Urbana 2022, Part 1

One of my highlights of 2022 was volunteering as a prayer minister and team leader at Urbana a mission conference for InterVarsity (IV), an inter-denominational, evangelical campus ministry founded in 1941. The ministry works with students and faculty on 772 campuses across the U.S. and Canada. Many of these campuses have chapters that focus on “Greek life students, international students, nursing students, graduate students, athletes, artists, and members of ethnic minorities, or be more generalized depending on the campus. These include 71 ethnic-specific chapters ministering to Blacks, Asian, Native Americans, Filipinos, and Latinos. 44% of the students who are actively involved in IV are ethnic minorities or multiracial.”[i]

Urbana is held every two years, but in our case, because of the pandemic, three years had elapsed since the previous Urbana. I heard about Urbana when I was a college student, more than four decades ago, though I never attended. My sister, who spent most of her career working for InterVarsity, served as an intercessory prayer minister many times. It was truly astonishing to learn that the Urbana team prays for the next Urbana as soon as the current one has ended. In addition, there is intercessory prayer going up to God 24-7 during the conference.

As soon as I got the invitation from Dr. Karl Lehman, I knew that I had to be there, but I had a conflict. I had agreed to spend Christmas vacation in Florida with my husband, children, and grandchildren. The timing felt uncomfortably tight. The event started on December 28th, and we had to be there on the 27th for a full day of training. Dr. Karl had not only invited me; he had asked me to bring a team.  Initially, almost everyone I invited said no, yet I never lagged in my sense that I should go, regardless of who went with me. But the timing was still an issue. I reached out to my Canadian brother-in-law, owner of the condos in Florida where we would be staying, and he said, yes, we could come a week early. My family was also willing to gather earlier.  

In the end, an HCI team of six attended Urbana:  Christina Wood, Catherine Curtis, Dreya Bundy and, from the Charlottesville area, Frank Williams and Anwar Allen.  I would be flying from Tampa to Indianapolis. Christina and Catherine would be traveling by plane from the DC area. Dreya lives near Chicago and would be driving—she offered to pick us up from the airport. Anwar and Frank decided to make it a road trip and motored from Charlottesville.  In preparation, we gathered on Zoom three times in November to practice what we would be doing in Indianapolis.  

We ladies booked rooms at the sponsored hotel, the Omni, about two blocks from the convention center. The men stayed at the Sheraton a little further out.  It was supposed to be very cold in Indianapolis, so we all packed our warmest coats, gloves, and hats.  

On 26 December, my son loaded my heavy suitcase into my friend’s minivan, and I drove from Fort Myer, site of our family Christmas, to Tampa. I had one last meal with my friend Sarah, and then in the morning she drove me to Tampa General Airport .  

As I typically do, I arrived early. There was no sign of distress at the gate. I was wearing a mask, and I sat in the empty chairs a gate away. It was a little hard to hear the announcements, but as soon as it was time to board, they let us know that they had a plane and a pilot, but no cabin crew.  They said that it looked like our flight had not yet been assigned a crew. It was clear from their tone of voice and their words that this was unusual. Later, they announced that the crew was on the ground and in the area, but not at our gate. About thirty minutes later a flight attendant showed up. Thirty minutes after that a second one came, but we were still short one flight attendant. The minutes and hours ticked by. It was hard to imagine what was happening.

I knew something dicey was going on because, while I waited, I had reached out to my intercessors, and one of them responded that their mother’s flight had been canceled. They believed all Southwest flights had been canceled until the end of the year, still six days away. What was going on?

