• MOP Jan 2013 Schedule
• MOP 2013 Reflection sheet > PDF format
• MOP 2013 Philippines Reflection Sheet > Excel format
• MOP Curriculum Guide
• Program Objectives for MOP
• Evaluation

• Description - This is an introductory session where we explore participant’s expectations for our MOP program and then connect that to their expectations for their anticipated first 4-year term of missionary service. When expectations for ministering cross culturally collide with the realities of daily life and work in a foreign culture missionaries many times experience disappointment. This session will help participants identify their personal expectations for their first term and discuss healthy ways to deal with unmet expectations.
• Objectives

1. Each participant will identify personal expectations for their first term of service as it relates to a list of potential culture stressors.
2. Each participant will be able discuss ways to deal with unmet expectations.

• Handouts: Expectations handout

• Description – What are our underlying values and priorities? What are the underlying values and priorities of the culture we are entering into as missionaries? Using the “Basic Values Inventory” from Ministering Cross-Culturally by Lingenfelter & Mayers, we will identify our tendencies on 6 pairs of contrasting traits. We will discuss the various values represented in these traits (e.g. time-oriented vs. event oriented, task oriented vs. people oriented) and the necessity of learning to work together with people who have different values.
• Objectives

1. To complete the “Basic Values Inventory” by Lingenfelter and Mayers.
2. To identify challenges faced when basic values collide on a multi-cultural team of missionaries and national coworkers.

• Handouts:
  • Working Crossculturally handout
  • Questionnaire

• Description – This session begins with a card game called 5 Tricks. This game is used to facilitate a discussion on culture and culture stress. After the game and initial debrief, we continue the session with a discussion of the reality of culture stress, some signs of cultures stress, and ways to deal with culture stress.
• Objectives -

1. To realize that different cultures perceive things differently, and/or play by different rules.
2. To realize that cultural differences may bring more of a “clash” when hidden amidst apparent similarities.
3. To identify signs of culture stress.

• Handouts: What is Culture Stress

• Description - The objective of this session is to examine some of the factors in effective teamwork when team members are drawn from varying cultural backgrounds. The session will address the importance of sensitivity to SEND’s multicultural nature and increasing internationalization, dimensions of cultural values that distinguish different ethnic peoples with a view to understanding the impact of cultural differences on relationships in a ministry team, and fundamental principles for effective multicultural teaming in the various contexts of SEND.
• Objectives

1. Express the significance of the corporate SEND value of “unity in diversity” for mission relationships;
2. Explain different dimensions of cultural values in communication and decision making and their impact on relationships and team ministry;

• Handout: Teaming Expectations

• Description - We live in an interconnected and fast paced world. As missionaries we are called to enter into a new culture and engage with the people in that culture in order to build meaningful relationships with people for the sake of the gospel. How do we do that in a world where email, Skype, texting, Facebook and cheap flights make it difficult to disengage from our own home culture? How do we avoid the temptation to seek to meet all of our emotional needs in the expatriate community or in our home country, rather than through friendships in the host culture? With the incarnation of Christ as a starting point, this seminar examines the pressure our connected world brings to us and discusses principles of servanthood that can help missionaries leave and cleave.
• Objectives

1. To examine the incarnation of Christ and identify qualities of Jesus’ life and ministry that can guide our entrance into a foreign culture.
2. To discuss how instant communication will both enhance and inhibit a missionary’s acculturation process and list some boundaries they would like to put in place for communication back home.
3. To identify the stages of cross cultural servanthood and illustrate those stages from Christ’s life or from servants they know.

• Handout: Leave and Cleave

• Description - This session casts a vision for facilitating church planting in our context and reviews what Ephesians 3:8-12 says about the centrality of the Church in God’s overall plan. This session concludes with an interactive presentation of the Scoggins and Rockford church planting phases using the NCE plant analogy. The interactive presentation will facilitate the retention of the 6 basic Church planting phases.
• Objectives

1. Each participant will have a deeper appreciation for the role of the Church in God’s plan for reaching the world.
2. Participants will be able to list the 6 Church planting states.

