STEM Team to Dominican Republic

STEM Ministries, a nationally-recognized leader in Christian short-term missions, and Bethany International, a mission training and sending agency for career missionaries, are joining their respective short-term mission and career mission competencies beginning September 1, 2008 to expand the mobilization of short-term and career missionaries. STEM brings 24 years of recruiting, training, and sending thousands of short-term missionaries into more than two dozen locations around the world to the partnership. Bethany brings 63 years of training, sending, and supporting more than 700 cross-cultural missionaries into 40 different countries. Its Bethany College of Missions and Bethany International Ministries focus on mobilizing a new generation of missionaries.

Bethany CEO Dan Brokke notes, “STEM has pioneered church based short-term missions and has laid a foundation, both in relationship with church and with field mission leadership, to provide high impact mission service opportunities. We look forward to mobilizing together with STEM a whole new generation of short and long-term missionaries.”

STEM Founder and President Roger Peterson notes, “Our partnership with Bethany will allow STEM short-term mission teams to penetrate places we never dreamed possible. Bethany will help ramp up our administration of these multiplied short-term mission efforts, and also provide opportunities for training and career placement to those short-termers in whom God places a longer-term vision during their STEM short-term outreach.”

Dan Brokke
CEO & President, Bethany International
http://bcom.org/

Rev. Roger Peterson
Founder & President, STEM Int’l
http://stemintl.org/

His best-known recorded teaching was first shared at Bethany International. Reidhead felt God told him that he was not to speak on the subject he had prepared for that day?s message, but he was to share on something very different. The teaching “Ten Shekels and a Shirt” was the result. (Read Paris Reidhead’s account of how God led him that day).

“Ten Shekels” left Reidhead with the conviction that much of evangelism had adopted utilitarian and humanistic philosophies contradictory to Biblical teaching. The end of all being, he came to believe, was not the happiness of man, but the glorification of God.

Download audio file (10shekelsshirt.mp3)

Transcript here.

Jeff reported, “Your prayers worked! A couple weeks ago I asked you to pray because only three people had registered for the “Awaken to the World” missions-awareness course here in Ghana. The program started yesterday, and the number of registrants had reached 194! That’s a record for the first day. Thank you.”

Brazil

Pat, who has served with Bethany in Brazil for 33 years shared about the opening of a new missions training school, “The Bethany School of Missions was ‘opened for business’ on April 9th! We are happy to report that we had 29 students for the first module, well beyond our expectations! Not only that, but the good reports on the course required us to repeat the first module for some 10-15 others who missed it.”

Learn More

Teen Mania Ministries has successfully been reaching North American youth for 20 years. They’ve appeared before millions of teenagers presenting the gospel plainly to them through relevant means. They’ve taken thousands of young people on short-term missions trips all over the world and have had over 3000 high school graduates spend a year on their campus in a one-of-a-kind discipleship experience called the Honor Academy. In recent years they’ve developed second-year options for those who graduate from the Honor Academy to train them according to individual callings. This is where Bethany College of Missions comes in. If an Honor Academy graduate desires to go in to foreign missions, they can choose BCOM for their Bachelors in Cross-Cultural Studies, a program that can get them to the field in one year as part of their training and in three to four years as a career missionary.

Teen Mania has always been passionate about mobilizing young people into full-time, foreign missions and through a new partnership with Bethany College of Missions, that dream is connected to possibility.

Sustainable

GO¹⁰⁰ waited to officially start the program until it was certain that the Nigerian church and leadership were able to not only maintain, but also grow and develop the program on their own.

Passion for Evangelism

Africans have caught the vision to bring the gospel of salvation in Christ to peoples that are still unreached. Western missionaries have done a marvelous job. They have sacrificed and suffered much to reach Africa, but many unreached people groups still remain. Now, the African church has caught the missionary vision, and they have called for help. They want to be trained to do cross-cultural ministry!

Paul Strand (front row, 4th from left) at a NEMA workshop last year

Nigerian Evangelical Missions Association (NEMA)

More than 100 African denominations and missions organizations are members of NEMA. Together, they have sent out more than 4,500 missionaries, with over 1,000 of them going outside Africa to minister. But they recognize that most of these missionaries were not trained and many are returning burned out and crying for help and training.