I kept circling around, sitting where there were no people so I could lower my mask, then inching forward—mask on—when I heard announcements. Finally, when we had been delayed over three hours, they announced that the final flight attendant had arrived. Everyone in the gate area stood and clapped and cheered. I later spoke to her on the plane, and she said she had no idea where she was supposed to be. She had gone to the hotel and kept looking at her phone, but no assignments showed up.  Someone at the gate had figured out the name of the missing flight attendant, perhaps from the other flight attendants, and they called her at the hotel. I remembered hearing an odd announcement, “Jane Doe, please come to gate 32.” Yes, I was flying Southwest on the very day that 70% of their flights were canceled. As it turned out, the system that tracks personnel for Southwest had gone down. They didn’t know where any of their pilots or flight attendants were. I was also grateful that I was going to be flying the final leg of my 17-day journey with Christina on United!

Once we had all of the necessary crew, we quickly boarded and were in the air in minutes. I had been in contact with the others on the team to let them know that my flight was finally leaving. I had a sense that God had protected me.

I arrived at the airport hungry and exhausted. The tension of waiting had worn me out. Dreya was outside, and though we had a bit of trouble connecting, I was soon in her Highlander with the seat heater on full high, feeling the warmth sink into my muscles. I did not know Dreya well, but I soon learned that she is a Mary Poppins of sorts. She handed me a bottle of water and a snack. Throughout our time together, she was continually pulling treats out of her bag: apples, chocolates, bags of popcorn, pens, and notepads, and even New Year’s necklaces that lit up like a string of Christmas tree lights. Christina also had a bag of treats, including little crowns that said, Happy New Year’s, waiting for us.

Soon we were at the hotel. Christina had suggested we rent our own rooms, and as soon as I checked in, I was grateful. It’s not like me to rent my own room, but when I got inside, it felt like I was in a refuge.

Within an hour, we were expected at a welcome banquet for IV staff and volunteers. In my mind, I pictured something with, at most, a few hundred people, but when we got there, we were in a gigantic room with thousands of people.  All the IV staff, volunteers and presenters were there. We were dismayed by the long buffet lines, but they moved swiftly and soon we were seated at a table with people we did not know, eating some kind of meat, topping off the meal with a delicious chocolate cupcake. I was sitting next to someone from a country that is hostile to Christianity and heard a little bit of her story.

Right away, I was impressed by Urbana. It seemed that every possible contingency had been thought through, from the check-in to the meeting rooms. There were people of every possible ethnic group. It was a taste of heaven.

I had been asked to attend a meeting for the leaders with Dr. Karl and had asked Frank and Anwar to come with me. There were about 18 people there.  We started by going around the circle, introducing ourselves and talking about how we learned the Immanuel method. Such an interesting group!  It included Kim, with Voice of the Martyrs, who had taken Jim Wilder to Columbia to minister to the families of murdered pastors.  I had heard of him but never met him. Imagine my surprise when he introduced himself to me, saying, “I’ve heard so much about you, but we have never met before.” Just what I was thinking. There was a female medical doctor who had just come from Ukraine.  Josh Kammerer, who was a priest at Church of the Apostles when I was on staff, was also there. Some of the team leaders were missing, including one couple, who after getting bumped from flight to flight, had gotten in their car and were driving enroute from Annapolis. As I sat and listened, I felt even more grateful that I was in that place. I also felt honored. And that moment and every moment that followed, we were treated with great honor. It was wonderful.

Dr. Karl explained how God brought InterVarsity and Immanuel Approach together. Someone had wanted to donate several thousand dollars to him, and he explained that he was not a nonprofit. He told them, “Find a ministry that you would like to see trained in Immanuel and give the money to them.” The donor gave the money to InterVarsity, and for several years, Dr. Karl has been training the head of prayer for IV, Peter Horton.  

I had met with Peter on Zoom. Josh had gone to the HCI website, found a short summary of the Immanuel Method, and had broken it down into clear steps. I had written the two-page document, probably eight years ago. IV wanted to know if they could use it. I was happy to give permission. They also asked if they could alter it, and so it went back-and-forth between me and Dr. Karl several times before it was printed into a little booklet that was given to all the prayer ministers. At the time, both Dr. Karl and Peter told me that the InterVarsity prayer ministers were fairly new to the Immanuel Method. The volunteer team would be the most experienced people there.  

