On Sept. 17-20, the Global Missions Experience (GME) anticipates bringing more than 1,000 Christian university students together at Harding University at Tahkodah (HUT) for a long weekend of missionary education and cross-cultural simulation workshops. The cost is $30 for Harding students and $45 for non-Harding students and includes meals, lodging and a T-shirt. Dr. Kent Brantly will be a featured speaker throughout the event weekend.
Shawn Daggett, director of the Center for World Missions, is in charge of directing the GME. Daggett said that a central part of the experience will be the classes offered to help students from every field of study to understand where they fit into God’s mission.
“While the missions major and the missions minor — those planning to spend their lives in full-time mission work — will be benefitted greatly by this intense experience, it is meant to be for everybody,” Daggett said.
Alongside classes and keynote speakers, Daggett said the weekend will include many true-to-life simulations, such as a market experience where students are given a certain amount of foreign currency and told to exchange it for food and other necessities in an unfamiliar culture. The experience will also include counseling simulations and will help students prepare for situations they might encounter in mission work or in everyday life.
Daggett said the weekend will be about minimal instruction and maximum experience.
“The (GME) will be a short-term learning experience for a lifetime of seeing how every vocation fits into God’s mission,” Daggett said.
Junior Drew Howerton, one of two student leaders for the GME, said he hopes students have high expectations for the event, because he believes those expectations will be both met and exceeded. Howerton quoted Dean of the College of Bible and Ministry Monte Cox as saying, “God is seeking those who are seeking those who are seeking him.”
“Our hope is that every student will leave with a renewed passion to carry out God’s relentless mission, regardless of where their futures will take them,” Howerton said.
The GME is built on the foundation of the World Mission Workshop, which had its first session in 1961 at then Harding College, according to Daggett. The theme this year is ‘Relentless.’
“God is relentless in the search for his lost creation,” Daggett said. “He is relentless in his search for each of us, … and it should be our relentless pursuit to seek him and find him as his disciples.”
Registration for the GME can be done up until the event at www.harding.edu/events/global-missions-exp.
