International (MNN) — Ramez Atallah will be the Bible Expositor for Urbana '09,
preaching on the first four chapters of the Gospel of John at InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship's 22nd Student Missions Conference.
"John is a powerful example of missionary communication," said
Urbana director
Jim Tebbe. "It is explicitly evangelistic and intends that those who come to
believe through his witness will in turn become witnesses."
Atallah serves as general secretary of the Bible Society of
Egypt and as program chair for the Lausanne III World Congress. A native of Egypt,
he spent his teen years in Canada
and got involved with InterVarsity while attending McGill
University in Montreal. He later attended Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts.
"Ramez has a passion for inductive Bible Study," Tebbe said.
"He has been practicing it and teaching it all his life. His personable style,
sense of humor, deep devotion to God and commitment to His Word, along with his
experience as a dual citizen of Egypt
and Canada, make him an ideal
expositor for Urbana
09."
The triennial conference will be held at the America's Center and the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri,
December 27-31, 2009. A.W. Tozer, Donald
Grey Barnhouse, John R. W. Stott, and Ajith Fernando have all spoken at the
conference, which was first held in Toronto
in 1946.
Since then, most of the conferences have been held on the
campus of the University
of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Over 20,000 people
attended the conference in 2006, the first year it was held in its new location
in St. Louis, MO.
The purpose of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA is to
establish and advance at colleges and
universities witnessing communities of students and faculty who follow Jesus as
Savior and Lord: growing in love for God, God's Word, God's people of every
ethnicity and culture and God's purposes in the world.
