St. Louis, Jan 4, 2009: 16,000 young Christians brought in the New Year with a challenge to couple evangelism with social justice for the world's poor.

Students spent the final week of 2009 in St. Louis at the Urbana 09 Missions Conference, where young people from across the U.S. and Canada took part in worship sessions and Bible studies, many of which focused on refugees and how to share the gospel with homosexuals and Muslims. Those who attended Urbana 09 report that it was educational and worshipful.

"At Urbana what you're seeing is a large number of students who are serious about their faith and serious about how their faith intersects with global needs," InterVarsity's York Moore explained, Today's young people are thinking about missions in new and fresh ways. They're concerned about social justice issues as well as evangelism. They're also strategizing about how to reach emerging communities such as Muslims and gays.

Andrew Marin is the president and founder of The Marin Foundation, a non-profit organization which ministers to the gay community.

"College students are the most hungry group of people to build bridges with the gay and lesbian community," Marin said. "Because it is getting thrown in their faces five days a week, eight hours a day on the campuses no matter where you go no matter where you turn."

More than a thousand students packed Marin's seminar on reaching out to gays. Thousands more are choosing seminars on social justice issues such as poverty and AIDS.

For many, it's a unique opportunity to learn more about global needs - and where they might fit in.

"It was really awesome just to be given helpful hints and tools to engage people. I feel like I'm not engaging enough on the campus where that's such a prime place to get involved and talk to people about what they believe and share the gospel with them," says one student. "I really feel God speaking through the different people I encounter.”

Another Urbana 09 participant explains, "I've been challenged by some of the things I'm [hearing] about how God is working around the world. [I'm] trying to understand his call in the scripture to share the gospel with people of every nation and partner that with social justice and kind of understand how those go together and how God calls us to both." She concludes that "it's very powerful to see people representing all nations and tongues praising God together."

“At a time when students are thinking globally and are open to what it is that God may be saying to them, we're showing them what God is doing in the world, and then inviting them to be a part of that,” said Jim Tebbe, the director of Urbana .

As the Bible expositor for Urbana 09, Ramez Atallah, the General Secretary of Bible Society of Egypt, taught from the Gospel of John each morning at the Urbana conference. Other eminent speakers included Rev. Sunder Krishnan, Senior Pastor, Rexdale Alliance Church,

Etobikoke, Ontario; Patrick Fung, General Director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship; Alec Hill, President of Inter-Varsity USA; and Oscar Muriu, Senior Pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya.

In a growing number of countries the Urbana conference has been a stimulus for Christian student groups to sponsor their own student missions conferences in locations as far-flung as Nigeria, India and Ukraine.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship holds Urbana conferences every three years to present missionary opportunities for each generation of students.

In the years since 1946, as student populations have changed in many ways, InterVarsity's triennial Student Missions Conference has maintained its global perspective. In 1948 the conference relocated to the campus of the University of Illinois, where it came to be called Urbana. Then in 2006 it moved to St. Louis, Missouri, for Urbana 06.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is an interdenominational ministry to university students in the United States, with over 32,000 students involved on 550 campuses nationwide. InterVarsity is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is advancing Christian student work in 150 countries.