Urbana 2006 Tells Attendees 'Meet Me In St. Louis'
by Jim Brown
October 26, 2004
(AgapePress) - The next Urbana Missions Conference will not be held in Urbana, Illinois. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has announced that the 2006 "Urbana" gathering will be convening in St. Louis, Missouri.The renowned Urbana missions conference has been held on the University of Illinois-Urbana campus every three years since 1948. However, InterVarsity president Alec Hill says the triennial event, which attracted more than 19,000 participants in 2003, has outgrown the Illinois campus' facilities. On the other hand, he says, the new location in downtown St. Louis will accommodate the size of the expected Urbana 2006 gathering with far greater efficiency.
Hill says, "One of the exciting possibilities of St. Louis is the ability to have students come at 8:30 in the morning under one roof, eat, and stay basically all day and then leave after the plenary in the evening at 10:30." What this means, he explains, is that conferees will have "less inconvenience in finding seminar rooms, people won't get lost, food -- everything will be there."
The ministry head notes that most of the conference events will be take place within the St. Louis Rams' football stadium, although he is quick to add that the organizers "won't allow people to run around and throw footballs." Still, he points out, "Two-thirds of the hotel rooms are within walking distance, so we're very excited about the logistics of this."
InterVarsity's president feels moving its missions conference to St. Louis is the right move for several reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity that relocating into the city allows for the ministry to interact advantageously with its urban mission. "The convention center is absolutely fabulous," he says, "and having the football stadium contiguous and then the housing right next door all worked out very well."
Moreover, Hill says the new location helped the event planners optimize costs and convenience for the participants. "The pricing in St. Louis was right," he says. "Also, since two-thirds of our delegates drive to the event, I really didn't want to push them beyond another two-and-a-half or three hours in circumference from whatever direction they're coming, and St. Louis fit that bill as well."
Hill contends the Urbana conference has been a major influence among missions-minded Christians and has been a pivotal event "on which North American missions has hinged in the last 50 years." Through this important conference, he says, InterVarsity tries to expose students to the world of overseas and domestic missions and "encourage them to think of their lives in the light of the call of God."
