For Immediate Release
(Madison, WI) – InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s triennial Urbana Student Missions conference will have new leadership when Urbana 18 takes place in St. Louis, Missouri, in December 2018. Tom Lin, InterVarsity vice president and director of missions, has announced the search for a new Urbana director.
Lin and his predecessor, Jim Tebbe, both held the job of Urbana director and director of missions simultaneously. But at other times in the past, the two jobs have been separated. “Global and generational transitions have created new opportunities in missions,” Lin said. “We want to bring increased creativity, spiritual leadership, and cross-cultural savvy to meet this God-given opportunity. A full-time director will enable Urbana to innovate new ways to mobilize this ethnically diverse student generation to give their whole lives to God’s global mission.”
InterVarsity’s interim president, Jim Lundgren, said, “We live in a world where complacency, worldly success, and comfort beckon us on a daily basis. We are looking for a dynamic leader who will ensure that Urbana remains an event that boldly calls students to follow Jesus with their whole lives.”
InterVarsity held its first missions conference in Toronto in 1946. Thereafter, through 2003, it was held every three years on the University of Illinois campus and became known as Urbana. Since 2006, the Urbana Conference has been located at the Edward Jones Dome and the Americas Center in St. Louis. Urbana 15, held just two months ago, was attended by 15,000 people who came from the U.S. and Canada, and more than 80 other countries.
Urbana is one of the longest running conferences of the evangelical church of North America, with more than 300,000 alumni. An untold number of men and women are serving today in God’s mission around the world because they responded to the call from God that they heard at an Urbana Conference.
“InterVarsity is privileged to host this conference for the North American church,” Lin said. “It’s a responsibility that we don’t take lightly. Our next Urbana director will determine how to present the call to missions for a new generation of college students at Urbana 18.”
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA is an interdenominational ministry with over 40,000 students involved on 649 U.S. campuses. Urbana 15 is also co-hosted by Inter-Varsity Canada and Groupes Bibliques Universitaires et Collégiaux du Canada.
For details on the Urbana director position and opportunity profile, go to: http://intervarsity.org/job/director-urbana.
For more information:
Gordon Govier
ggovier@intervarsity.org
608/443-3688
