Urbana 25

When the World Couldn’t Travel, the Stage Came to Them

Urbana 25 was more than a conference—it was a defining moment for college students stepping into their calling

Client: InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

Event: Urbana 25

Location: Phoenix Convention Center

Executive Producer: Mike Work, Velocity Productions

Show Caller: Brian Pirkle, Velocity Productions

The Challenge

Urbana is one of North America’s most influential missions conferences — a gathering where thousands of students, leaders, and ministry partners come together around a shared conviction that God’s global mission requires global voices.

InterVarsity knew the General Session experience had to do more than deliver content. It needed to move people. Every moment had to reinforce the conference theme, honor the diversity of attendees from around the world, and draw participants deeper into a sense of shared calling.

Then came the complications.

Several international leaders — voices essential to the conference narrative — couldn’t attend in person. Visa restrictions and travel barriers threatened to reduce their participation to an afterthought. At the same time, the General Session needed to serve more than 50 sponsors without fracturing the attendee experience, and the scale of media requirements demanded infrastructure capable of handling live presentations, pre-produced content, and international video integrations without missing a cue.

The question wasn’t whether to solve these problems. It was whether to solve them in a way that made the experience richer — or just functional.

Velocity’s Role

Velocity partnered with the Urbana leadership team from concept through final cue, serving as the strategic and creative production partner for the entire General Session experience.

Our scope included:

• General Session content strategy and development

• Engagement of Matt Lundgren (Willow Creek) as Worship Design Partner to lead the creative development of a diverse, culturally proficient, and musically cohesive worship experience woven throughout the General Sessions

• Creative development of two 20-minute live global leadership segments featuring six leaders representing different world regions

• Creative collaboration on audience engagement throughout the event journey

• Design support for the attendee orientation experience, in collaboration with Lightware Labs

• Development of live and pre-produced video experiences

• Integration of international speakers unable to attend in person

• Design and production support for a closing-night choir of 320+ voices

• Engagement of live DJ Bobbito the Chef to manage sponsor video sequencing, room energy, and program transitions across more than 52 sponsor recognitions

• Deployment of a live video truck to manage complex video production and media workflows

• Mike Work serving as Executive Producer, providing strategic oversight and production leadership from concept through final cue

• Brian Pirkle serving as Show Caller, anchoring live execution across all General Sessions

The Approach

The first decision was a mindset shift: the travel restrictions weren’t a problem to work around. They were a creative opportunity.

Rather than substituting international voices with domestic alternatives or relegating remote participants to brief video cameos, Velocity worked alongside conference leadership to build experiences that preserved the full weight and authenticity of each contributor’s perspective — on their own terms, in their own environments — and brought those perspectives into the live General Session in a way that felt present, not pre-recorded.

Two 20-minute program segments became the heart of the global conversation. Six leaders representing different regions of the world engaged in genuine dialogue that expanded the stage far beyond Phoenix. These weren’t filler segments. They were the spine of the General Session programming.

Worship wasn’t a program element that happened between the “real” moments. It was load-bearing.

Velocity engaged Matt Lundgren — worship design leader from Willow Creek — to serve as the creative architect of the conference’s worship experience. The brief was specific: reimagine worship to authentically reflect Urbana’s diversity, cultural breadth, and missional intent. Matt brought both the credibility and the cultural fluency to shape something that could genuinely resonate across the full range of the Urbana room. His work wasn’t confined to a single set or a closing moment. It ran through the entire General Session journey — connecting the global leadership conversations, the audience engagement experiences, and the closing choir into a single thread of worship that held the week together.

For attendee orientation, Velocity provided design support for an experience that set the tone before the conference formally began. In collaboration with Lightware Labs, the orientation environment became an engaging entry point that grounded participants in the week’s journey and built anticipation for what was ahead.

Sponsor recognition is where many events stumble — awkward logo slides, dead air, disrupted momentum. Instead, Velocity brought in live DJ Bobbito the Chef to own those transitions. Working through a sequenced program of more than 52 sponsor videos, his presence transformed recognition moments into energy beats — keeping the room alive and ensuring that every partner received meaningful visibility without the experience ever feeling like a commercial break.

