We Are Not in the Most Important Moment in History! Probably.

Dispatches from Urbana 25

I come to you from sunny Phoenix, AZ. This is my first time at the renowned Urbana student missions conference. My colleague Chris Flanders and I are proud to have brought four ACU students with us to this significant triennial event. Dr. Flanders will be presenting later in the lineup, and I’ll be sure to share some thoughts about his session. For now, let me say something brief about the opening night of the conference.

Urbana is a massive production. We’re at the Phoenix Convention Center. The whole thing is curated to a tee. The audio-visuals are impeccable. The worship experience is top-tier. (High-production-value, full-band, elite-vocal, 100-decibel worship is not my style, but still.) The energy is palpable. We’re talking thousands and thousands of college students from all kinds of backgrounds who are serious about missions. The crowd looks like a snapshot of the global church’s diaspora presence in the US. It’s cool.

And of course, the keynote speakers are notables in one way or another. I heard a variety of thoughts tonight, some more agreeable, some less. And I heard some nonsense. What deserves comment here? You guessed it: the nonsense. Or at least one part of it.

I heard a major speaker say, “We are living, I think, through the most important moment in history.” That’s very close to a direct quotation, anyway. No, I’m not going to name the speaker. It doesn’t matter. The statement represents something typical.

The hubris of the claim is staggering. It is, on one level, an attempt to exercise prophetic authority based on dreams and visions—and status! On another level, it’s the run-of-the-mill hubris (which is still staggering) that one finds throughout history. We all tend to think we’re the center of not only the universe but also human history—and, by extension, divine history.

But no one is the center of history, human or divine, except God. And one thing is for sure: every human who ever thought their culture, their moment, and their contribution were at the center of history was proven dead wrong. So I state equivocally: We are not in the most important moment in human history. Probably. That’s up to God. And I wouldn’t presume to make that judgment from a human perspective. Nor should you. Nor should a speaker who is trying to motivate university students to participate in God’s mission. Not even the Son of Man knows the day or time.

Motivation is the issue, almost always, when people say such things. Granted, motivation is a difficult, important question. And when you have thousands of eager prospective missionaries hanging on your every word, it’s tempting to say too much. I’m certainly not immune to that temptation.

Still, theologically, I think it’s important to note that the church’s motivation for participation in God’s mission lies elsewhere. The issue is not whether we’re in the most important moment in history but whether we’re faithful in our moment in history, however important it may be. What God is doing in the most unimportant moments in history (whatever that might mean) is still what God is doing. How could anything be more important to us?