HIV/AIDS discussed at Urbana 06
By Melissa Deming

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from a Baptist Press story about the 2006 Urbana conference held in St. Louis. The conference focused on "Living worthy of the calling," and encouraged more than 22,000 college students and youth to infuse evangelism in the issues they are facing on a daily basis. Among the issues discussed was HIV/AIDS. Click here for full story >>

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (BP)--With 39.5 million people living with AIDS at the end of 2006 and 15 million children orphaned by the disease, Urbana organizers urged students to look beyond the statistics to a mission field of opportunities. Special exhibits, testimonies and worship sessions were dedicated to educating students on the staggering needs present by AIDS on the mission field.

Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren and an Urbana plenary speaker, shared her story of traveling to Rwanda to meet with AIDS victims. “HIV offers you and me the opportunity to do the most powerful thing in the world, and that is to make the invisible God visible,” she said. “Our world doesn’t understand God until you and I make him visible.”

Giving a face to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Princess Kasune Zulu, a Zambia native and AIDS activist with World Vision, shared her testimony of losing both her parents to AIDS and becoming infected with the disease.

“I remember when I tested HIV-positive, I wanted to share my story in the congregation. And the first thing that the local pastor of my church said is, ‘You cannot do that,’” she recounted. “And I did insist that I wanted to share, because if I as a Christian cannot stand up to say I may have this incurable disease -- if I hold on to my faith, I know that God is faithful even in this situation and [will] give hope to those already dying because the reality is there is no cure. Who else can be in a better place [to share]?”

Speaking at a news conference Dec. 30, Rick and Kay Warren acknowledged that evangelical support for the fight against AIDS has been polarized in previous generations. But both agreed that social justice and traditional evangelism must go hand-in-hand.

“Those who argue that there is only way to evangelize, that is like only dropping one hook in the water,” Rick Warren said. “ As a church that has baptized 20,000 new believers in the last 10 years, I repudiate that vision and would say I imagine some of the churches that are doing social ministry are seeing greater results than even those who have limited themselves to one form of outreach.”

Having recently forged an unlikely coalition with political figures such as Sen. Barack Obama and Mark Dybul, an open homosexual, at Saddleback’s recent AIDS summit, Warren rejected the schism between the church and the political arena in battling HIV/AIDS.

“You do not have the right to demonize someone just because he is different than you. Jesus said not only love your neighbor, but also your enemy -– that is radical love,” Warren said. “If you could only work with people you agree with, you will rule out the entire world because nobody agrees completely with you. But you can disagree without being disagreeable. And you can have unity in certain issues without having uniformity.”

The church must become known for what it is for rather than what it is against, Warren said. “One of the things we are for is what Jesus is for -– for the poor, sick, uneducated [and for efforts to counter] any corruption, sex-trafficking, the misuse of people and slavery which is still a real issue in some parts of the world.”

Steve Haas, vice president of World Vision, said more Christian leaders are beginning to incorporate a response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic into their mission strategies.

“There are a lot of people in the tent who don’t appear to agree on everything. But we do agree on God’s love for the world. We do agree on the fact that He loves every individual. We do agree on the fact that AIDS can be prevented. We do agree that it takes our voice to stand up for people who have no voice,” Haas said. “That is where we start. That may be different than some people’s understanding of what ‘evangelicalism’ is. It’s not to say anyone is watering down anything. It’s just to say there is a wealth of things that we need to be talking about and have a great deal of similarities in. Let’s start there and just see what God does.”

Kay Warren said she believes the power to eradicate AIDS and bring the hope of the Gospel to the world resides with the current generation of students attending Urbana.

“In my generation, we were given an epidemic that we allowed to turn into a pandemic. And so to the next generation, the 22,000 students who are sitting here today, we are handing them a pandemic that we have failed to stop.

“I encourage them to care and have the heart of God. That is the only hope of stopping it,” she said.