Biola University’s 84th annual Missions Conference — the largest student-led missions conference in the nation — kicked off this year with several new features. New career-specific breakout sessions and the inclusion of social media learning at the Global Awareness interactive exhibit are enhancing students’ experience at this year’s conference, which runs from March 13-15. Also, Cambodia is represented at Global Awareness for the first time — a result of one Biola student’s desire to bring awareness to genocide in her home country.

QR Codes Enhance Global Awareness Experience

Global Awareness, an educational life-size interactive exhibit on global issues, is improved this year with the addition of social media learning opportunities incorporated into the exhibit’s line, said conference coordinators. In past years, students could be found filling the sidewalks outside Global Awarness — classrooms transformed into other countries to replicate different cultures — between sessions, waiting for their turn to experience Global Awareness. This year, conference coordinators enhanced the waiting-in-line experience with the inclusion of QR codes on wood blocks that link to videos and websites with information about each culture represented in the rooms.

The focus of Global Awareness has slightly shifted as well, according to Michael Beatima, co-coordinator of Global Awareness. Attention generally geared towards the acting and entertaining aspect of each exhibit room will now focus on prayer and practical ways in which students can become involved in revitalizing and restoring certain countries. Global Awareness is designed to educate and empower students and the inclusion of missional outlets will aide in this process.

“We do not only want people’s hearts to be broken for the lost and hurt,” said Beatima. “We want students to also be encouraged by how God is already moving in these countries and cultures.”

Career-Focused Sessions Added to Conference Lineup

Themed “Outpour,” the conference is focusing on equipping students to embrace their roles in the Great Commission while finding their identity foremost in the Spirit of God, according to the conference website.

“We want to fulfill his Kingdom to all ends of the earth,” said Keaton Tyndall, co-director of Missions Conference.

Through various activities, cultural events and performances at Missions Conference, students are urged to rethink what it means to be a member of God’s global church. This year, specific career-oriented sessions will look at how to live out the Great Commission in one’s field of study as well as how to use one’s major as an overseas missionary. With sessions on how to find a career that involves helping people and major-focused sessions like, “Missionary Psychologist: Not an Oxymoron,” Missions Conference 2013 sessions have shifted to further encourage students who may not be called to full-time missionary work in the traditional sense after graduating, according to Tyndall.

Student Raises Awareness to Genocide in Home Country

Leah Pak, a junior and native from Cambodia, has a strong desire to raise awareness among her peers to the cultural issues present in her country. Prior to the start of last year’s conference, Pak informed conference coordinators that her country’s flag was not included in the traditional “parade of flags,” which commences the conference. The coordinators quickly addressed the issue by including the Cambodian flag and Pak was able to walk in the parade representing her country.

This year she is the co-leader of a Global Awareness exhibit room featuring Cambodia.

“Everyone has a story, and this is my story,” said Pak. “I speak for my parents’ story because they don’t have the opportunity to do that. I want to use my testimony to bring awareness.”

Pak’s grandfather was killed in the Cambodian Genocide of the 1970s and her parents were able to escape and immigrate to the United States.

“I want the Cambodian Genocide to be known,” she said. “All I want is a seed to be planted in [students’] hearts — not just in America but all over the world. I desire for the people of Cambodia to be heard.”

It is the hope of both Pak and Missions Conference coordinators this year that the theme of Outpour will empower the Biola community to view righteousness as a never-ending stream and recognize that God is constantly moving.

“We want to encourage the community to be in a posture of asking God to pour his strength and love into us so that we can pour into the hurt, oppressed, lost and broken,” said Beatima.

View the 2013 Missions Conference schedule.

Biola’s annual Missions Conference is currently the largest annual student-led missions conference in the world. For 84 years, Biola’s Missions Conference has sought to educate, equip and inspire students to embrace their role in the completion of the Great Commission during the three-day-conference, during which all classes are cancelled. To accomplish this vision, students attend events involving speakers, bands, worship, cultural events and global awareness exhibits to bring the nations to Biola’s campus and ignite students’ hearts.

Written by Cassandra Acosta, Media Relations Intern. For more information, contact Jenna Bartlo, Media Relations Specialist, at 562.777.4061 or jenna.l.bartlo