• NEMA Web Site

Multiplying Training Schools

At least 400 Bible schools are operating in Nigeria alone. Many want to offer missionary training. Teachers from these schools are coming to take the courses and learn how to teach them in their own schools. Our task is not just to teach the knowledge and skills, but to show them how to teach it and give them the materials to do so.

Please Pray!

We believe that God has opened this door of service for us. But we need His power and alert sensitivity to do the task day-by-day. We need His protection, especially as Muslims around the world lash out in anger over various issues. In return, we need to show love and understanding.

During my first trip to East Timor, I heard a story that blessed and encouraged me and blesses nearly everyone who hears it. Two of Bethany’s early missionaries, Herb and Ruth Billman, were always eager to be led by the Holy Spirit. They studied Portuguese and went to Guinea-Bissau. In 1962 they felt a call to East Timor. Their leaders and friends advised them not to go. “You won’t find housing and you won’t get a visa to stay,” they argued.

But the Spirit was leading, so they went without the approval of their friends and colleagues. To their disappointment things turned out just as they had been told. They lived in a rundown shack with their four children and battled unsuccessfully to get a visa. After two months they had to leave. It seemed to everyone that they had not discerned God’s will and their work had been a failure. But during those two months they led one couple to an experience of salvation in Christ. The couple stayed true and started a church that multiplied and now has 14,500 members scattered throughout the nation and on the island of Etuaro, three hours away by boat. A failure? It was the most fruitful two months they ever spent!

Last September, on my second trip to East Timor, I preached in one of their churches. It was a thrill to see what God has done. We never know what may result from sowing the gospel seed. It does not return to Him void! Both Herb Billman and the founding pastor have now died, but their widows still keep in touch.

Most of my time in Timor was spent with Youth With a Mission (YWAM), represented by an international team composed of Brazilians and Australians who are heavily involved in discipleship and mercy ministries. I gave classes in the morning, had one-on-one time with missionaries in the afternoon and taught another group of students at night.

I was impressed by the work of the young people who are making a terrific impact on the country. Since East Timor gained independence, they have adopted Portuguese as an official language, along with their native Tetum. Since the children must now learn Portuguese, YWAM is opening a preschool to get them started. Because of our connections there, we hope to recruit many more Brazilians to work in this harvest field!

George Foster, a former Bethany missionary to Brazil, now travels around the world, providing pastoral care and encouragement to many missionaries.

Tim Freeman (second from left) Sudhir Isaiah and Vasanthi Isaiah install Ezekiel Jako (center) as the director of the East Africa Hub.

Paul will be teaching cross-cultural communications, ethnographic research, and cultural anthropology to the 28 students currently enrolled in the program. Please pray for Paul as he helps to equip the next generation of Ethiopian cross-cultural missionaries! And pray for the Ethiopian Kale Heywet believers as they pursue their vision to start eight new missionary training schools focused on the least-reached.

Ethiopian missionaries in training: class of 2005 with GO¹⁰⁰ consultant, Dr. John Kayser.

Historical Shift in East Africa

Kenya?s Finish The Task is an interdenominational missions movement mobilized around the commitment to reach each of Kenya?s unreached people groups.

In 1997 a delegation of 80 Kenyan church leaders attended the Global Congress on World Evangelization (GCOWE) in South Africa. The GCOWE challenge to reach the least-reached peoples struck a deep chord within the Kenyan delegates who represented many denominations across the nation. Returning home they began to pray together about what role God would have them fill in reaching the unreached in their own backyard. This season of prayer led to the formation of Finish The Task (FTT), an inter-denominational movement of Kenyan churches committed to mobilizing, training and sending missionaries to engage each unreached people group in Kenya.

This was seen as a strategic shift in the direction of the church in East Africa. Now some countries which have long been missionary receiving nations are mobilizing members and resources to ?finish the task? of world evangelization. They are becoming true missions-sending forces.

