Urbana 09 Worship Leader Named

^{Urbana 09 News Release #2
For Immediate Release}

(Madison, WI) – Sandra Van Opstal will lead worship at InterVarsity’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference, continuing InterVarsity’s commitment to multicultural worship. The Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference will be held December 27-31, 2009, at the Edward Jones Dome and Americas Center in St. Louis, MO.

The musical worship segments of the Urbana program are designed to help participants draw closer to the presence of God. Multicultural worship recognizes that different cultures bring different gifts to worship, and reflects a fuller picture of God’s character.

Sandra is passionate about creating a worship experience where people of many cultures can come together to experience the presence and power of God. “Expanding our worship vocabulary helps expand our vision for God’s plan to reach the whole world with the good news of Jesus Christ,” she said.

Sandra has been a part of multiethnic worship teams at previous Urbana Missions Conferences, CHIC (Evangelical Covenant Denomination’s Youth Conference), and Willow Creek Association conferences. She also regularly leads worship at New Community Covenant Church, a multiethnic urban church in Chicago.

Sandra has been an InterVarsity staff member for more than ten years, working on the campus of Northwestern University. She now directs InterVarsity’s Chicago Urban Program, an internship for students in urban and cross-cultural ministry. She received a degree in Music Business/Vocal Performance from Millikin University in 1996. She is currently working towards a Masters of Divinity Degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Sandra and her husband Karl live in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago.

InterVarsity’s Urbana student missions conference is one of the longest-running institutions of North American evangelicalism. For most of the last six decades the triennial conference was held on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2006 the conference drew more than 20,000 people to its new location in St. Louis, Missouri.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is an interdenominational ministry to university students in the United States with over 32,000 students involved on 550 campuses nationwide.

For more information contact:
Christy Chappell – Urbana Communications Director
608-443-3671