More Than 4000 Students Pledge Lives to Mission Service at Urbana 12 Conference
By Bill Bray Special Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
ST. LOUIS, MO (ANS) -- Some 4,224 students from US and Canadian colleges pledged themselves to long-term missionary service at the close of Urbana 12 on New Year's Eve, twice as many as the last Student Missionary Conference in 2009. All the other measured outcomes of the conference broke records making this the most responsive student conference for foreign missions since the end of World War II.
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Packed house for Urbana | "This generation is soft-hearted and tender toward the Lord," said Tom Lin, Urbana Director for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, "They are ready to make commitments and respond to global challenges."
Dubbed the "justice generation" by leaders here, they say today's students tend to see compassionate ministries as a way into the gospel, not as a result of the gospel the way their grandparents did in the 1960's and 70's. They want to build relationships and create community in which unbelievers can discover Christ as Lord and Savior.
But, he said, Urbana organizers are always keeping a balance in the message to ensure there is a balance between preaching the gospel in word and deed. There was also a studied effort to keep a balance between cross cultural and indigenous missions, providing for Bible translation, Internet evangelism and mass media.
Besides the 4000 who made long term commits, 8,815 also checked boxes saying they will go on short or mid-term missions. But many other spiritual and practical decisions were made: $800,000 was collected in the plate offering toward a goal of one million for missions; 32,000 AIDS Caregivers Kits were assembled for Africa; 3,700 made personal recommitments of their faith and 96 made first-time decisions to follow Christ.
"A tremendous amount of resources were mobilized at this convention for all our mission partners and it will go on for decades," said Lin, who cited the historic role of student missions conferences and movements in providing personnel for the missions of the church. Over 250 missions and training organizations were represented on the convention floor, all exhibiting to interview potential candidates.
Urbana 2012 will be remembered for many innovations. Over half the music was in languages other than English, mostly Chinese, Hindi, Korean and Spanish. For the first time, there was only one Anglo male presenter, David Platt, and all the other preachers were African, Chinese, native American or woman. Over 44% of the participants were internationals or multi-ethnic Americans but there was a notable absence of Arabs, North Africans and students from Muslim south and central Asia.
Unlike previous conventions, non-English lyrics were actually used in worship rather than for their novelty impact. The result made a strong devotional impact that moved the conference into prophetic look at the Church as she will be in heaven.
Besides devoting one night to an AIDS Caregivers "Kit Build" with the presence of indigenous partners in Swaziland there was a "Launch Lab" to help encourage participants who had ideas for new missions, ministries and service businesses to organize their operating structures.
The 16,000 delegates welcomed in the New Year singing Hindi worship songs led by a Blackfoot native American using a combination of Anglo American and native American liturgy. The conference, which cost over $10 million to stage, takes three years to organize and will next be held in 2015 according to planners who began their work on the next Urbana even as this conference was closing.
The use of theater, dance and new media was amazingly effective. Parts of the program were streamed on the internet and tweets from the audience ran live on five giant screens during sessions in the Edward Jones Dome where the conference was held. Participants actually interacted with each other during the program. Not everything was digital; missions book sales "broke records" as well and there was a live exchange with the "One Thing" UHOP Prayer Conference being held simultaneously at the IHOP University in Kansas City.
The prayer rooms were open 24-hours around the clock in 20 hotels as well as the most popular Missional Prayer Room in the America's Center Convention Center. Prayer and Bible study of the book of Luke were foundational to all the other program events which keyed off of them.
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