Our vision is to see students transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.
We are passionately committed to inviting Native and Indigenous peoples of every tribe and nation to explore this by:
- pursuing culturally-sensitive group dynamics, and promoting Native ways of knowing, understanding and applying sacred knowledge to our lives.
- worshipping in lecture halls and dorms, but also on the tops of mountains and by the seas — prophetically declaring God’s love and healing power for all people.
- singing songs in Hawaiian, Tongan, Navajo, Wyandotte, Kiowa, Yupik, and other languages.
- praying in Native languages and styles — incorporating Native American and indigenous prayer practices.
- spending time with Scripture — incorporating Native storytelling styles as we study the Bible.
What does it looks like to follow Jesus without walking away from our culture?
We resonate with Terry LeBlanc in this Urbana03 video that Christianity “can be expressed in any culture equally well" and that we should not have to choose between being Native and being Christian. Such a false dichotomy has left many of our people "without a witness for Christ from within our own cultural context; within our own spiritual, traditional, and ceremonial acts."
"Why are we so distrustful of our cultural identity? Why as native Christians do we believe our drum, our musical styles, our dance and art forms have less value in the kingdom then English hymns or Germans organs? .... Why do they have less value than Welsh choruses, Irish ballads, Italian frescos, Roman architecture? These things are very acceptable in the mainstream of evangelical Christianity. Why those things and not our art forms?" - Terry LeBlanc
InterVarsity affirms both Native focused and multiethnic campus ministry.
Native students and staff participate in InterVarsity’s campus ministries both in multiethnic as well as Native focused Bible studies and chapters (fellowships). This Ethnicity Matters video explains how both contexts provide opportunities to explore the intersection of our faith and ethnicity. The video also responds to such questions as: Isn't God color blind? and Is ethnicity a biblically-valid part of our identity?
Download the video and discussion guide.
