Missionaries--Training

Jerome Ebua Awah D.Min.

The goal of this project was to understand the approaches that should be present in a contextualized curriculum for leadership development at the Jesus City Mission (JCM), Cameroon. The need for an indigenous approach to leadership training contextualized to the Cameroonian African context, in contrast to the current adopted Western model was identified. This project developed a model for leadership training to prepare ministers for service in the rapidly growing JCM church. To reach this understanding, a participatory action research process incorporating qualitative data-collecting instruments was employed, interviewing and surveying of Ministerial Academic (MINACA) students and JCM stakeholders. A focus group of 8 participants was constituted, 10 MINACA former students and 25 current students were interviewed. Sixty questionnaires were administered to participants. We discovered that trainers must not only be qualified but must be conversant with the sociocultural realities of where training is taking place. Leadership training must be hands on. This information provided a foundation for the future development of various training processes in JCM and other Christian denominations facing similar challenges.

Wayne Jansen

This project is designed to provide missionaries to Japan with information needed to carry out cross-cultural pastoral care effectively by looking to ancient Japanese scriptures for meaning, and comparing selected narratives to those in the Bible containing parallel themes and motifs.

Chapter One, the Introduction, explains the cultural milieu in which the Western missionary finds him/herself.

Chapter Two introduces six chosen "subjects," including clients, patients, and professionals who have been chosen as case studies upon which the entire project is based, along with rationale for why they were chosen.

Chapter Three reveals what it means to live in Japan's strict hierarchical society, and how the Japanese cope with and effectively use the system to succeed.

Chapter Four demonstrates how important and necessary it is for Japanese to understand how to blend and adapt to their surroundings in order to be successful.

Chapter Five pursues the question of what exactly the religious soul of the Japanese is, and how the missionary is to understand his/her clients in order to meet their needs.

Chapter Six illustrates where the Japanese church stands today on various issues, and provides missionaries with information to help them understand their colleagues better, and to function appropriately in the Japanese setting.

The Epilogue touches on the project's limitations, and suggests possibilities for further followup studies.

This project shows that knowing Japanese mythology is productive in the cross-cultural pastoral context both in providing tools for ministry to the missionary/pastor, and in applying pastoral care correctly to Japanese clients.

Gary Wayne Parker D.Min.

This applied research project is intended to propose a strategy for planting churches in the unreached river communities in the Amazon region of Brazil. This strategy seeks to facilitate the planting of responsible and reproducing churches that can thrive under local leadership using local resources for generations to come. There are four hypotheses that guide this study: Balance in evangelism and discipleship in unreached communities must be maintained. Local leaders must be preserved for local churches without depending on external support. Cross-cultural missionaries must prepare local leaders to do the majority of the public teaching in the churches that are planted. Cross-cultural missionaries must train local leaders to be responsible for the leadership of the churches that are planted. These hypotheses were evaluated in the bibliographic and biblical research. The SEARA mission was researched to determine if these hypotheses are currently evident in the mission’s methodologies. The results of this research are presented followed by a proposed strategy to be implemented in the future.

Linus Aniekan Umoren C.M. D.Min.

Before the Second Vatican Council, it was commonplace to think that the new churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were pastoral communities. However, following the missiological breakthrough of the Second Vatican Council, the Church of Christ, which is by nature missionary, is fully present in all legitimate local assemblies united with their pastors. Today, Africa, Asia, and Latin America have the largest Christian communities and produce an increasing number of missionaries. Nevertheless, the contemporary global migration and the resulting multicultural societies challenge the priestly formation of these new missionaries.
To confront this contemporary challenge, the Congregation of the mission (The Vincentians), Province of Nigeria realizes the need to develop a formation curriculum that emphasizes the overall human development of the candidates for the priesthood and ensuring that preaching and mission in multicultural settings is a priority.
Therefore, this study undertakes an examination of the current formation curriculum concerning how it promotes the self-awareness of the missionaries and their ability to understand cultural differences. It examines postcolonial theories regarding the self-awareness of priests. Furthermore, it studies narrative preaching to the extent that it benefits multicultural preaching.
Moreover, the research establishes that adequate preparation for multicultural preaching needs a reframing of the Vincentian formation. This process will ultimately link the human formation of the priests to the missiological purpose of preaching in multicultural settings.
Consequently, this study recommends rethinking the formation program and the formation faculty. It provides a framework and practical suggestions for an extended and improved curriculum in forming the Nigerian Vincentian priests.

Wilson Fernando Dantas Soaris D.Min.

Although the numbers show people responding positively to the Gospel in Spain, the Autochthonous People of Spain [APS] and congregations composed of Spaniards are not following the same pattern. The reason for considerable growth in the nation without necessarily reaching the APS is due to the number of immigrants living in Spain, especially from Latin America.
This dissertation investigates the EC in the Autonomous Community of Madrid [ACM] from its beginnings and its methods used to transmit the Gospel to unbelievers, especially among the APS. The analysis seeks to determine why the majority of the ECs in Madrid do not have many APS congregants.

Nathan Kendall D.Min.

