Approximately 50 students, several teachers and seven students from the graduate school in Memphis piled into two vans, a mini-bus and cars to travel to Fort Worth, Texas, for the Global Missions Conference Oct. 19-22.
The theme of the missions conference was “Into the Heart of God.” The purpose of the conference was to learn about what God is doing in missions, learn about mission opportunities and meet with other people involved in missions.
“It’s always great for [students] to meet missionaries from around the world,” said Shawn Daggett, director of the Center for World Missions and a professor of Bible. “There was an atmosphere that was electric, encouraging, inspiring. On Thursday morning, students got to hear Fred Asare, an energetic, zealous preacher from Ghana, challenging us to be more generous, helping, doing more.”
Most of the students who attended were either Bible or missions majors, but the conference was open to any interested student.
“[The conference] was inspiring because it really encouraged our generation, the college students that were there, to go ahead and get started and find out what your passion is because we are upcoming leaders,” junior Bethany Reeves said. “The class that stood out the most was about Thailand and their mission to rescue women from prostitution. Missionaries there have a house and teach women how to find a new job and skills to get them out of that.”
Daggett said that one of the takeaways for him was to see friends from around the world whom he had not seen in years.
“I saw people that I went to school with at Harding that had left for the mission field and I hadn’t seen since,” Daggett said. “It was thrilling. Some of them are still missionaries. Some of them are preaching.”
Church leaders from around the U. S., members of various churches and missionaries from around the world traveled to the conference.
“I thought it was really neat how we could see how all the missions organizations and missionaries are connected and that there is a community, a missions community,” Reeves said.
Several teachers from Harding spoke at the conference. Daggett spoke about the God of mission. Ken Graves, director of Global Outreach, spoke on short-term missions. Monte Cox, dean of the College of Bible and Religion, spoke about preparing church leadership for missions. Donna Daggett, of student health services, participated in a panel on balancing one’s family and one’s mission. Associat Professor Allen Diles served on the steering committee and spoke on finding one’s place in the mission of God. Every year, students go to the World Mission Workshop, but this time the World Mission Workshop was combined with the Global Missions Conference. Harding is hosting the World Mission Workshop next year.
“It was such a great event that I hope that next year students at Harding will rally to help host [the World Mission Workshop] and be there and enjoy it because it will be held at Tahkodah,” Daggett said. “It just changes the way you see God and understand that he is working all over the world.”
