Urbana is Open For Business

News Release

For Immediate Release

(Madison WI) – Men and women interested in using their business skills to advance God’s Kingdom are urged to attend the Open for Business track at Urbana 06, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Missions Convention that will be held in St. Louis, December 27-31, 2006.

Open for Business is designed to mobilize men and women to use their gifts and training in business and related fields to seek the economic, social and spiritual flourishing of communities around the world. Track participants will have their own plenary sessions and 40 unique seminars designed just for them. Business professionals, MBA students and business faculty are urged to sign up for Open for Business, as well as graduate and undergraduate students focused on business, public policy, economics, and the developing world. Open for Business also features a “$40,000 Business Plan competition.”

A pool of $40,000 has been established to award to the best business ideas that pursue an integrated triple bottom line approach: financial, social and spiritual impact. Urbana wants to encourage the proliferation of these types of businesses around the world. Open for Business delegates will be housed together in two downtown St. Louis hotels, providing for ample networking opportunities.

Open for Business delegates will study the book of Ephesians with each other, drawing specific insights on how God’s calling gets uniquely worked out for business people. The theme of Urbana 06, “Live a Life Worthy of the Calling,” is taken from Ephesians 4:1. This track is open to third-year undergraduate students and up, and will be limited to 1,500 participants.

Business as mission, the concept underlying the Open for Business track, means releasing business people to use their gifting in business, integrated with biblical principles, to transform their own communities and nations and to carry the good news to the ends of the earth through commerce. Business as mission works both within a business setting and through its purposes and capacities. It seeks to harness the power and resources of business for intentional missions impact in the community, nation, and world at large. (Adapted from the Lausanne Occasional Paper)