,
"I think the second is to also be confident in saying, 'I don't know whether species
turn into other species. I don't know whether God created bacteria, and then everything
evolved by mutations and so on and so forth happening. But I am convinced that the hand of
God guided whatever process was used in creation,' and that's something that science just
doesn't have anything to say about." God's Word specifically says that God Himself
created everything that exists after its own kind (Gen. 1:11-12, 21, 24-25).
Bible-believing Christians should be confident in saying, "I know how everything came
into being. God created it with His own hands in six days!" Why is Crouch telling
these evangelical college students to admit that they do not know how the earth became the
way it is today? It is because she does not believe God's Word and is advising these other
young Christians not to believe God as well, thereby calling God a liar. This is the
worldly, anti-God philosophy of evolution creeping into the evangelical church in its most
deceptive form. This philosophy that God created some original matter and then left the
world to evolve on its own is oftentimes referred to as "theistic evolution."
Finally, Crouch's third piece of advice to students was to "just not get into
arguments with people. I think that we have to not be ashamed to disagree, so I feel like
it is really important when someone makes a statement like, 'clearly evolution
demonstrates there is no God,' that's a ridiculous statement. Evolution doesn't
demonstrate anything about God. Evolution is about biochemistry and modular biology. It's
not about God."
Is evolution about God? Yes, indeed it is. In order to believe that evolution played a
part in the formation of the world, one either has to believe that God does not exist or
that God does exist but that what He says in His Word is a lie. Either way, evolution does
say something about God, and it does reflect one's view of God.
Christians are called by God to be set apart from the world. This necessarily includes
any worldly, man-made philosophy that contradicts God's Word. It is a common and even
sadly accepted fact that those who have not come to Christ by grace through faith alone
oftentimes embrace the theory of evolution, but for Christians in an evangelical gathering
to be taught that evolution could have played a part in the formation of the world is
inexcusable. Why was there no warning about the dangerous theory of evolution at Urbana?
Young believers today need to have their foundation solely in the Word of God.
MISSIONS: FAITH THAT GOD WILL SUPPLY IS NOT ENOUGH
At Urbana, the leadership seemed to place a strong emphasis on the need and importance
of short-term missions trips rather than life-long commitments to carry the gospel into
other lands. Elisabeth Elliot and Libby Little, two missionaries who have spent their
lives on the mission field, spoke at the convention, but the majority of the conference
focused on short-term missions projects and trips. Libby Little even told the students,
"At a time when short-term missions trips are becoming popular, you might consider
long-term commitment." There is obviously nothing wrong with going on a short-term
trip to work with missionaries, but as a college student who has studied the lives of
several God-fearing missionaries who were led of the Spirit to commit their entire lives
to preaching the Gospel in foreign lands, I wondered why today's youth are being
encouraged to only "try it out" for a short time to see how they like it.
During one press conference, a man from Uganda asked Dan Harrison, the director of
Urbana 96, "Why aren't they [college students] being challenged to do long-term
commitments? So many young people are coming in [to Uganda] introducing casinos, video
games, and they are determined to stay there and bring their culture to us. So why can't
young people be challenged to do the same thing [long term missions]?" Harrison said
he thought it was important for students to be challenged to long-term service, but he
said, "For a generation like this one, for whom all of their institutions, or most of
them, have failed them ... coming to the point of trusting at an earlier stage, sufficient
to make a career or life-long commitment is very, very difficult." This may be true,
but it has always been difficult to make such a commitment in any generation. It is
difficult to see how this generation is so much different from the generation of J. Hudson
Taylor, David Livingston or Adoniram Judson when it comes to making decisions for Christ.
In fact, it seems to me that it would be much easier for us to commit to missions today
with all the technological advantages we have such as computers, phones, automobiles and
airplanes. These early missionaries who were called and led by the Spirit to preach the
gospel to foreign peoples did not possess any of the technology we have today. But
Harrison added, "They [today's students] will come for a summer and then if they are
treated reasonably well and respected and used and allowed for their gifts to be
exercised, they will come for a year, for two years, or more." If an individual is
led by God to forsake the comforts of America and go to another land to preach the gospel,
should it really matter how well he is treated by those to whom he is ministering? No, for
if an individual is called by God, He will bless and provide (1 Cor. 4:10-13; Phil. 4:13,
19).
George Verwer was also in this press conference and added that many of the students at
Urbana want to commit themselves to long-term service, but they cannot receive the
financial backing from their churches because "the church is unwilling to be honest
about money." Verwer said, "We're still telling young people to just trust the
Lord; if it's the Lord's will He'll provide. Can you imagine anything so stupid to tell a
young person in 1996, when nobody else is living that way back in their own
countries?"
Whether or not everyone else is consistently trusting God to provide, it is our
responsibility to do just that! Just because churches or religious organizations today are
oftentimes dishonest does not mean we have to find some other institution or invention of
the world to cling to for support. No, if God calls a young believer to go to the mission
field, then He will provide. The believer is to trust God no matter what anyone else is
doing or saying. God will never call anyone to missionary service and then leave him
without help and strength. It is sad that Verwer thinks the stupidest thing to tell a
young person is to simply trust God to provide. Verwer added, "God has given this job
to us, trust in the Lord, it's absolute, bottom line, without question, but there is a lot
more that has to happen." How can Verwer say that the command to trust God is
"absolute" and "bottom line," then add, "but there is a lot more
that has to happen"? Those two statements contradict each other and do not make
sense. If God's command is to trust completely in Him, then nothing more needs to be
added.
As a Christian and a college student, I am concerned about what is being taught in
meetings like Urbana, and I am concerned about the philosophies of the world that are
making their way into Christian circles and being treated as biblical fact. All believers
today, including young people who will be tomorrow's Christian leaders, must know that the
Bible is the sole foundation for all matters of faith and worship. God's Word is the final
answer on the creation of the world. God's Word is the final answer on how to worship Him.
God's Word is the final answer on how believers who are called to the mission field must
trust Him to provide. Young people must not become involved in any organization that
refuses to proclaim the whole counsel of God and fails to uphold God's Word as the final
authority in every matter of life. God will honor those who honor Him through obedience to
His Word.
