From Urbana '12

The Urbana '12 Missions Convention is my 12th Urbana.

The event is held every three years by InterVarsity (and has been relocated to St. Louis as of 2006).

Three observations:

1. This generation of students is deep into community, teamwork, cooperation.

2. They show little interest in the turf wars of their elders regarding denominations and secondary doctrines.

3. They're not color-blind. Rather, they affirm ethnicity. There's a big difference.

One more observation:

One of their prominent concerns is the strident atheism that has crashed the stage of college campuses the past ten years.

Thus: Naively, we were expecting 50 students to attend my seminar on the "new atheism" Saturday afternoon at Urbana.

600 showed up.

I almost forgot my lines.

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Lastly, I'll mention that worship is a central part of the convention. A 30-second sample is here:

Urbana Worship