God made me realise how hard my heart had become to the gentle touch of his Spirit.

Following Urbana, God opened my eyes to see this, and is now gently breaking my heart with a desire to see His glory in my life and in the lives of those around me; the ones I love, and the ones he is calling me to love.

Praise God for his patience and persistence with us.

The story continues…

This week’s prayerline comes to you direct from the last day of Urbana 09, InterVarsity’s 22nd missions conference, in St Louis, USA. Over the last five days, 17,000 students, staff, supporters and missions agencies have gathered here to worship, pray, and consider the theme ‘he dwells among us’.

A few weeks ago we asked you to pray for Urbana – that delegates would be challenged by the spiritual and physical needs of the world. Thank you for your prayers – God has been mightily at work here. We have been challenged to see mission as incarnational, following the model Jesus set before us. Thousands of students have committed or re-committed their lives to Christ, thousands more have declared their intention to serve in cross-cultural mission.

Now please join us in praying for everyone who has heard God’s call on their life this week – that the seeds sown here at Urbana would be nurtured in the coming days, weeks, months and years. Please pray that God will raise up workers for his harvest. nd praise God with us for the faithful service at Urbana of staff, organisers, speakers, volunteers and so many more. To hear more about how God has been working in the lives of IFES delegates here at Urbana, we invite you to take a look at this short film.

Thank you for praying with us in 2009; we look forward to seeing what God will accomplish through the prayers of his people in 2010.

Andy

Andy Moore
IFES Global Communications

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The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is a fellowship of students, staff and supporters right around the world. A third of a million people praying, working and giving to see a vibrant gospel witness on every campus in the world.

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.

After an ingeniously planned lunch break (to make sure none of the city’s restaurants had too many thousands of hungry students arriving at once!) we were back into an afternoon of seminars, meetings and times for reflection. Delegates are invited to choose from a huge range of themes from Domestic Poverty to Environmental Stewardship, Business as Mission to World Religions.

By the early evening, the hallways of the America’s Centre were thronging with dinner-seeking students, and the catering operation to get 17,000 diners through in 2 hours had to be seen to be believed! We then gathered once again in the Dome for an eye-opening evening.

We heard the testimony of Cheryl Bear who is travelling around the USA and Canada in a motor-home to share the story of Jesus with all First Nations communities… Patrick Fung, director of OMF, shared his thoughts on living to be forgotten… Ruth Padilla DeBorst spoke passionately on forced migration, and challenged us: “love does not reach from afar – it demands incarnation.”… we saw a film on the statistics of trafficking and forced labour… York Moore spoke movingly about his ‘conversion within a conversion’ to the fight against modern day slavery at Urbana 2000… we witnessed a powerful dramatic monologue about Rahab… we left once again full of thoughts and challenges to bring before God… and Day 2 of Urbana 09 came to an end.

It’s hard to describe how big this conference is. Main sessions are taking place in the Edward Jones Dome at America’s Centre – a 21-storey tall arena which can seat up to 67,000 people. Around 16,000 Urbana delegates gathered there for the first main session this evening but the space felt full as God’s people joined together in worship and thankfulness after some difficult journeys.

The theme of Urbana 09 is ‘He Dwelled Among Us’ – we’re exploring the idea of incarnation, of God ‘moving into our neighbourhood’ – and what this means for mission. After a rousing introduction from Jim Tebbe (Director of Urbana 09), Ramez Atallah took to the stage to explore John 1. His message for the week about incarnation is this:

• it is the means by which God reaches out to us
• it is the message God wants to communicate to us
• it is the model for how we should minister

As well as teaching and sung worship, the evening session included a fantastic word and movement piece based on John 1 by Urbana’s Theatre Arts team and film pieces by InterVarsity’s 2100 Productions. As the night drew to a close, thousands of students spread back out across the city to where they were staying with heads and hearts full of images, impressions and inspiration. Urbana 09 has begun.

With heightened security at Heathrow – following a failed terrorist attack on a United Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit – and a generous helping of snow in Chicago and across the mid-west, our connecting flight to St Louis has been cancelled, and we now face the unexpected and exciting prospect of a night spent at O’Hare International Airport.

By this time I had anticipated having checked into our hotel and the opportunity to enjoy a restful evening in preparation for the start of Urbana tomorrow. Instead I am left wondering how our other colleagues from Oxford, and around the world, are faring in their travels.

Ah well, it’s adventures like this that remind me that life, despite our best plans, is often not straight forward for many of our IFES friends around the world. This is very little hardship compared to what some students will endure to get to Urbana, and the reality many face on a daily basis, for the sake of the gospel.

I wonder what lessons God might be teaching us through these minor inconveniences, and will be teaching us in these coming days.

I wonder how this fact sits with students as they plan to come to Urbana – how is God calling you, and to where?

The international impact of Urbana is felt amongst other IFES student movements, who run similar missions conferences around the world. Two years ago I was privileged to spend time in Rwanda, as the IFES Region of Francophone Africa held its first regional missions conference. You can read more about that here.

In a press release from earlier this year, the impact of Urbana in spawning similar events around the world was considered:

The influence of InterVarsity’s Urbana student missions conference, the longest running student conference in the world, is being multiplied by a wave of new Urbana-type conferences in many other countries. What began as a movement of North American students in 1946 in Toronto is being increasingly owned by university students from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Argentina: The second South-American International Mission Conference, CIMA2010, will meet in Cordoba, Argentina next January. The organizers, CEC (international and inter-denominational workers among local evangelical Latin-American churches), anticipate 2,000 students attending from countries in the ‘Southern Cone’ of Latin America.

There is unlikely to be any internet access at the arena. Best options are in your hotel, either free in the lobby (perhaps) or in the room (for a small fee). Or, of course, nearby shops with wifi (if they’re not too crowded).