As Biola prepares for this year’s Missions Conference, students will hear from a speaker whose life’s work has been shaped by the global church.
Al Janssen is a Christian author, editor, and priest with over 40 years of experience in publishing and ministry. He has written more than 30 books, served in leadership roles with organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ and Open Doors International, and currently works as a writer, speaker, and pastor in Colorado Springs.
Al Janssen spoke during Session 2 at Missions Conference this week, bringing his decades of ministry experience and firsthand encounters with believers living under persecution. In a recent interview, Janssen reflected on the stories that shaped his faith, his calling as a storyteller and what he hopes Biola students take away from his message.
For Janssen, it is difficult to point to one defining moment that impacted his career. Instead, he described a lifetime of experiences that have left a lasting impact, especially his relationships with Christians who have suffered for following Christ.
“I have eight men on my wall up here who I’ve known personally, who have died a martyr’s death because of their faith in Christ,” Janssen said. After nearly 25 years connected to ministry involving the persecuted church, Janssen said what has stayed with him most is the reality that many believers around the world live with danger, discrimination and pressure as part of everyday life.
For Janssen, speaking at Biola is an opportunity to introduce students to a side of the body of Christ that many Western Christians rarely encounter.
STORYTELLING AS A CALLING
Over the years, Janssen has served as a writer, communicator and pastor. These are roles that he believes all come together in one mission: telling the story of what God is doing around the world.
“My desire is to tell the story of what God has done and is doing in his church around the world,” Janssen said. Rather than simply teaching doctrine, Janssen said he wants to make faith tangible through testimony.
“I don’t want to just say who God is. I don’t want to just teach theology and doctrine. I want to tell the incredible stories of what God has done and is doing,” he said.
That calling has drawn him again and again to the persecuted church, which he believes offers one of the clearest pictures of lived faith.
“When your life is threatened, you don’t have lukewarm Christians,” Janssen said. “They’re living the faith.”
He also pointed to a paradox that continues to inspire him: in some of the places where persecution is most severe, the church is growing the fastest.
“There are more people in the Muslim world coming to faith in Christ than there have ever been,” Janssen said. “In the places where persecution is most severe, the church is also growing the most significantly.”
A MESSAGE FOR STUDENTS
Though Janssen has spent years in difficult and sometimes dangerous places, he said he does not see himself as a natural risk-taker.
“I’m not a risk taker. I am not a person who likes to live dangerously,” he said.Instead, Janssen said his path has been shaped by obedience more than fearlessness. He encouraged students to pay attention to the gifts God has already given them and take the next faithful step.
“In one sense, all of us are called to communicate in some way, aren’t we?” Janssen said. “We’re to be witnesses.”
Reflecting on his own early years in ministry, he said he learned to follow the abilities God had already placed in his life.
“If God’s given me the ability as a journalist to write, then I need to use that,” he said.
Still, Janssen emphasized that calling takes time to grow into.
“Just because you have ability doesn’t mean you have the skill and the knowledge to really use that,” he said. “It took me several years to really gain the experience and the knowledge and to get the training that I needed.”
At 76, he said he is still learning.
“It takes a lifetime to learn how to be good at what we’re doing,” Janssen said. “We keep learning.”
As Missions Conference approaches, Janssen’s story offers more than a preview of his session. It invites students to consider a broader view of the global church and how God might use their own gifts, whether in ministry, leadership or creative work, to tell stories that matter.
