Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – A New Gateway to World Missions at Urbana 06

By Gordon Govier

St. Louis, the gateway to the American Frontier, will become the gateway to world missions for nearly twenty-five thousand of Christians who attend InterVarsity’s twenty-first student missions convention this month. The theme of Urbana 06 is “You Have a Calling” and it will be held 27-31 December 2006 at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

InterVarsity leaders announced in 2004 that the triennial convention was moving from the University of Illinois campus to St. Louis in order attract more students and offer more comprehensive programming. Jim Tebbe, InterVarsity’s vice president for missions and the director of Urbana, says, “I believe a new location gives Urbana a different lens through which to see God’s heart for the world. A new venue helps us explore new possibilities and redesign the event with fresh vision and energy.”

Those who come to Urbana 06 will be immersed for five days in the world of cross-cultural missions; the event will include testimonies from missionaries, Bible exposition on Ephesians and seminars led by missions practitioners from around the world. Urbana 06 will also host the largest gathering of representatives from missions organizations and seminaries in North America.

Speakers at Urbana 06 include Ajith Fernando, national director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka; Brenda Salter McNeil, director of Salter McNeil & Associates in Chicago, Illinois, USA; Lisa Espineli Chinn, director of InterVarsity’s international student ministry; Oscar Muriu, pastor of Nairobi Chapel, Nairobi, Kenya; Ray Bakke, founder of International Urban Associates in Seattle, Washington, USA; Saul Cruz, founder and director of Armonia Ministries in Mexico City, Mexico; and Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, USA.

2006: An Important Year for Missions
Paul Borthwick, a missions professor at Gordon College, notes that 2006 is an important anniversary in the history of missions and student involvement in missions. Several key events are being commemorated:

• Fifty years ago five missionaries were martyred in Ecuador, an event depicted in the move End of the Spear, released in January 2005. All five missionaries cultivated their passion for lost souls while they were college students. One of the men, Jim Elliott, had attended InterVarsity’s first student missions convention in Toronto.
• Sixty years ago InterVarsity held its first student missions convention in Toronto. Two years later it was moved to the University of Illinois and became the Urbana convention.
• One hundred years ago the Azusa Street revival began, which launched the modern Pentecostal movement.
• Two hundred years ago the Haystack prayer meeting was held at Williams College in Massachusetts, launching the modern missions movement in the United States.