• Handout: Church Planting Phases v4.doc

• Description - So many of us feel like we do not have the gift of evangelism but through this session each person will realize they can do life on life discipleship that will lead to taking people from where they are to where God wants them. The purpose of this session is to show how relationship building is discipleship, which can become evangelism, as God through our lives and through his Word will bring others to himself.
• Objectives

1. To give each person tools that can be used in building relationships, that will bring people into a relationship with Jesus Christ through life on life discipleship.
2. Each person will understand how they can do evangelism through discipleship.
3. Each person will understand how they can disciple others into a relationship with Christ and in turn those they disciple will have the tools and the desire to disciple others into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

• Handout: Disciple-Making

• Description - SEND International is committed to teaming, but teams in SEND vary greatly in style, function, size and leadership. This session will explore expectations we have of our future team, and discuss the challenges that we face in creating functional teams on our different areas. We will seek to understand the role of the team leader and why team leaders are often reluctant to serve in this role
• Objectives

1. To identify personal expectations new missionaries have in the area of teaming
2. To discuss challenges that missionaries will face in working on teams
3. To compare the different types of teams in SEND
4. To identify teaming principles through a team-building exercise

• Handout:
  • Teaming handout January 2012.docx,
  • Multicultural Teaming
• Links:
  • Missions Teams in SEND
  • Team Building on SEND U wiki

• Description – Where possible, SEND seeks to partner with the existing local churches in the host culture rather than starting our own “SEND brand” of churches. We work with and serve these existing churches to assist them in their church planting efforts. These partnerships provide many unique opportunities for SEND, but also present some unique challenges, particularly to new missionaries who are seeking to find their place of ministry alongside national pastors and existing ministries.
• Objectives:

1. To identify the reasons why SEND partners with existing national churches and some of the challenges that come with that partnership
2. To develop a plan for how missionaries will learn more about the host culture church
3. To develop a plan for how missionaries will seek to establish their credibility with the host culture church

• Handouts:
  • Working with the National Church handout
  • SEND Manual's Statement on National Church

• Description - These sessions are an interactive, discussion-oriented focus on participants walk with God as a missionary, or maintaining and nurturing an ever deepening intimacy with God while serving as a missionary. These sessions conclude with a Day Alone with God scheduled during the second week.
• Objectives:

1. Remind participants of how critical their walk with God is to their success and fruitfulness as missionaries and have them do a self-evaluation.
2. Motivate participants to commit to making intimacy with Christ their number one priority, to resolve to be like Mary (rather than Martha), and to develop a plan for how they will do so.
3. Provide participants with practical suggestions for how to nurture intimacy with Christ on a daily basis.
4. Help participants prepare for a meaningful Day Alone with God.

• Handout: Helps for Day Alone with God

• Description - How is it possible for you to get everything you need to do, done? By living intentionally you will be able to give order to your life and work as a missionary. The material will be divided into four basic topics: 1) Guard Your Heart; 2) Minister from Your Strengths; 3) Figure out the Big Rocks; and 4) Connect the Compass to the Clock & Develop a Rhythm.
• Objectives

1. To develop the conviction that intentionality matters and that intentionality begins with our spiritual lives.
2. To develop a growing sense of self-awareness as to your unique design.
3. To initiate movement in your life toward a balance in ministry responsibilities.
4. To experience an introduction to a planning process using Key Result Areas, a five-year plan and a system of regular review.

• Handouts:
  • Intentional Living
  • S H A P E profile
  • Ministry Description form
  • Personal Retreat Day

• Description - This session will identify key habits of successful marriages in cross-cultural settings that promote continuously growing and God-honoring marital oneness as a platform for a fruitful missionary career.
• Objectives

1. To identify God’s purposes in biblical marriage
2. To identify key habits of successful marriages in the missionary setting.
3. Reflect on the impact of personality type, season of life, and attitudes toward change on their marriage.
4. Sense freedom to seek help needed in dealing with transitional stress on their relationship.
5. Identify one or two habits for development in the coming year.

• Handout: Nurturing Your Marriage outline.doc

• Description - This session will focus on the various aspects of sexual purity for singles and married couples, explore reasons why maintaining sexual purity might be harder for missionaries than for Christians living in their home country, and help the participants begin to develop a strategy for maintaining their sexual purity.
• Objectives -

1. Identify sexual or other issues from their past that they should consider discussing with a trained counselor.
2. Understand the dynamics of sexual temptation.
3. Recognize the dangers inherent in Internet Pornography.
4. Understand why moral purity is often harder to maintain for on-field missionaries.
5. Value the importance of having accountability partners that one can be completely honest and transparent with.
6. Develop a strategy for maintaining internal moral purity as individuals in their thought and emotional life.
7. Develop a strategy for maintaining external moral purity in their relationships with others either as a married couple or as a single.