Peter, Dr. Karl, and the three 30-something people who headed up the team, Josh, Laurel, and Brunel, were incredibly organized.  At the end of the meeting, I was drooping with exhaustion. I had asked Frank and Anwar if they would walk me back to the hotel, so we soon turned out into the bright lights of the city and my hotel.  

The next morning, we found ourselves in a group of 135 prayer ministers. The training was excellent. We were given time to spend with our teams, and Laurel added two young women to our group. There was time for spiritual practices. Lectio. Soaking Prayer. Examen. We learned about legalities and how to summon help. We were told to hold our hand up showing one finger for the Psych team, two fingers for a more experienced prayer minister if we needed help. We learned when to call the psych team. We were given a tour of the ministry rooms, which had been set up with two chairs, offset yet facing each other, so that the right knees of the facilitator and the recipient nearly touched. In this way, we could lean forward and hear what the person was saying in a room filled with other pairs giving and receiving ministry. This arrangement was repeated throughout four rooms, each holding about forty sets of two chairs. There were also chairs along the walls for the “Two Team” and a cluster of chairs for the Psych Team.  I was asked to serve on the “Two Team”.

Students who desired ministry would line up outside. We were instructed to find a set of chairs and claim it as our own by leaving something on the chairs. Then we were to line up along one of the walls in each room. Each of the four rooms had a host. The host continually went back and forth fetching a student from the front of the line and bringing them back to where the prayer ministers were lined up. We would then take the student to our seats and begin working with them. The hosts were constantly on the move, going back and forth from line-to-line pairing students with prayer ministers. Sessions were to last one hour, then there was time for a short break, and we would line up for the next session. The plan was to have three sessions a day.  

During our training day, we were asked if we were experienced Immanuel Prayer ministers to go sit in one of the paired seats. Then the seats opposite were filled with other prayer ministers, who considered themselves to be less experienced. I worked with an African woman who was on IV staff in New York City. She had a sweet and tender heart for God and had a wonderful encounter with him. This practice time was so encouraging. It looked like it was going to work. Even though it seemed kind of crowded, we could hear each other. God was showing up all around the room.

I was still in the grip of exhaustion, and so after a quick dinner, I went back to my room, so grateful to be alone. I could feel my body relaxing, and I actually went to bed at 5:30 PM. In the morning, I felt that I was being physically restored.

While I slept, other members of our team attended an amazing plenary session, the opening event of Urbana. InterVarsity had been reaching out to Native American tribes for many years, and IV Press had created a First Nations Version of the New Testament. Native people served on the IV staff. Proper protocol, the sense of what should happen first, would argue that the folks in charge of Urbana should approach the original owners of the land, where Urbana would be held, to declare that they had come in peace and to seek the blessing of the tribe, in this case the Miami Tribe. The Urbana leaders approached the tribal chiefs in 2021.

The first plenary session began with the MC explaining what we were about to do, then leading everyone through a ceremony. This included the exchange of gifts—amazing blankets and a flute. Representatives of the tribe sang a love song about God’s love with drums and flutes, in their native tongue. Women danced to the song dressed in native clothing. It was a great blessing to see the tribe honored. And to be welcomed by them.

As I drifted off to sleep in my private room, my mind touched on several questions. Were we ready for the next day? Would the students want to receive ministry? Would people who had never heard of the Immanuel Method be able to encounter God in just one hour with a complete stranger? My mind surrendered my questions and my heart filled with anticipation. I did not know what was going on in the convention center two blocks away, but I sensed that it was important to the heart of God. I had seen people of many tribes and nations welcomed. I felt the honor and the presence of God that surrounded us. Dr. Karl had told me that he had never tried anything so ambitious. As I closed my eyes, I knew all my questions would be answered, and my heart filled with joy and hope.

Next month I, Betsy, will write the rest of the story.

[i] “InterVarsity Fellowship,” Wikimedia Foundation, last modified July 5, 2022, 14:33, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterVarsity_Christian_Fellowship