No divide between sacred and secular: a report on #Jubilee2015

We’d like to thank Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds Bookstore for allowing us to reprint this from his blog.  We’ll be reprinting some more of Byron’s book reviews and resource lists in the coming days and look forward to sharing them with you.–Ed.

SOME customers have told me that they enjoy my annual recap of the Jubilee conference, the biggest thing we do all year (with 3000+ college students drawn together in Pittsburgh by the CCO, a campus ministry with which we are associated.)

The Jubilee conference is a high-energy, life-changing event with all kind of shenanigans, craziness, powerful (and multi-ethnic) worship and sophisticated, serious teaching about a few core truths. Jubilee has (since our early involvement with the formation of the conference in the late 1970s) talked about how college students can serve God in their various studies, preparing for careers, by developing a sense of calling and vocation, by deepening the Biblically-influenced mind, and by entering into a desire for a prophetic imagination. Perhaps they will become social reformers or dream up cultural initiatives to be salt and light and leaven in the world God loves, but we hope they will see themselves as agents of gospel reconciliation, wherever they end up. They will be God’s agents, in the world and in the church. 

Another routine theme proclaimed and modeled at Jubilee is that there is no divide between the so-called sacred and secular; we can have a life of celebration and joy, knowing that in Christ, God’s grace not only allows us to know forgiveness, liberating us from the power of sin, but causes us to experience the Spirit’s presence in the day to day of our ordinary lives.  Call it the “spirituality of the ordinary” or the Lordship of Christ over all aspects of life, but Jubilee – not unlike the cultural shalom promised in the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 —  invites us to a wholistic faith, based on God’s own promises to restore and make new all of the good but fallen creation. This was the theme of Jesus’ first sermon, you know (Luke 4.) The upside down logo and slogan this year shouted that “this changes everything!”  And, indeed, it does!

There are always lots of authors at Jubilee, whose books we celebrate, and many of the workshop leaders and seminar speakers who are not authors recommended books to their listeners. From books on science and engineering to theater and the arts, from criminal justice to special education, nursing, counseling, math, business, computer science, environmental studies, social work, politics, media studies, we sold a lot of books  to these idealist young adults. Hours and hours we talked with students.

You should be glad, too: it is from the learning and inspiration that goes on in these generative conversations and relationships that faith development deepens and matures. Look at it this way: these are the school teachers and engineers and judges and TV show script writers and drug manufacturers and shop-keepers and public servants and journalists and doctors you will be interacting with over the next decades.  Aren’t you glad that young Christians are learning to relate their faith to their careers and callings? That they will become people of character, integrity, principle and kindness, and that in these ways they will be bringing stabilizing, leavening influence into the very places you and your children will inhabit in the decades to come?  This, dear readers, is momentous. (And a good reason to financially support the good work of the CCO, by the way.)

This is a slow cook reformation we are a part of, selling our books in venues like this, where research can be done about how the brokenness and dysfunction and idols and injustices in various spheres of society can be slowly overturned in our lifetimes. Thanks be to God for these young students who may not necessarily feel called to church ministry or the mission field, but will nonetheless be vehicles of the reign of God as they are scattered across the vocations and professional associations of this land. 

Byron Borger is proprietor of Hearts and Minds Books in Pennsylvania and author of the Booknotes blog.