Jamie Wright, The Very Worst Missionary

The Broom Colloquium will take place Wednesday and Thursday as opposed to during the spring semester, as it has in past years.

The Broom Colloquium is an annual campus conversation that encourages the ACU community to relate global issues to God’s mission in the world, will take place Wednesday and Thursday.

Dr. Chris Flanders, associate professor of missions, said this colloquium is an opportunity for ACU gets to come together and have important missional conversations.

This year’s featured speaker is Jamie Wright, a former missionary in South America and writer of the blog The Very Worst Missionary. She will speak on the theme “Missions, Justice, and Social Media: Can Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook Really Change the World?”

Wright is the second female speaker to speak at the Broom Colloquium. As a younger woman, she brings a different perspective to the campus conversation of living missionally. She aims to answer the question, “How do we translate all this knowledge, passion and energy into a truly better world?”

“She is profound in her insight that is challenging and revealing and encouraging to reshape the way we think about missions, particularly among the so-called ‘millennials,'” Flanders said. “She represents a younger voice. One that’s a little bit more connected to the students’ own age and life and situations.”

Flanders said he hopes everyone – missions major or not – will get involved and hear what Wright has to speak over the campus.

“The colloquium has an effect of energizing people to think more deeply about their own lives and how God can use them missionally,” Flanders said. “What we intend by ‘missional’ is that people see their own lives, their degrees and their future work as an extension of God’s loving reach to this world.”

There are many opportunities to hear Wright speak this week, including in Chapel on Wednesday in Moody, Chapel on Thursday in Chapel on the Hill, and a Chapel forum on Thursday night at 7 p.m. in Hart Auditorium.

Other opportunities during this colloquium are the faculty reading group lunch on Wednesday from 12-1 p.m in the Adams Center, as well as the Honors College dinner on Thursday from 5-6 p.m.