More than 7,000 college students and others recently gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, for Urbana 25 – Intervarsity's 27th student missions conference. By the end of the five-day gathering, 800 people made decisions to follow Jesus, and many others solidified their commitment to spreading the Gospel throughout the ends of the earth. 

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA kicked off the event in late December, and attendees were challenged to think outside the box when sharing the Gospel. 

"How do we live into the imagination God has given us to take the gospel into the world?" Executive Director Mark Matlock asked the audience on the first night of the conference.

Students arrived ready to be challenged and stretched. Many arrived at the conference excited to learn how they might be a part of God's global mission, just as previous generations have since 1946. Past conferences have featured evangelical legends such as Billy Graham, Elisabeth Elliot, Francis Schaeffer, Rick Warren, and John Stott as speakers, according to RNS.

Urbana 25 speakers included Jennie Allen, of the IF:Gathering, Dr. Ed Stetzer, Soong-Chan Rah, and Lisa Pak. Jon Tyson, an Australian pastor who now leads Church of the City New York, walked attendees through expositions of the Book of Jonah, while Egyptian professor Dr. Anne Zaki led "spiritual formation moments" each morning.

Recently appointed Christianity Today CEO Dr. Nicole Martin called it an "inflection point." She shared on the Urbana podcast how the conference was integral in shaping her calling and how it will continue to impact future generations. 

"Something happens when you get a group of people together who believe that something great is going to happen," she shared. "When you specifically get believers together, trusting God, all expecting the Lord to show up, it just makes room for a level of vulnerability, authenticity, relationship, and expectation that makes room for God to move." 

On the last night of the conference, 42% of attendees signed a commitment "to surrender their will for their lives to explore how God might use them to accomplish his global mission." Almost half shared a tangible next step toward living out God's mission, and 800 made decisions to follow Jesus for the first time or recommitted their lives to Jesus. 

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"The great commission and the grand commandments aren't two separate entities but constitute the whole gospel," prayed Bread for the World CEO Eugene Cho.

As CBN News has reported, the conference, which is held every three years, has been calling generations of college students to find their place in the Great Commission for nearly 80 years.

"Coming to a place that is packed full of people that are on fire and love God and want to do his work in the world is really exciting," said Jonah, a student at Wesleyan University. "It's motivating to continue to do that work and to dream bigger–– to imagine larger things than I had before."