Urbana 03 News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, contact:
Brian Wallace
Urbana 03 Press Liaison
(512) 422-7948
urbana03media@ivcf.org

Urbana 03 challenges students to serve in God ’s Kingdom

URBANA, ILL., December 31, 2003 – For the last four days, college students, missionaries, and church and campus leaders have together prayed “Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done.” This was the overarching theme for Urbana 03, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s 20th Student Mission Convention, held in Urbana, Illinois. The goal of the convention was to call delegates to make three choices: (1) Lordship: Will they choose God? (2) Evangelism: Will they proclaim Jesus to others? (3) Mission: Will they join God in mission? This morning thousands of delegates responded to each of these three calls, standing to acknowledge the commitments they made on their decision cards.

Attendance reached 19,000 people, including 800 international students from 200 countries studying in North America, 800 pastors, church leaders and faculty, and 1,400 missionary representatives. This delegation was the most ethnically diverse assembly gathering in the history of the convention, with 39 percent of the delegates being of non-white descent. Asian/Pacific heritage students made up 30 percent of the delegation. This year’s 1,074 Black/African American delegates was the largest number for this group in Urbana history. College sophomores, juniors and seniors comprise 50 percent of the convention.

The program for December 27 and 28 was designed to call students to Christ’s Lordship. Joshua Wathanga, Associate General Secretary and Chief Administrative Officer of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, delivered the opening address on behalf of Dr. John Stott. Dr. Stott was unable to attend the convention, having suffered a mild stroke a few days before Christmas.

"From a past eternity to a future eternity, through the process of time, God's unchanging purpose is that, instead of being conformed to the fashions of the world, we will be conformed to the image of his Son," read Wathanga.

At the evening session on December 28, Geri Rodman, President of Inter-Varsity Canada, challenged students to follow God above all else.

“We need to turn from the idols that enslave us, that demonize us, that dehumanize us, and degrade us, and return to the living God,” she said. “Will you deal tonight with God? Will you put your life in His hands?”

Following Rodman’s address, students were led in prayer by InterVarsity staff Jon and Jen Ball and were encouraged to give idols in their lives to God, that they might be free to serve Him.

The program for December 29 was designed to call students to proclaim Jesus to others. In the morning session, John Teter, an Area Director with InterVarsity USA, challenged students to proclaim Jesus to their friends. Acknowledging that many of the delegates had fears of failing in evangelism, Teter encouraged them that God was with them in their attempts to share.

“God sees our struggles in witness, and when you freeze, He runs out to you and says, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’m with you. Let’s finish this together!’” Teter said.

That night, the convention focused on crossing cultures for the sake of the Gospel. In keeping with InterVarsity’s emphasis on relational witness, Urbana Director Jim Tebbe urged students to befriend Muslims. He said that the three best ways to reach a Muslim for Christ are friendship, friendship and friendship.

“Would you be willing to consider doing at least one thing in this next year that would be a form of testimony to a Muslim person?” he asked the delegates.

Ray Aldred, Director of First Nations Alliance Churches of Canada, spoke on the challenges and dangers of presenting the Gospel across cultures. “So what does it mean to communicate the Gospel across cultural boundaries and call for conversion?” he asked. “For most here we understand conversion as ‘to turn around,’ to stop from going one direction and turn back the other way…To me conversion is about becoming who we were made to be.”

He also urged those who go out witnessing to have a posture of humility. “If we are going to communicate on a heart level, we must share our need and our weakness,” he said. “And we must go to other cultures as the learner, not as the learned with everything to teach.”

Aldred’s address was historic: he was the first major First Nations speaker to address an Urbana convention from the platform.

On December 30, the delegates were challenged to join God’s mission. Samuel Escobar, a Peruvian Christian missiologist, exhorted the delegates to use their vocation and gifts to further the Kingdom in the inner city. “These conflictive areas need children of the Kingdom as teachers of public schools, as decent police officers, as medical doctors, as professors of community colleges, with a sense of mission right here in the heart of the American cities,” he said.

Nairy Ohanian, an InterVarsity Link Staff in the Middle East, shared about the joys and the costs of saying yes to God’s call when she attended Urbana as a student. She made a passionate call to delegates to follow God and obey God no matter what the cost. Ohanian asked them to look neither to the left nor the right when making their decision, but only up to Jesus and down into their hearts.

Students also had an immediate opportunity to respond and live sacrificially on December 30. An offering was taken and delegates were asked to consider giving $52.63.

Most delegates also skipped the noon meal that day and spent the hour in prayer for the needs of the world. The money saved from a meal expense was combined with the offering, bringing the total to $1.1 million. Every dollar received in the offering will go directly to the organizations listed at www.urbana.org/go/offering. Contributions may still be made to the offering online at www.urbana.org/go/donation.

Keeping with InterVarsity’s commitment to Scripture, the delegates gathered each morning in small groups to study passages from the Gospel according to Luke. They then heard Bible teaching in the morning general sessions as Lisa Espineli Chinn and David Zac Niringiye taught from Luke.

Chinn urged the convention to realize and remember that Jesus is the King and to respond to Him as such. Niringiye’s talks centered on the idea of harvest and the call for Christians to announce the good news of God’s peace (or shalom) that comes with the Kingdom.

“Remember, we who go and those we find, together we participate in the harvest of the Kingdom,” he said.

Delegates also experienced Scripture in new ways as the words of the Bible were read, sung and interpreted through poetry and drama.

Each afternoon, the delegates could choose from over 300 seminars designed to help them grow in their understanding of cross-cultural and urban missions. They also could attend a daily prayer seminar and prayer ministry time, staffed by over 80 trained prayer ministers. More than 325 mission agencies, graduate schools and seminaries set up booths at the exhibit halls, with colorful displays ranging from rock climbing walls to a replica of the Taj Mahal.

In a student survey taken on the first evening of the convention, 68 percent said they came to Urbana to seek God’s will for their lives. Ninety-three percent of the students read the Bible at least weekly. Eighty-one percent indicated they have at least one meaningful cross-cultural friendship. Sixty-three percent of the students stated that another person had started to follow Jesus through their witness. Even before the convention began, 88 percent of the students stated they planned to serve in cross-cultural missions at some point in their lives.

Lindsay Moore, a junior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was interviewed on December 27 as she arrived at the convention. She said, “I have a heart for missions, and I want to learn more about what it means to be a missionary in today’s age.”

She was interviewed again on December 29, midway through the convention and she said, “In my small group I am really learning to apply the Bible studies in my community. There are so many practical applications…. I want to be more intentional about speaking to non-Christians and getting into GIG’s (Groups Investigating God) on campus.”

The convention is sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and co-hosted by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada and Groupes Bibliques Universitaires et Collégiaux du Canada. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, an interdenominational campus ministry, has 810 chapters on more than 565 college campuses in the United States, and is a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which has ministries in 150 nations.

Complete decision card survey results will be available in late January 2004. Find general sessions, a photo gallery, streaming audio and video at www.urbana.org. You can learn more about InterVarsity at www.intervarsity.org.

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