Proud to work for this organization

Almost everytime I find out something about InterVarsity at the national level (life in the trenches, on college campuses can be far from the national picture), I am incredibly impressed and feel nothing but God's grace that I've found such a wonderful organization to work for.

For one, the commitment to missions. A couple of days ago I had a long conversation with the founder of the Global Urban Trek (the kind of trip I went on to Bangkok) about my formal 2-year commitment to urban poverty and staff work. He sees a strong potential and possibility in my ability to be influencial in both places. It was exciting to hear from someone I admire like him.

Tonight, however, we discussed InterVarsity's Multiethnic History.

Disclaimer: a Biblical view of Multiethnicity comes out of Revelation 7:9 where John describes the multitude of heaven singing out from every tribe and nation...this shows that we retain our unique cultural and lingual identity in heaven! God created diversity! So if heaven's going to be looking like a mosaic of many kinds of people, we on earth need to be getting ready for that kind of heaven.

Back to InterVarsity's multiethnic ministries. When InterVarsity came to America in the 1940s they were the first evangelical ministry to stand up for and integrate black students into their ministry. At one point during InterVarity's history, almost all the campus staff threatened to quit if the board of InterVarsity would not hire a black man as regular campus staff--to think, threatening the life of the organization. That's a kind of history I'd like to be a part of.

There is a commitment in the organization to building minority leadership and staff. We celebrated all minority Regional Directors (my Regional Director is an African-American man I believe, never met him) and national minority staff. InterVarsity, seeing smaller numbers of minority staff getting involved in high-level leadership, started holding leadership seminars/institutes for minority staff to promote considering leadership. I think this is exciting because it is one thing to say "we think having people in our group that are minorities is good" is one thing....but it's another to put weight behind that statement. InterVarsity has decided to aid minority staff in succeeding on staff, making multiethnic ministry a possibility, not just a nice idea.

All staff agree to a percentage of national overhead being self-taxed in order to create money to give to minority staff who are struggling with funding.

Urban projects are also a significant training ground for students of all ethnic backgrounds to work and live together for a summer, discovering ethnic identity and social justice issues/implications in a multiethnic community. These remain one of the most intense intermingling of students of different racial backgrounds.

InterVarsity press has published more books on racial identity and race-related topics than any other Evangelical press (including big-names like Zondervan).

I'm excited to work for this organization!