A License to Serve: Designing Thriving Missions Communities
YWAM campuses and missionaries worldwide flourish when they have the practical and professional resources necessary to stay focused on their ministries’ core work. Providing those resources is at the heart of what MBI does—so others may thrive.
Partner Architects is one of the professional resources MBI offers. They provide architectural “design for missionaries, by missionaries,” working with ministries in under-served locations “to create places that support God’s redemptive work in the world.”
Partner Architects’ door is open to professional architects who share their vision. In September 2023, they welcomed Garrett Morrison.
Garrett knew he was different from the time he was in the sixth grade. A math assignment triggered his lifelong desire to become an architect, and he organized his high school studies accordingly. Then, in Garrett’s junior year, the Lord threw him a curve ball, calling him to be a missionary. At the time, Garrett had no idea how architecture and missions fit together, so he laid down his vision for architecture to become a missionary with YWAM.
Garrett served for nearly a decade with YWAM Montana-Lakeside (along with his wife Sarah and their four children). He spent the latter half of those years with the independent architectural ministry 100 Fold Studio. Those years of training set him on a path to becoming a licensed architect, and after a year of university, he joined a firm in Washington state, taking the opportunity to complete licensure through work experience.
“All in all, it took a decade of training and testing, and by God’s grace, I passed my final exam and became a licensed architect in 2023,” Garrett says. “Soon after, the Lord called me to take a new step and work with MBI’s Partner Architects.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to come alongside missionaries as a professional resource in architectural design, to journey in faith together, ‘lifting their arms’ by undertaking the project design process that could otherwise overwhelm the work of the ministry.
“We’ve heard the horror stories of ministries held back by their current facilities due to lack of resources—unsafe, unfit buildings that neither serve the vision nor communicate the gospel to the community in a way that helps them to flourish. As missionaries ourselves, we share and understand the values and challenges of our missionary clients. We have a unique capacity to speak the same language and help them fulfill the mission and vision God has called them to.” (Photo: Garrett Morrison, center)
After joining Partner Architects, Garrett began designing the new YWAM UofN campus in Pailin, Cambodia (one of the many ministry sites that grew out of the YWAM Battambang campus). Garrett says, “UofN Pailin is exciting because it represents the multiplication of the gospel and the mission within the country that moves YWAM Cambodia closer to the fulfillment of their vision of reaching ‘one nation in one generation.'”
Garrett recently returned from Cambodia, where he visited UofN Pailin and Freedom’s Promise, a ministry currently constructing an 18-classroom school building that will open in 2025. Partner provided a campus masterplan and design for the school, which will significantly increase the ministry’s capacity to impact communities with the gospel and eradicate human trafficking in Cambodia.
Garrett and the Partner Architects team spent a week in late April at YWAM Mazatlán in Mexico. The Mazatlán team plans to grow the campus to house and train 3000 missionaries yearly to reach Mexico and other nations with the gospel.
“For two days,” Garrett says, “the Partner Architects team listened to the Mazatlán leaders and staff members describe their vision and values. We helped them define their measures of success, the campus aesthetics they desire, and the program requirements necessary to meet their mission needs. At the end of more than twelve hours of meetings, as we reported back from our notes what we heard, the hospitality coordinator exclaimed, ‘I think you have captured our heart perfectly!’
“We have a current project in the Gambia in West Africa, where we are helping to design a new YWAM campus in the country’s center. We’re also working with a church project in Samoa and a pastor-training and church-planting ministry in the Middle East.”
Garrett concludes, “Partner Architects could use more licensed architects. We’re praying for two more licensed individuals to join our Montana team. There is a lot of work ahead, and it is thrilling to be a part of it and to have the ability to use our gifts and talents to serve missionaries and the gospel!”
For more information, visit www.partnerarchitects.org.
MBI exists to help YWAM locations thrive and achieve the best possible kingdom results in their work. In January, MBI’s Leadership13 (L13) members Ron Brewster and Dawn Masucci traveled to Cambodia to continue training and encouraging the 
Cambodia is recovering from the genocidal war waged against its people by the Pol Pot regime in the mid-‘70s, which devastated their elderly and educated population, leaving the vulnerable young to fend for themselves. According to WHO and the UN, Cambodians still face widespread poverty and illiteracy, lack of proper sanitation and access to clean drinking water, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and sex trafficking. But the missionaries at YWAM Battambang believe they can “transform the nation in one generation.” They accomplish this through elementary education, teaching English, reaching out to families facing HIV/AIDS, fitness programs, business-as-missions projects, youth development, and more.
that their driver, a man named Dang, was a believer. Dang told the team that in the ‘90s, a former YWAM outreach center took him in when he was thirteen years old. He became a follower of Jesus, which is remarkable since only 2% of Cambodians are Christians 
The course immediately intrigued Brad Spencer, MBI’s then-volunteer services coordinator. He shared the information with fellow Canadian Brian Oldridge. They applied and headed to Colorado last October to participate in the training.
“Initially, they built very different systems, depending on the location and available materials. Eventually, they were motivated to engineer a repeatable design, reduced to the simplest, most common materials that did not require extensive startup expertise. Hence, OASYS was born. Building according to their OASYS design eliminates startup risk for the most part. They’ve streamlined troubleshooting and system support. The Emerge team and those trained on OASYS know how the system was built, significantly eliminating local design deviations.
“Emerge is ten years into this and still strongly desires to make it happen. There is no shortage of vision; they share it with as many as possible. They need trained and skilled individuals willing to help make this happen in communities with needs.
YWAM missionaries know feeding and caring for impoverished men, women, and children is a powerful part of its mandate to make God known. Meeting real physical needs reveals God’s intentional love for those who hunger body and soul. 
ministries like YWAM Gleanings need to attract helpers while offering an easy, seamless application process that gets volunteers on campus and to work quickly.
Over the past year, M91 members Matt Praetzel, J.T. Pharr, and Luke Smith worked with eighteen individuals between the two campuses, including staff, directors, and hired security personnel. Besides helping them develop both policies and procedures and standard operating procedures, the M91 team introduced a curriculum to take the trainees above and beyond basic security skills. The curriculum includes laying the groundwork for the prerequisite training, physical capability, and baseline knowledge that allows multiple well-trained people to respond to incidents, ensuring the burden doesn’t fall on just one or two people. The training modules also include operations planning, de-escalation, mission debriefing, and incident reporting.
We train these teams to see Jesus amid people’s worst days and their worst decisions.” Rather than a hardcore security focus, M91 offers Refuge teams as platforms for potential life-changing ministry.
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