1996-1997 Yearbook

Students direct mission tnorkslwp The 37th annual World Mission Workshop involved 2200 people, including 1350 students and more than 100 registered adults from the United States and abroad. With Harding serving as the host site and senior John Cannon serving as director, more than 650 Harding students were able to participate in this year's three-day seminar. ''Theworkshophelpedmepersonallybecause, before the workshop, mywife and I had been planning to go to Ecuador to do missionwork, butwe couldnever get a whole team together to go with us. Two days after the worshop, we got three couples to commit to going with us. It was all directly related to the workshop," Cannon said. Cannon worked with faculty advisers Mark Berryman, Bill Richardson and Gordon Hogan to plan and direct the workshop, which rotates between Christian universities from year to year. He became involved in the leadership role at the request ofMonte Cox enroute to last year's workshop at David Lipscomb University. Berryman attested to the enormity ofthe task when he said, "Planning was a lot of work, but we had more than 400 people to commit to missions somewhere in the world, and that made it worth the effort." Cannon and his team ofstudent planners scheduled missionaries from every continent but Antarctica and many who were involved in stateside missions to provide a broad spectrum of missionary experience. "This workshop is the only place that like-minded students from the different • universities can come together to give each other encouragement ," Berryman said. "Every school has a small amount of people interested in missions, and here, they can get a unique kind of encouragement to enter the mission field." Murphy Crowson, a recent Harding alumnus who addressed the need for missionaries in West Africa, said, "The best thing about this workshop was all the networking with missionaries and people who have already been in the field." Student guests came to Harding from Pepperdine [California], Lubbock Christian and Abilene Christian [Texas], FreedHardeman, David Lipscomb and Harding Graduate School [Tennessee], Oklahoma Christian, Michigan Christian, Cascade [Oregon], Faulkner [Alabama], Ohio Valley [West Virginia] and Western Christian [Canada]. Others attended from Western Michigan State, Texas A & M, Southeast Missouri State, Louisiana Tech, Northeast Louisiana, University of Arkansas and University ofArkansas for Medical Sciences. "I learned that there are several ways we can be missionaries. You don't have to go across the world; you can be a missionary in your own back yard," Courtney Barnum, an Oklahoma Christian junior, said. Attendance peaked at the keynote lecture on Saturdaynight by Stanley Shipp, director of a mission intern program in St. Louis. "We have heard nothing but good comments about the workshop," Berryman said. - Hallie Bell Molly Luten andRuth Sellersprepare a booth about the Finland summer campaign. Each campaign group set up a table in the Mclnteer rotunda. Photo by Aaron Gillihan. World Mission Workshop 21

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