Vol. IV, Iss. 1 - January 2005
The latest from Student Leadership University

Start Your Year Standing for Something
So how has your new year started?  Have you made that familiar promise to yourself that goes something like “This year will be different,” or “This year I am going to get serious.”  Yet, by the end of January, do you find that your resolve has already faded? Well, history does not tell stories of men and women who just planned on getting around to something. No, from every decade of history, stories are told of men and women who stood for something.  From the American Student Union in the 1930s to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1930s, to the student in Tiananmen Square in 1989, these three exemplars have an important thing in common:  they seized an opportunity to stand strong against the prevailing notion of the day to bring about significant change. 

The ASU got Thousands of Students to Stand

During its peak years, from spring 1936 to spring 1939, the American Student Union mobilized at least 500,000 college students (about half the American student body at the time) in annual one-hour strikes on behalf of an extensive reform agenda, which included federal aid to education, government job programs for youth, academic freedom, racial equality, and collective bargaining rights.  Having originated the idea of federal student aid in the Hoover years, the student movement during the mid-1930s used its national federation and lobby to champion job programs for low-income students and unemployed youth. By the end of the decade, the American Student Union had become the most successful group to push for educational and job reform in the United States for young people.  

Dr. Martin Luther Took a Stand

It is a testament to the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. that three decades after King was gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., he is still regarded as the main leader of a movement for racial equality.  Yet, King did so much more….he seized his opportunity to stand.  It is only because of King and the movement he led that the U.S. can claim to be the leader of the "free world" without inviting smirks of disdain and disbelief. Had he and the blacks and whites who marched beside him failed, vast regions of the U.S. would have remained morally indistinguishable from South Africa under apartheid, with terrible consequences for America's standing among nations. How could America have convincingly inveighed against the Iron Curtain while an equally oppressive Cotton Curtain remained draped across the South?   And though this revolution was the product of two centuries of agitation by thousands upon thousands of courageous men and women, King was its culmination. It is impossible to think of the movement unfolding as it did without him at its helm. He was, as the cliche has it, the right man at the right time.

One Decided to Stand in Tiananmen Square

In Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, a young man stood for his county.   The man who stood before the tanks reminded us that the conviction of the young can generate an unmatched courage.  The meaning of his moment — it was no more than that — was instantly decipherable in any tongue, to any age: even the billions who cannot read and those who have never heard of Mao Zedong, a revolutionary who sacrificed more than 20 million people to his evil theories, could follow what the "tank man" did. A small, unexceptional figure in slacks and white shirt, posted himself before an approaching tank, with a line of 17 more tanks behind it. The tank swerved right; he, to block it, moved left. The tank swerved left; he moved right.  Then this anonymous bystander clambers up onto the vehicle of war and said something to its driver, which comes down to us as: "Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you." One lone Everyman standing up to machinery, to force, to all the massed weight of the People's Republic — the largest nation in the world, comprising more than 1 billion people — while its all powerful leaders remained, as ever, in hiding somewhere within the bowels of the Great Hall of the People.  (excerpt taken from ww.time.com)

Will You Take a Stand?

So what about you?  What is the thing that God has called you to stand for? He may not be asking you to stand in front of a tank or fight the mobs, but make no mistake, God has called us all to stand for something.  It may be a fight to stand for truth like pushing for NBC to remove their show Book of Daniel from the air because of its anti- Christian tone. It may be a fight to stand for justice like seeing that laws that are pro-life be put in place.  It may be a fight to stand for eternity because you share for the first time with a friend the joy you have in Christ. This year, our prayer for you is that you are vigilant with the opportunities you have to stand for the Kingdom.

Nikki Finch is the Program Director for SLU. Her articles appear throughout the year.

This new year has already been filled with topics from the news that give us more than enough to talk about - the war, abortion, Senate confirmation hearings, stem-cell bioethics, Israeli-Palestinian relations, foreign policy, and much more. One poignant figure whom we cannot afford to ignore is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Certainly his life underscores the importance of social activism and total commitment to a cause. But how exactly do we follow leaders like King, and how do we pursue what King described when he said that "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community"?

Indeed, we must stand for something. But as the news throughout this month has demonstrated, it can be difficult to do so in the midst of a turbulent world that seeks to confuse your sense of direction and value. If Christ served to usher in the Kingdom of God, then we must stand for those things that Christ stood for, which means standing in opposition to a violent and hateful world. And to this end, we are in desperate need of wisdom. We need wisdom to discern when we should stand and what we should stand for, we need wisdom to guide our interactions with others so that we encounter others with both grace and truth, we need wisdom to be able to know that the ways of God are higher than our own and to know that the living God is working through history.

The one form of activism that needs to be learned and embraced through faithful discipleship is none other than prayer. It often gives me hope for our social situation today to hear from those who have committed to pray for the causes of social justice, or to hear from those hundreds of young men and women who plan to spend their spring break rebuilding houses in Louisiana, or to hear of those who are taking a stand for freedom, liberation, and justice, and those who are working to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves. Allow these two quotes from Dr. King to remind you of the privilege and responsibility we all have, as well as the challenge to do right: "The ultimate measure of a [person] is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." Be prayerfully committed to standing strong for the issues that matter most as you live your life for God and others this year. Take a stand and DO something. Faith without the action of faithful Christian discipleship is dead.

Luke Lin is a Master's degree student at Duke University and the Associate Editor for The Edge. His column on culture and Christianity appears every month.

As Christian educators, we hold a very powerful weapon in our hands.  We have the ability to daily influence the hearts and minds of our students to live a passionate, purpose-filled life that will exalt and expand the Kingdom of God.  This is accomplished by training them to be intellectual thinkers in the post-modern era and then putting them in leadership roles.

Student Leadership University has been the #1 resource for us in achieving this goal.  Through SLU, our students have been taught by some of the most influential speakers in the country. In July 2005, our students came back from SLU 201, Washington D.C., with an overwhelming hunger for change, in our community and the world.  Our staff has had to work extremely hard to keep up with the thirst for knowledge with which our students have returned.  Student Leadership University is not a retreat or typical leadership conference; it is, by nature, a challenge to students to take the position of not just existing in a culture but engaging it and transforming it, based upon Biblical principles.

I would strongly insist all Christian schools to consider sending their students to Student Leadership University.  It challenges students to find their calling from God and to go out and change the world. Personally, I cannot wait to see what else God is going to do in the lives of my students, who were inspired by having the opportunity to attend Student Leadership University.

Gerald Porter is a Christian School administrator who has been involved with SLU for several years. Every month, we feature the story of an SLU graduate whose life has been impacted by SLU in significant ways. Have an SLU story? Send it to us at edge@studentleadership.net