March 2015 - The SEND U Blog

In our mission organization, we provide a coach for all of our new missionaries at the mid-point of their first term. This coach meets with the new missionary for a total of 6 times over a 3-month period to help them walk through the process of doing a self-assessment of their spiritual, physical, emotional and relational health. This 3-month coaching period is called MOP-up (Member Orientation Program under pressure). SEND’s pre-field training is called MOP or Member Orientation Program, and MOP-up is a follow-up event a few years later. The whole program seeks to 1) reinforce the pre-field learning, 2) identify what has been learned experientially since arriving on the field, and 3) plan future learning goals for the rest of the first term. You can read more about this training for first-term missionaries at this link. At the end of the MOP-up experience, we ask the coachees to give… Read the whole post

Review of John Mark Terry and J.D. Payne, Developing A Strategy For Missions: A Biblical, Historical, and Cultural Introduction, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013. When I was in Seminary, one of my professors began “Pastoral Duties” class by saying, “The church should celebrate Columbus Day – He set out not knowing where he was going, when he arrived he didn’t know where he was, and he did it with someone else’s money – that’s what we often do in the church.” Historians may want to nitpick with elements of that statement but the professor made his point that strategic planning is important. John Mark Terry and J. D. Payne have provided missionaries a helpful resource for developing strategy for missions. As they point out in the introduction (viii), this is the first comprehensive book on mission strategy since Dayton and Fraser’s book, Planning Strategies for World Evangelization, 1980, revised 1990… Read the whole post

Blog topics

Month: March 2015

The Value of Coaching

Developing a Strategy for Missions: A Book Review