• Handouts:
  • MP Growth and Strategy--couple.doc
  • MP Growth and Strategy--ind.doc
  • Bible Study for Men - Purity
  • Bible Study for Women - Purity
  • Purity on the Mission Field

• Description – Many missionaries engage in work in another culture with little or no experience and understanding of Spiritual Warfare. Since many come from a western world view that is blind to many of the phenomena and realities of the supernatural world, this isn’t too surprising. The reality is that many missionaries will face spiritual warfare like never before once they arrive on the field. This session will look at spiritual warfare in the ministry of Jesus, levels of spiritual warfare, the realities of spiritual warfare in new converts, and have a panel discussion with SEND International missionaries who have served in a variety of countries. An extensive outline and list of resources is provided.
• Handouts:
• 1MOPJan2012(SW) Expect Spiritual Attack-ok.doc
• 1MOPJan2012 Spiritual Warfare Intro.rtf
• 1MOPJan2012 Spiritual Warfare Eph6-10ff.rtf

• Description – Sometimes participants can walk away from an intense training program like MOP and be overwhelmed with information. Over the course of our two week training program participants will meet in small groups several times to get to know one another better, ask questions, and reflect on what they are learning. This is an informal time for sharing and prayer led by the staff of the International Office of SEND.
• Objectives

1. Discuss challenges presented in daily sessions and the participant’s response to those challenges.
2. Encourage one another in prayer as participants

• Description - We all long to hear those cherished word “well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness.” But what does it look like to do your ministry “well”? What serves as authentic measures of “success”? We will see that missionaries define success differently and that one’s understanding of success change over the life of a missionary career. A study of Paul’s measure of success in his apostolic ministry will guide us in our development of a personal definition of success for our first term of service.
• Objectives

1. To discuss various ways that missionaries define whether they have been successful or not
2. To study the Apostle Paul’s markers of successful ministry.
3. To write out a personal definition of success for the first term
4. To recognize that SEND U serves to help SEND missionaries become effective

• Handouts: Well Done
• Additional resources - Ken's blog posts on this subject:
• Do we really need to demonstrate our credibility?
• A clear proclamation of the Gospel
• The evidence of life change in others (The resume is staring you in the face)
• Joyful acceptance of hardships
• How do we define success as missionaries?

• Description - This session opens with a reminder of what lies at the core of SEND: seeking and saving the lost (Luke 19:10). This brief overview of the origins and growth of SEND International highlights key turning points in the mission’s history. A discussion of what our values look like in action is followed up with what it means to live in covenant community. A brief description of our structure is included.
• Objectives

1. To establish the framework for why we do our work
2. To understand the rich heritage from where we have come
3. To get acquainted with our core values and be able to articulate what they look like in action.
4. To be able to describe what it means to be a covenant community on task

• Handout: history handout

• Description - What does it look like to mobilize a person into missions? What are our biggest opportunities? Or biggest barriers? How can everyone be involved in mobilization? This session will also describe SEND’s strategies for mobilizing non North American missionaries onto our teams.
• Objectives

1. To clearly understand what mobilization all involves
2. To gain a vision for “internationalization”

• Handout: Mobilize handout

• Description - We will never establish reproducing churches unless we are effective at engaging the unreached. Through case studies and group discussion, we will examine what effective engagement looks like. Special attention will be given to understanding the various components of a typical journey to Jesus.
• Objectives

1. To gain an understanding of what all is involved in effective engagement
2. To be able to describe a typical “journey to Jesus”
3. To determine what makes up an effective gospel presentation

• Handout: Engage handout

• Description - We are not trying to bring “church in a box” to every people. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to how people gather and worship our LORD. Yet there are some common markers of a faithful community of Christ. What are those? This seminar will help articulate some irreducible minimums of church and illustrate how you can pursue establishing a reproducing church.
• Objectives

1. To be able to articulate our key objectives in church planting
2. To gain some insight on what the process of church planting looks like

• Handout: Establish handout

• Description - Why do we devote a 2+ hour session to Safety and Security? Our manual states that, “SEND International believes that our members are our greatest resource. In the fulfillment of our mission and commitment to our membership, SEND International endeavors to provide our members with security resources and knowledge to enable them to function effectively as Christ’s servants.” This session highlights policies and procedures to keep you and your family safe while living abroad. We touch on travel, evacuation, government registration, and our Child Protection Policy.
• Objectives

1. To be familiar with our Safety and Security Manual and Child Protection Manual.
2. To understand safety precautions while traveling and living abroad.

• Handouts:
• Critical Incident Notification
• CHILD PROTECTION CHECKLIST

Handouts:

• SEND-U Presentation
• Missionary Growth Plan & Self-Assessment
• MOP-Recap Program Explanation
• Am I Ready for Coaching