While you jump from session to session, one breakout to the next and try to complete your conference credits, it is vital during Missions Conference that you slow down and gain a full understanding of the intention behind the conference. In order to slow down, there will be a specialized experience provided to all students allowing them to go further into the life of missionaries, specifically global missionaries.

Biola’s Student Missionary Union (SMU) put together a team tasked with creating a walk-through experience of the lives of missionaries from a variety of countries and cultures. This experience is called the Global Awareness Room, which has been a beloved part of Missions Conference in years past. And while it doesn’t provide students with conference credits, it provides them a time to truly honor the work of missionaries. All students have access to the room from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m, during the Wednesday and Thursday of Missions Conference in Rose 002 and 005. 

FILLING THE ROOM WITH STORIES

Planning the Global Awareness Room started back in August when the application for coordinators opened up, then starting in the fall semester they began selecting the rest of the team. Throughout the year, the team met on Sunday nights where they planned extensively, and work nights where they executed their vision of the room. 

To ensure that they gathered a well-versed selection of missionaries, the team has reached out to missionary friends and their churches. Senior design major Eden Stratton, who is a co-coordinator of the room, noted that one of the most enjoyable parts of the process was finding the people and their stories to fill the room. 

“So it’s been like a network of people that we know, which has been really cool. And the process is mostly reaching out and getting missionary stories, and then trying to think of how we can show the culture and also show how you can bring the light in the Gospel to that culture,” Stratton said. 

THE LIGHT OF MISSIONARIES

The theme for this year’s missions conference is “Children of Light.” Talbot Masters student and Biola Bible major alum Luke Poarch, co-coordinator of the room, said that the team was able to align the theme of Missions, “Children of Light,” with the room itself by showing how missionaries are the light to the different countries they are ministering to. 

“This room is drawing on the darkness to light. And so it’s gonna be very dark in a lot of it, “ Poarch said. “And it’s like, ‘How does the light come in and dispel this darkness?’ And a lot of times we don’t know, but God knows.” 

Poarch noted that last year the theme for the room was “Unreached,” and while maintaining that idea, this year the team also wanted to put an emphasis on the unengaged.

“The theme for this year is called “The Unengaged,” and that’s kind of a play on words a little bit where it’s number one, highlighting a difference between unreached and unengaged,” Poarch said. “…The Unengaged is one step further than [the Unreached. Whereas there’s no known Christians in their area, there’s no translation in their language, none of that.” 

There will be four rooms for people to walk through, each showcasing how Christianity resides in different cultures and contexts, and then a reflection room will be available at the end. Walking through the rooms, Poarch said that guests might feel the tension of how to share the gospel to different cultures. 

“In the U.S., we completely are so foreign to that tension and that confusion. So I think that the global awareness room will help people kind of feel that tension a little bit,” Poarch said. “And so you’ll walk through the four rooms, and then in the hallway as you’re leaving, there’ll be a column explaining what you just walked through. And that will hopefully resolve that tension, but they’ll feel that as they’re walking through a lot.”

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY WORKING

While the room is centered around the work of global missionaries, Poarch expressed his desire for all students to leave the room understanding more about God’s sovereignty.

“I think with a lot of these missionary testimonies, there’s just so much language of the Lord working, and the Lord has to work, and it has to be God,” Poarch said. “And so I hope that people come out with a need of the crutch of God being sovereign over the situation, or else it’s not going to happen. …If God doesn’t send people, they won’t be sent.”

Ultimately the purpose of the room is to spotlight real people with real stories, being guided by a real God. While recognizing that, it also demonstrates how this work is attainable for all believers in the kingdom of God, if that is what God is calling them to do. The Global Awareness Room provides students with an opportunity to see how all types of work are made possible through God. 

“The global awareness room is real people with real stories,” Poarch said. “And I do hope that there are students at Biola that recognize how important being on the mission field is.”