Anyone who attended last week’s Missions Conference would agree — the Holy Spirit, prayed down for months in preparation for the event, did indeed move powerfully in the Biola community. The 24-hour prayer room consistently had students on their knees. For three days, the entire Biola community gathered for communal praise and learning. Extended worship sessions evoked spontaneous dancing one night, and heartfelt open mic confessions the next. The gym shook with the passion of thousands of students being set ablaze for Christ and the nations.
Multiple angles of missions
We commend the student directors and all of the Missions Conference staff for making this year’s conference widely applicable to the student body, and not falling into the trap of guilt-tripping students into immediate commitments to foreign missions. And, we encourage Biola to continue to challenge students to share the gospel in ways that don’t mean leaving the country.
There is a knowledge gap between missions abroad and missions at home that students are looking to have filled. The vast majority of students who graduate from this school will not spend their lives serving overseas. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. If we didn’t think we could serve God domestically, we wouldn’t be pursuing degrees in business, psychology, English and the like. But, everyone alike needs to be set ablaze and keep the fire burning.
The fading spiritual high
But, the conference was a week ago. As the fervor of the conference wears off, absorbed by the stresses of college life, we must be particularly intentional not to just ride on the spiritual high of Missions Conference. We should not view it as extended chapels crammed into an intense three days, a Christian huddle that produces no difference in our lives. There is the temptation after a powerful experience like Missions Conference to allow the spiritual high to define our entire semester’s worth of spiritual formation. We can’t just check missions off our list of things to think about because we sat in the gym and got all our conference credits in last week.
The reality is that the growth that was started and fostered in those three days must be worked out in daily life. Despite standing last Thursday shouting out to God, the conviction to rededicate our lives to the total pursuit of him will be tested. We can go right back to fighting with parents, gossipping about friends, and complaining about how much homework professors are assigning. How quickly the fire can be extinguished, like a slightly more “grown-up” version of a post-camp high from pre-college days.
Staying ablaze
As Mark Parker told us, it’s stinking hard. But it’s not impossible. Don’t segment off missions from daily life. Don’t wait until next year’s Missions Conference to be set ablaze again.
