Bethany International: G0 100

About Global Outfitting¹⁰⁰ (GO¹⁰⁰)

Solid Missions Training Needed

Today, Asian, African and Latin churches are mobilizing to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission. Requests for help for missionary training are accelerating dramatically from denominations across the non-Western world as the vision for their involvement in missions grows.

While there are about 118,000 Western missionaries on the field, the non-Western world has already mobilized more than 100,000 missionaries and this number is increasing rapidly. Within the next 10 years it is possible that this number could rise to more than 400,000.

There is a desperate need for solid training for these new national missionaries, but adequate cross-cultural training is unavailable in many countries. Bethany International is committed to helping meet this urgent need.

BETHANY’S ROLE

Bethany’s passion is to outfit men and women for godliness and world missions. Bethany is committed to greatly enhancing its efforts to train and send missionaries around the globe.

Through GO100, Bethany’s goal is to assist the church and national Christian agencies to develop national missionary training schools and sending agencies so that national workers are multiplied and mobilized to evangelize their own least-reached people!

Bethany’s 60 years of global missions experience has positioned us for maximum impact through consultancy and the training of national missions trainers. During the past year our team of experienced missions consultants has assisted our network of partners in developing five new schools and we will add at least six additional schools in 2006. Twenty schools have been established since 2002.

In order to effectively launch 100 new schools, Bethany has developed a basic six-step plan on how to equip and outfit a typical school. The steps are as follows:

Research and Initial Contact–National leaders and/or missionaries on the field request Bethany assistance to establish missionary training.
Initial Consultancy–Initial consultancy occurs and a broad framework is developed to get the project moving.
Second Consultancy–Secondary consultancy develops program specifics and assesses staff training needs.
National Leadership Buy-In–The results of the consultancies are communicated to and accepted by national leadership.
Developing Resources–The school opens. Bethany assists by sending teachers and trainers and by helping with the practical equipping of the school.
Assessment: School Evaluation

The potential to reach the least-reached peoples in the most difficult regions of the globe is tremendous. Training schools are multiplying in nations such as Nepal, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malawi, Ghana and a host of other strategic countries.

Bethany’s Strategy

A strategic component to enable the completion of GO100 is the development of regional mission resource centers called Hubs. Hubs serve four main functions:

Missions Mobilization
Missionary Training School Development
Development of Sending Structures
Partnership and Network Facilitation

Ideally, each Hub will assist in launching multiple missionary training schools in a given linguistic or cultural region, like Anglophone Africa. Each hub will help build a regional network of schools designed to empower nationals to mobilize, train and send Christians for missions.

This decentralizes the task of starting 100 new missionary training centers around the globe, and avoids unwanted dependency. In the next three years (by 2008), our goal is to establish at least 10 regional Hubs. By 2012, we hope to see these Hubs graduate at least 800 missionaries each year, and establish 100 national missionary training and sending schools.

Missions Mobilization

by Bethany missionary Jeff Korum in Ghana

In 2005, we (GlobeServe Ghana) and the Ghana Evangelism Committee organized two eight-week missions-awareness courses called “Awaken to the World.” The first was held in April and May; the second was held from October to December. The two lecture series featured the leaders of major denominations and ministries with the purpose of enlightening churches about the need to reach the unreached people groups and villages in Ghana. Prior to the first course, we were cautioned not to anticipate a large crowd (because missions usually isn’t a large draw), but more that 170 pastors and church leaders signed up. In all, nearly 300 people attended the two courses. Both the number of participants and the immediate impact on their lives exceeded our expectations!

The impact has been so encouraging that we are now planning a second-level “Awaken to the World II” for April-May 2006. Because of the high-quality instruction, an accredited university is offering a year’s worth of credit for those who complete courses I & II.

One pastor who attended recently told us that the course “revolutionized” his ministry by redirecting his church’s focus to the unreached. Another pastor said that the lecture series revived him spiritually, and he immediately planted a church in a remote village.