Did We Miss the Mark at Azusa?

In the same month of this past weekend's UYWI, our nation experienced the closest thing to the civil right's marches of the King era with well over a million immigrants, documented and not; Latinos and not; democrates and not...all marching in support of changing our current immigration laws.

And while this revolution-crisis is at the height of national debate, from the halls of Congress to the hallways of school campuses (it effects so many lives of Latino young people--especially in California) we missed an opportunity to engage the 1500 plus urban youth workers in the process. To inform. To connect it to Kingdom justice, which was the theme of this year's conference.

80 - 100 UYWI attendees came to an afternoon workshop on Saturday to find out more about this issue, which I am so thankful for, but we missed an opportunity to connect a national crisis to the very theme of the conference- Biblical justice.

By the time next year's UYWI comes around, only God knows where our nation will stand in regards to dealing with the 12 million undocumented immigrants that reside in our nation (6 million in California alone). Will there be millions more that take to the streets to march and demonstrate? Will there be more boycotts and walkouts and anxious moments as more walls are errected and more troops are deployed?

My gut tells me that 1400 more informed young people broken up by the love and compassion of Christ for the least of these...for of our immigrant neighbors (a good number that were attending the conference) would have made a difference for the Kingdom.

I regret I did not push harder to highlight this issue on a larger scale at UYWI; as a result I believe we missed a historic opportunity to live the Kingdom, NOW.