About ten days before embarking on a 12 day trip to Atlanta to attend two conferences I got one of those out-of-the-blue emails that both clergy and graduate students are prone to receive. At first I was confused because the “from” line of the email read the name of a friend I haven’t been in touch with in a couple years but the email was clearly from someone else. As it turns out, my computer was remembering that my friend has been the World Student Christian Federation North America Regional Secretary a few years ago and didn’t notice that the job had been passed on to someone else, along with the email account. Luciano, the new Regional Secretary, was reaching out in a last ditch effort to drum up attendance at the Student Christian Movement-USA launch event at Morehouse College in Atlanta right in the middle of my trip. Given that I was going to be there anyway, and given the historic connections between Boston University and Morehouse, I felt that the Spirit was doing one of those things that I would be better off just yielding to. I even drummed up a few extra dollars from the chapel budget (okay, a few hundred extra dollars) to bring a student along; thanks be to Dean Hill!
Why would I go out of my way to attend the launch event, and find money to bring a student along, for a movement that had to drum up attendees at the very last minute? I first encountered the Student Christian Movements and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) during my Ministry Fellow year with the Fund for Theological Education. During that year I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland as part of a project called “Exploring Ecumenical Community.” My goal was to visit the World Council of Churches and get a sense of what the ecumenical movement was about and how the high level discourse of the Council could be embodied in local communities. While I was there I was also introduced to the General Secretary of the WSCF who gave me a crash course in the history of the Federation and how this movement of young religious leaders led directly to the formation of the World Council of Churches in the middle of the past century. It left a strong impression on me. He also explained that the Student Christian Movement (SCM) in the USA (national SCMs are chapters of the WSCF), which was one of the founding Movements of the WSCF, had died out in 1968. That left a strong impression as well.
Over the past few years I had heard rumors of people wanting to ignite a return of SCM-USA but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Finally, on Octobert 10th (10/10/10), the work of several years by a dedicated steering committee, the WSCF Regional Secretary, and an extraordinarily talented coordinator culminated in a re-launch of the Movement forty-two years after its demise. Having just come from the Fund for Theological Education’s Calling Congregations conference, where FTE elaborated their vision of calling young leaders to renew the church and change the world, I found myself in the midst of about 60 young leaders called to renew the church and change the world. (See my post on FTE’s blog for more on that theme). SCMs around the world have been at the forefront of progressive social change movements, drinking deeply from the Gospel message of grace and freedom in a spirit of hope and enacting ministries of committed service and activism. As the WSCF says on their website: “Throughout Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and Caribbean and North America, WSCF’s 2 million young women and men lead at the radical edge of their cultures, challenging their peers to a greater understanding of their Christian commitment and to the work of upholding justice, peace and the fullness of life for the whole of God’s creation.”
It is no coincidence that the WSCF and its constituent SCMs around the globe are made up of Christian young adults in nascent stages of their formation who are simultaneously at the leading edge of social change movements in nascent stages of formation. Young people know change deeply, and so are uniquely poised to bring it about. From interreligious engagement and environmental advocacy to issues of justice for racial, ethnic, religious, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, socio-economic status and other minorities and refugees, young people in SCMs around the world are leading the way in articulating a vision of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. They are not afraid of the messiness of movement formation and the work of bringing about social change. They live it daily in their own personal lives. Why should their social engagement be any different?
SCM-USA is clearly in its own nascent stage of formation. We just had our first Board of Directors meeting. (I was elected as one of two chaplains/campus ministers). We have no money. We have no staff. We have no office. We are not yet a registered non-profit organization. If you clicked the link above, you’ve noticed that we don’t have a proper website. We don’t even have a paperclip! And yet there is passion and commitment and vision. Most of all, there is hope. There is hope for what can be. There is hope for what we might become. There is hope for the impact we might yet achieve. Hope is not much, but for those of us in a state of formation, it just might yet get us through.