Alec Hill: Urbana 09 Shapes Our Missional Worldview

Preparations are well underway for Urbana 09. And this year’s Student Missions Conference promises to be a life-transforming event for many of the participants.

Alec Hill will be a plenary speaker at the Conference. Alec is passionate about students, campus witness, multi-ethnic ministry, and missions. Prior to becoming president of InterVarsity in 2001, he was a professor and business school dean. He has also served as a Regional Director with World Relief.

Alec is the author of Just Business: Christian Ethics in the Marketplace, published by InterVarsity Press. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Biblical Studies from Seattle Pacific University, and a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law.

Inside InterVarsity, InterVarsity’s staff newsletter, recently sat down with Alec to talk about his vision for Urbana 09.

Inside InterVarsity: How will Urbana 09 be different from previous Urbanas?

Alec: Well, each Urbana is significant. And we’ve always trusted God’s Spirit to guide Urbana conferences so that many students will hear the call to missions both here in the United States and in countries abroad. But this year we envision God using this conference to call students not only to God’s mission but to lives with missional intention.

Inside InterVarsity: What do you mean by “missional intention?”

Alec: By “missional intention” I mean living daily with the attitude, the mindset of a Christian who is attentive to reaching out to people in the name of Jesus. We’re looking forward to how God will use this Urbana to deepen students’ understanding of how they can reach others as witnesses for Christ.

Our participation in God’s mission requires us to pay attention to people—to their needs, both physical and spiritual. At Urbana we hope to deepen our awareness of what it means to intentionally participate in God’s mission, whether that’s overcoming one’s fear of rejection when reaching out to someone in a dorm room or intentionally majoring in an academic discipline that prepares one for servant-leadership in the marketplace.

It’s a mindset that says, “I don’t belong to myself anymore; I belong to God. I’m here to do God’s mission and serve people.”

Inside InterVarsity: So Urbana 09 will call the participants to a missional mindset?

Alec: Yes, a mindset. But more than a mindset, a way of behaving. Urbana 09 will call people to a missional lifestyle. Both individually and corporately—that is in community.

We live in serious times. And InterVarsity students are less concerned with attending some fun youth ministry than they are in being transformed by Christ and helping to transform the world for the better. That’s why we often call our presence on campus a witnessing community.

Our campus chapters are not Christian clubs but communities that intentionally reach out to others with God’s love and engage the social issues of the world in the name of Christ.

Inside InterVarsity: People’s lives are being changed through Urbana?

Alec: I’ve received letters from InterVarsity alumni who are now missionaries outside the United States or are ministering within the poor neighborhoods of our nation’s cities and they tell me that it was at an Urbana conference that they first heard God’s call to missions.

Take Sharon Cohn Woo, for example. Urbana 1991 helped define her call to missions. And in subsequent years she became more and more intentional about ministering to people who’ve suffered social injustice. Today she’s the Senior Vice-President of International Justice Mission.

But it’s not only individuals that are being changed through Urbana. Missional communities are being born on campus. At Urbana 06 Krissy Pfiel, a Junior at Lindenwood University in the St. Louis area, expressed interest in reaching out to international students and having an InterVarsity chapter at her school. She was put in touch with Howie Meloch, one of our InterVarsity staff in the area, who mentored her in reaching out to internationals.

After Krissy graduated in 2008, she served as an InterVarsity Intern at her alma mater. Through Kissy’s vision and obedience to God, InterVarsity now has a thriving chapter at Lindenwood.

Inside InterVarsity: What about the global reach of Urbana?

Alec: Now this is exciting. God has used Urbana conferences in many different ways to affect change in this world. International students attend our Urbana conferences and then return to their home countries to offer Urbana-like missions conferences that God uses to call thousands of national students to missions.

And, as I mentioned, people like Sharon Cohn Woo hear God’s call and follow that call for years as God develops in them the capacities for leadership through international organizations. Their decisions then affect the lives of countless people throughout the world.

Then there are the many people who have committed themselves to God’s mission during past Urbanas and who still today toil quietly and sacrificially among desperate people in some of the poorest places on earth. And also we’ve seen how many students from third world countries throughout the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students have gained fresh confidence that they too have much to offer through what they’ve experienced at Urbana.

Inside InterVarsity: How has Urbana personally affected you?

Alec: I’d say that my understanding of global missions has greatly expanded from my attendance at Urbana. I’ve always been an internationalist. My dad spent twenty-five years in Asia, and my mom was the secretary to the ambassador of Spain in 1944 and 1945. So it’s in my DNA.

I’ve served as a Regional Director for World Relief and seen the needs of people in other nations. But Urbana hasn’t just expanded my awareness of God’s global mission, its fed my passion for God’s mission.

Inside InterVarsity: Why do you find this coming Urbana 09 so exciting?

Alec: Through Urbana, we in InterVarsity have an astonishing opportunity to influence the world. And this year particularly we are seeing the convergence, if you will, of so many political, economic, ideological, and cultural changes.

The world is changing swiftly under our feet, and many people are feeling the tremors, the insecurities of those changes. So this Urbana conference will speak into this historic time of global transition, challenging people to heed God’s call to a new lifestyle, a new missional lifestyle that intentionally reaches this generation with the gospel.

The times are serious and urgent. We are called by Jesus Christ to be his intentional witnesses throughout the earth, to be his missional people.