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CHIC: Jesus Was No Ordinary Teacher

KNOXVILLE, TN (July 18, 2006) - Students at CHIC 2006 didn’t need to come to the Thompson-Boling Arena to find Jesus, Bart Campolo told the thousands of youthful attendees during the Monday night worship service on the campus of the University of Tennessee.

Campolo posed the question, “Where do you think Jesus is tonight?” He answered that question by saying, “Jesus is sleeping rough underneath the bridge in Knoxville,” adding that Jesus also is the self-loathing, hope-denying prostitute in a brothel, or even the lonely sophomore at the students’ school.

“He’s there waiting for you among the poor,” Campolo said.

Campolo and the evening’s other speaker, Don Everts, focused on Jesus as teacher, pointing out that the Jesus of scripture is “No Ordinary Teacher,” but also emphasizing the call of Jesus on the lives of the students, to serve others as he did while on earth.

What made Jesus such an extraordinary teacher, Campolo said, was that he was teaching about himself. “He was the subject.”

Campolo told the students that too many people get hung up on determining who is really a Christian or whether someone agrees with a finer point of doctrine. Those things don’t make one a Christian, Campolo declared. “He made you to love broken people.

“Tonight, Jesus is going to die for our sins,” Campolo said, but explained that this time it would not be on a cross. He would die on the concrete floor of a shack because the mother was too impoverished to care for him.

Everts put forth his own question. He asked the students if they knew why Jesus asked the people around him, “Why do you call me Lord, and not do what I tell you?”

The words from Luke 6:46 are familiar, but Everts suggests they often are not given enough consideration. “We need to stop and realize there’s an answer to that question.” Our reply to Jesus, he said, is, “Because the things you tell us to do are so foolish.”

The “foolish things” include looking up to the poor and pitying the wealthy, giving away what someone wants to steal, and letting someone strike even the other cheek, Everts said. “In fact you bring up the idea!”

“Our common sense just seems more doable in the long run,” Everts said. But it was at the end of the long run, he explained, that people discover Jesus was a “brilliant rabbi” and that it is in doing the “foolish things” that leads people to feel truly human.

The rock band Family Force 5 opened the evening with a set that had adults covering their ears and the students jumping with excitement.

Covenant Communications is providing daily coverage of CHIC 2006 from the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville as part of this online Covenant news report. For additional articles, photo galleries, and daily blogs (with Spanish translations), please see CHIC 2006.

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