InterVarsity's StudentSoul.org

I got back from Urbana 06 just a few weeks ago. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and my life will never be the same. But one thing stands out the most for me — Urbana takes students seriously.

I’d first heard of Urbana from a friend who couldn’t stop raving about this incredible life-changing student convention he’d been to. At the time, I made a promise to myself that I would be at the next one — Urbana 06. True to my friend’s word, the convention was different from anything I’ve experienced before. From the sheer size of the event, the magnificent worship, phenomenal speakers, exhibitors, book-store and global prayer sessions at the hotels, Urbana 06 was in a class of its own.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about an incident I’d heard about that blew my mind. It happened in Australia. According to the news report, a group of friends had been partying all night, and most of them collapsed wherever they found a place to crash. One of the guests was examining a rifle and accidentally shot one of the inebriated cadavers in the leg. The victim politely woke up, saw the wound in his leg, and went back to sleep. Lately I’ve been thinking that many people (including Christians) are like that victim. But I also know that there are many who are not, who want to be awake and alert to the issues around them.

I come from a family that is old-fashioned. It was a regular occurrence in my household to be told by my elder brother, “Be quiet, you don’t know anything.” (Perhaps you come from a similar background. In the past when that would happen, I’d always feel undermined and under-valued.) During one of the Urbana convention sessions, Rick Warren said something I thought should have been broadcast throughout America: “I had every idea I ever used to grow Saddleback Church when I was twenty-five years old, but nobody would listen to me. I don’t want to make that same mistake.” The more I thought about his statement, the more I realized why Urbana is an incubator of world changers. Urbana takes college students seriously.

Never before was I in a session where acclaimed authors and publishing editors took time to spend with college students discussing “What Does It Mean to be a Christian Writer?” Nineteen to twenty-five year-olds were being taken seriously and acknowledged as the next potential Max Lucado or Donald Miller or Rick Warren. My brother may still think I don’t know anything, but Urbana took notice of me and considered my views, my aspirations, my take on the world as valuable.

The story of the man who was shot in the leg and went back to sleep reminds me of how the majority of people live, including Christians. They may sense that something is wrong, but they go back to sleep pretending that everything is okay. A world changer sees what is wrong and feels compelled to do something about it. And we are living in a world changed by generations who saw something wrong and decided to do something about it: Jesus Christ, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, Winston Churchill, Mother Theresa. The list goes on — and like them, we too are going to change the world. Because someone takes us seriously.

—Hervict Jacobs, Urbana 06 delegate.