IFES at Urbana 09It was chilly again in St Louis today, as the Urbana ‘tribe’ went about their daily routine of bible study, teaching, worship, seminars and receptions. Everyone seems to be figuring out quicker ways to do things now – quicker to file in and out of the massive Edward Jones Dome, quicker to find the way to food at mealtimes, quicker to connect with people and get talking. Urbana is getting efficient!

But amidst the growing speediness of the day, there is more and more that is drawing us to stop and think deeply. In the morning bible study, which focussed on John 2:13-25, Ramez Atallah reminded us of the enormous shifts that have taken place in how we think about mission over the past few decades. He recalled the courage and risk-taking of Rene Padilla, Samuel Escobar and John Stott at the Lausanne Conference in 1974 which encouraged evangelical Christianity to move  beyond the past injustices of the missionary movement and seek to engage in holistic mission. He asked us to pray for next year’s Lausanne Congress in Capetown – “that it would challenge the Christian world to reach out with a holistic gospel.” Ramez also challenged us to guard our integrity in mission, amidst a results-driven culture.

The focus of the day began to shift to money: how to give, what to give, stories of those who have given sacrificially for mission. In the evening meeting, after talks from Shane Claiborne and Oscar Muriu, Urbana was called to contribute to an offering. The target total for the offering is $1m, which will be given away to mission causes, including future IFES mission conferences.

I’ve been trying to make these blog entries fairly generic: to give a taste of what’s going on here to anyone in the IFES world who would have liked to be here. But I guess it’s also OK to write as myself, as one individual among thousands.  I have been finding the sheer spectacle of Urbana – crowds, technical wizardry, big personality-driven moments – amazing but hard. I find it hard to meet with God in carefully orchestrated ‘moments’. So tomorrow my challenge to myself is this: shut out the spectacle, and seek God with all my heart and all my soul.