Yep. More than 20,000 students have registered to attend Urbana – Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s every-third-year International Missions conference.
Historically held in Urbana, Illinois, the conference has relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. However, the IV folks have kept the "Urbana" name – perhaps to communicate to those thousands of students that the vision remains the same even if the location has changed.
I’m privileged to be part of this in a small way. On the 26th of December I’ll hop on a chartered bus and head to St. Louis. There, I’ll join a small team of intercessors and prayer ministry people supporting the conference in intercession and the students and staff with healing prayer ministry.
This conference is meat for the mind and water for the thirsty. Worship will be a major focus. Some speakers will call out for intimacy with Jesus. Others will cry out from that place of intimacy, calling people to radical service.
This is a place where seeking first His kingdom takes legs and walks – to slum communities where the poorest of the world scrape a living from garbage dumps. To nations where AIDS has murdered an entire generation – and shows little sign of slowing its rampage. To places in the world where the name of Jesus has never been heard.
Will you pray for Urbana? For the more than 20,000 students coming there to ask Jesus what it means for them to seek first His Kingdom? For the staff working like crazy people to organize, plan, record, communicate, schedule and otherwise pull off this huge, five-day gathering.
I’m taking my laptop along so I can blog from St. Louis. I’ll let you all know what’s happening and what to pray for, around, and through. Other intercessors in past years said the intercession room was the place where God moved before He moved on the conference floor. Their job was to worship and agree with those movements of the Spirit. Pray for the intercessors.
My clear picture is that we are there to war for the students. the enemy wants to distract and detour and steal Father’s calling on the lives of these men and women. Satan wants them to look back in five years and say, "urbana was a good thing…but it just didn’t happen. Or, "I thought God was speaking to me, but I guess it wasn’t real."
One of the points of warfare, I believe, is the healing needed for people to be able to move from vision into active, life-giving ministry. People bound by wounded hearts, broken families, sexual abuse, pornography, abandonment or other hurts aren’t free. They carry those wounds around like a prisoner’s ball and chain.
Pray that the prayer ministry teams will be anointed and able to speak, pray, and act in power. That Jesus’ passion to heal the brokenhearted and set free those in bondage would happen every day. Every hour.
You can join in worship or hear speakers at www.urbana.org
Thank you for adding your "yes" to this. Does the world desperately need people willing to lay down everything for Jesus and to establish His Kingdom here? Now? Will you pray for those people to be released.
The days are short. We are closer to the final battle today than yesterday. Let’s make every day count!
Blessings,
Julia