Once Huge Evangelical Mission Conference Faces Major Shrinkage

[NOTE: Despite the sponsor’s upbeat words, attendance at this onetime mega-conference will be down 70% from its peak in 2000. For Quakers, the slide is quite similar to the 80% drop (from almost 2000 in 2000 to 440) in registrations for the 2022 FGC summer Gathering. For FGC, the decline for ed a shift from an in-person to a virtual event. For 2023, FGC is currently plans aiming for an in-person Gathering in western Oregon. Typically, registrations open in early spring.]

Urbana missions conference that once drew 20,000 expected to fall far short

Organizers believe that the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a struggling economy have likely caused attendance to falter.

Religion News Service — December 14, 2022

By Bob Smietana

(RNS) — For the first time since 2018, thousands of college students will gather a few days after Christmas to talk about God’s mission to the world and their place in it.

Organizers of Urbana 2022, a missions conference run by the evangelical campus ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, expect about 6,000 at the conference, to be held Dec. 28-31 in Indianapolis.

That’s about 3,000 fewer students than organizers had first hoped for, said Greg Jao, chief communications officer for InterVarsity, and about 4,000 fewer than attended the Urbana 2018.

Founded in 1946, the Urbana conference has long been a highlight of evangelical ministry to college students. From 1948 to 2003, the conference was held on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In 1970, Urbana drew about 12,000 students, and by the 1980s and 1990s, it was drawing more than 18,000. Urbana 2000, the largest conference to date, drew more than 20,000.

Past conferences have included evangelical legends such as Billy Graham, Elisabeth Elliot, Francis Schaeffer, Rick Warren and John Stott as speakers.

Jao said that lingering concerns over COVID-19 and the country’s economic woes are helping to drive projected attendance down for the conference, usually held every three years, but delayed until this year by the pandemic. Like many churches, he said, InterVarsity and other campus ministries are still rebuilding their attendance.

With the first normal school year since the pandemic started in 2020, many students are taking their accustomed Christmas break at home for Christmas. Others are still wary of large gatherings, especially one that lasts several days.

“COVID has had an effect,” said Jao, “in the sense that people aren’t sure if they want to gather with large groups of strangers. Some also just think, ‘I want to be home for Christmas.’”

Inflated travel costs likely play a role as well. Jao said he’s heard from students who were planning to come but balked when they saw airline tickets running twice as high as in 2018.

Jao said InterVarsity leaders have known for months that attendance would likely be down. They’ve been focusing on getting students to come to local conferences or back involved in regular activities at InterVarsity’s 700 chapters across the country

Getting students to sign up for the conference has been a challenge as well. Generation Z students, he said, like to keep their options open and appear less willing to sign up in advance. So past recruitment strategies for the conference, such as offering “early bird” discounts, haven’t worked as well as they have in the past, said Jao.

Urbana has long been known for its focus on addressing the changing role of missionaries in the world, and in addressing social issues in the U.S. The 1970 conference included addresses from African theologian Byang Kato and Indian evangelist Samuel Kamaleson as well as a speech from Tom Skinner about the connection between social issues and the Christian faith.

“There is no possible way you can talk about preaching the gospel if you do not want to deal with the issues that bind people,” Skinner told students in 1970. “If your gospel is an ‘either-or’ gospel, I must reject it.”

The 2015 Urbana conference caused some controversy after speakers expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jao said that the 2022 conference will feature speakers and music from the church outside the United States, designed to help students experience worshipping a “global God.”

“The goal is not to have a Westerner up there saying, ‘Go,’” he said. “It’s actually to have the global church say, ‘We welcome you. Come.’”

He suspects that the decline in 2022 is more of a blip than a long-term trend. And he said that missions remain a core focus of InterVarsity, which serves more than 45,000 students in its chapters. About half the students involved in InterVarsity are students of color.

“We believe God’s bringing a group of core college students who need to hear his invitation,” he said. “Inviting people to God’s global mission has been part of our history from the very beginning, and we’re going to keep doing it.”

One thought on “Once Huge Evangelical Mission Conference Faces Major Shrinkage”

  1. In the SR Bay area hospitalization from covid is approaching the 3rd highest. It is expected to continue to climb after the Christmas and New Year holidays. I experience cognitive dissonance when I read things such as “lingering impact”. I currently know people who have been very cautious throughout the pandemic with vaccination, meeting only with those who test negative and so forth catching covid.

    That said , I have been taking greater risks myself. I lunched with a friend. Neither of us had been around aother people for over 2 months and were fully vaccinated. I held a gift/craft shop at the meetinghouse. Me in N95 mask maintaining some distance (circa 3 feet) from others. Nearly all shoppers did not wear masks and clustered in small groups to chat with folks they hadn’t seen for a while.

    I understand. I am sick to death (not literally) of covid prevention measures. I want to think it’s over. I want for it to be over. Yet… Hospitalzation approaching the 3rd highest level since December 2019.

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