This phenomenological study investigated the characteristics of successful evangelists working in a trans-cultural West African Muslim context. The evangelists were part of a diaspora minority in Upper Guinea, where missions first arrived in 1919 but still shows few results. The potential evangelistic impact of the local Church, as the population of western missionaries diminishes, motivated research into what characteristics describe those diaspora believers who are successful at evangelizing their Muslim host populations. Interviews provided data to compare those who had successfully evangelized Muslims versus those who had only successfully evangelized non-Muslims. The results of the research point to four primary differentiators between the two groups became evident: a dedication to deep prayer, commitment to Bible study, trust in God refined through persecution, and participation in new Christian works. Additionally, some secondary characteristics were identified, including reading the Bible in multiple languages, an emphasis on external community, and evangelization of others as a means of spiritual growth. Lastly, some non-differentiating characteristics were identified: answered prayer, significant friendships across cultural and ethnic boundaries, and the sharing of learning. In other words, read your Bible and pray every day makes a difference.
Chapter 2 of the thesis explores God’s demonstrated desire for all nations to be saved, God’s use of diaspora God-fearers, and evangelism as an expected endeavor for the whole church. The chapter 3 literature review explores diaspora realities, including the reality of few scholarly resources coming out of French West Africa and nuances of diaspora in North America and Europe, with a preference to what has been reported by Africans. There was also a look at multicultural churches and one ethnic group evangelizing another, all within a West African, Islamic context. Not to be missed is the author’s contrarian view on heart-languages in urban, multi-cultural, West African churches.

R. Strickler D.Min.

The project set out to discover guidelines for how to best prepare Chinese bi-vocational Kingdom Workers to work and live missionally wherever God leads them. Of particular interest to the emerging missions candidates from China are Muslim peoples spread throughout the countries aligned with the emerging Belt Road Initiative.

A review of international marketplace ministry and business as mission practices was undertaken. The project research focuses on a sample of existing Chinese-led Business as Mission enterprises. Interviews were conducted with ten different Chinese executives or owners, located in seven different countries, including China proper.

Information on why companies chose to locate in an area and how the leaders were prepared, was elicited. Some correlation was made as to how the Chinese BAM companies conduct their businesses compared to the international BAM movement.

There was convergence between the two streams, and at the same time several distinct issues and opportunities emerged for the preparation of future Chinese workers. Among these are: solid teaching on the theology of work for both candidates and senders; the need for life-on- life discipleship training prior to going out; for those inexperienced in BAM or marketplace ministry, the recommendation for apprenticeship with an existing company prior to being deployed; and, the opportunity for Chinese BAM companies to capitalize on emerging green technologies.

The findings from these interviews provides material that will be used by the writer, his agency, and partners, in the preparation of bi-vocational Kingdom Workers. This will help new appointees they are coaching to live and work most effectively as they answer the call to go to unreached peoples in the newly opened Belt Road countries.

David Selvey D.Min.

A lack of cross-cultural training in the secular and religious sectors has contributed to attrition of valuable workers who are engaged in cross-cultural contexts. Until the twentieth century, the impact of cross-cultural factors on the effectiveness and efficiency of international workers was not a serious consideration in the English-speaking world.

Mission agency training remained somewhat static until end of the twentieth century when several studies reported on missionary attrition factors and multi-national entities began to evaluate their losses due to cross-cultural issues. ReMAP and ReMAPII collated much data on missionary attrition, identifying several factors as preventable. Several of these factors pointed back to potential weaknesses in preparation and screening missionary candidates for cross-cultural work.

In response to this problem, this study presents the need for missionary Pre-Field Orientation and Training (PFOT) and lays a foundation that includes biblical, theological, historical, and practical reasons. The research includes ancient and current literature as well as case studies of the Pre-Field Orientation and Training programs of three major evangelical mission agencies.

The study produced a PFOT plan for Faith Global Missions that utilizes current technology and educational methods. The work includes the process of plan development, evaluative input from missionary trainers and training experts, PFOT subjects, and pedagogy that may be useful to Faith Global Missions and other missionary training organizations.

William Boyd Guy

The purpose of this project was to research cross-cultural communication theory to equip short-term mission teams from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary serving in rural India. The emphasis of this project was to utilize cross-cultural communication theory as it pertains to ministry in the rural-cultural context of Indian villages. The need exists to equip individuals serving on mission trips to rural India for effective cross-cultural communication for which few models currently exist. This project begins with the project director’s research an ends with the development of curriculum to meet this need. Due to time constraints, the results are outside the scope of the project.

Yunhong Xuan D.Min.

This paper introduces the theory of ecosystem into missiology for the first time, and it puts forward the theory of mission ecosystem. The so-called theory of mission ecosystem refers to the healthy interaction among mission-driven church, mission-driven leaders, mission-driven disciples, missionaries, and mission strategies which form a system in world missions, thus establishing a complete mission ecosystem.
This paper emphasizes that God is the source of power in the entire mission ecosystem. Just as the energy of the natural ecosystem comes from the sun, the energy of the mission ecosystem comes from God. Missionary God is the core of mission, the driving force of mission, and the essence of mission. Missionary God is like the engine of the mission ministry. Only God-centered missions can receive a constant supply of missionary power.
This paper emphasizes that in the engineering of the mission ecosystem, the establishment of the mission-driven church, the cultivation of mission-driven leaders, the training of mission-driven disciples, the dispatching of mission-driven missionaries and the formulation of mission-driven strategy form a complete mission bio-chain. When the influence and interaction between them achieve a dynamic equilibrium, it enables effective world mission.
This paper provides strategies for establishing mission-driven church, cultivating mission-driven leaders, training mission-driven disciples, dispatching mission-driven missionaries and formulating mission-driven strategies.
Key Words: Mission Strategy, Missionary God, Missional Church, Missional Leader, Missional Discipleship, Missionary.