Behind all of it was a live video truck — and Brian Pirkle on the show call. Deployed to manage the complexity of switching between live speakers, pre-produced segments, international video contributions, and sponsor elements in real time, the production infrastructure was anchored by experienced leadership at every level. When you’re running a General Session at this scale, infrastructure isn’t a detail. It’s what keeps every other decision from unraveling.

And then there was the close.

More than 320 attendees walked onto a stage together and became a choir — with no formal promotion, no recruitment push. They signed up on their own, arrived early, and came prepared. A single act of collective participation — designed to transform the audience from observers into contributors — became the most visible expression of what Urbana is actually about: ordinary people, from everywhere, joining a story bigger than themselves.

That’s Experience Storytelling™. Not producing an event for an audience. Producing an experience with one.

The Room

Urbana 25 brought together thousands of students, ministry leaders, and global practitioners under one roof at the Phoenix Convention Center — convened around a shared conviction that the next generation of missionaries, advocates, and leaders is already in the room.

The speaker lineup reflected the full breadth of that vision:

Mark Matlock — Executive Director, Urbana 25
Andy Kim — Associate Director & Emcee, Urbana 25
Jon Tyson — Senior Pastor, Church of the City New York
Jennie Allen — Visionary behind IF:Gathering & Gather25
Dr. Nicole Martin — President & CEO, Christianity Today
Dr. Ed Stetzer — Dean, Talbot School of Theology
Dr. Anne Zaki — Global voice and speaker
Eugene Cho — President & CEO, Bread for the World
Soong-Chan Rah — Professor of Evangelism and Church Renewal, Fuller Theological Seminary
Andrew Scott — Co-Founder & CEO, Scatter
Tyler Prieb — Founder & Executive Director, Missional Labs
Tatiana Alderson — Link Staff Coordinator for Eurasia, InterVarsity
Anna Lee-Winans — Global leader and speaker
James Kelly — Speaker and ministry leader
Sarah Breuel — Global speaker and evangelist
Jon Hietbrink — Speaker and ministry leader
Shana Powell — Speaker and ministry leader

This was not a typical conference stage. Velocity built a production environment capable of holding the weight of that room — and the conversations it was designed to create.

Results

Six global leaders reached every seat in the room.

Despite visa restrictions and travel barriers, six international leaders representing different world regions remained central to the conference narrative. Through a combination of live and pre-produced content, thousands of attendees engaged with perspectives that would otherwise never have reached the stage.

Worship connected the room across cultures.

Matt Lundgren’s creative leadership produced a worship experience that reflected the full cultural and missional diversity of the Urbana community. Rather than a series of disconnected sets, worship became the connective tissue of the entire General Session journey — theologically grounded, musically excellent, and genuinely inclusive.

Participation was built in from the first moment.

From the orientation environment through closing night, audience engagement wasn’t an add-on — it was architecture. Attendees entered an experience designed to draw them in, and that posture carried through every General Session.

More than 52 sponsors were recognized without breaking the room.

DJ Bobbito the Chef gave sponsor visibility a pulse. Recognition moments had energy, continuity, and context — not dead air. Sponsors were celebrated; the experience was protected.

320+ attendees became the finale — without being asked twice.

The closing choir mobilized more than 320 voices with zero formal promotion. Participants self-selected, arrived early, and came ready. The moment unified the room, gave attendees something to carry home, and ended the conference the way it should end — with people, not production.

A 28-person team that made the impossible look routine.

A 28-person Velocity team — 19 production crew, an eight-person stage team, Executive Producer Mike Work, and Show Caller Brian Pirkle — managed the placement and flow of 320+ choir participants, multiple B stages, and the continuous movement of speakers and performers throughout every General Session. Anticipating needs before they became problems and executing with calm precision from open to close, this was the operational backbone of every live moment.

One unified experience. Multiple content formats. No dropped cues.

Live speakers. International video. Pre-produced content. Sponsor integration. Worship. Large-scale audience participation. All of it — supported by a dedicated live video truck and Brian Pirkle on the show call — delivered as a single, coherent attendee journey from opening orientation through the final session.