Bethany?s eight year partnership with FTT has been a strategic and fruitful one. The growing emphasis on Africans reaching Africans has led to further opportunities for Bethany?s GO¹⁰⁰ team to come alongside partners and encourage them in their vision to reach the least-reached peoples.

GO¹⁰⁰ Partners in Tanzania and Burundi

In 2006, GO¹⁰⁰ began working with the Evangelistic Fellowship of African Churches in Burundi (FECABU) and the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa (PEFA) in Tanzania. The goal is to mobilize the Church and establish two new inter-denominational missionary training schools. These competency-oriented schools of missions will aim to equip field missionaries with the knowledge, character and skill sets necessary to cross cultural barriers with the gospel.

FECABU is a fraternity of evangelical churches in Burundi that has seen exponential growth over the past decade. Since the war in Burundi started 13 years ago, FECABU has grown from 40 churches to approximately 440 churches nationwide.

PEFA is an indigenous African network of churches established in 1963. Today, PEFA is comprised of approximately 450 churches across Tanzania and Kenya, with the greatest concentration of churches located in the area around Lake Victoria. The network ministries include church-planting, outreach to refugees and orphans, and film-making ministry, among others.

FECABU leadership team and missionary to Tanzania, Nathan Rasmussen (front row, 2nd from right) with GO¹⁰⁰ consultants Bill Kieselhorst (back row, 3rd from left) and Paul Strand (front row, middle).

Vision Casting

A year-long campaign is underway to mobilize and train the Tanzanian and Burundian churches to take ownership of Christ?s Great Commission mandate. Network leaders have a strong vision for a missions movement within Tanzania and Burundi and have begun to strategically impart that vision to the broader Body of Christ.

In the process the aim is threefold: to identify and commission qualified candidates for missionary training, to create structures for sending graduates to engage the least-reached peoples with the gospel, and to make provisions for member care and on-going support to fielded cross-cultural workers, with the goal of long-term fruitfulness and sustainability.

Global Cooperation

GO¹⁰⁰ consultant, Paul Strand, has been working closely with brothers Nathan and Steve Rasmussen to train leaders and work through the process of developing the new schools. The two missionaries, originally from Cloquet, MN, have more than 30 years combined service in Tanzania.

In October 2006, the partners collaborated for a 4-day consultation in Bujumbura, Burundi to train 200 pastoral overseers. The leaders received training in the biblical, cultural, historical and strategic perspectives on reaching the least-reached peoples. Each of these pastors oversees 4 to 12 local churches. Similar consultations were held in Tanzania.

The momentum continued in January 2007 when eighty-six church leaders from 25 denominations were trained in the western region of Tanzania. Bethany?s Africa Area Coordinator, Dan Germo, traveled from Kenya to join the teaching team, presenting 8 hours of the 24 teaching hours. Another 60 leaders were trained in Mwanza in February.

Nathan Rasmussen (front, left) and BIM Africa Area Coordinator, Dan Germo (far right, middle row), collaborated to train 86 leaders from 25 denominations in January.

Mobilizing a Grass-roots Movement

This year?s focus on mobilizing the churches includes 5 District-level missions conferences in Burundi to train 2700 church leaders. PEFA leaders plan 78 grass-roots seminars involving 206 churches in Tanzania. The seminars are designed to train thousands of church leaders over the next twelve months to provide leadership for the emerging missions movement.

Nathan Rasmussen training Tanzanian leaders to mobilize their churches for a nation-wide missions movement.

Stoking the Fire

The long-term impact of these seminars will depend upon a determined and on-going mobilization strategy. The mobilization campaign is designed to build a critical mass of missions-committed congregations and to raise up a prayer movement for the least-reached peoples and the national cross-cultural workers who are trained and sent by the churches to reach them. But the task of mobilization requires perseverance. After visiting one East African nation last year, GO¹⁰⁰ consultant, Bill Kieselhorst wrote, ?Church mobilization for missions requires constant face-to-face contact?endless networking and faithful communicating?the fire [of missions] needs constant stoking by those of us who are called to tend the fire.?