My Current MTW Project

The following is part of a prayer letter I just sent out. If you don’t receive our prayer letter but would like to, let me know and I’ll put you on the list.

I have been asked by MTW to design and implement an apprenticeship training program for all new missionaries heading to Latin America.

The purpose of this project is to make MTW’s church planting ministry in Latin America more effective by building on and deepening the training of MTW’s missionaries going to Latin America in how to plant and revitalize churches cross-culturally by…

1. Deepening their understanding of how to plant missional churches cross-culturally by dealing biblically and practically with the nuances of the challenge within a Latin American context.
2. Showing these new missionaries how to make effective and practical use of their theoretical training in the areas of cross-cultural church planting and teamwork.
3. Involving them in specific, supervised and targeted church planting experiences in conjunction with MTW’s church planting/revitalization team in Costa Rica, the Costa Rican leaders with whom they partner, other invited Latin American leaders, and other MTW personnel.
4. Extending their stay in Costa Rica for language training by up to one year in order to accomplish these goals.

Generally speaking, the training experiences will include:

1. Observing specific church planting skills performed by more experienced missionaries and Latin America leaders.
2. Attempting to put those skills into practice in real cross-cultural situations.
3. Receiving feedback from more experienced missionaries and Latin American leaders on how well they did.
4. Receiving further instruction and practice opportunities that bring their theoretical knowledge, practice and motivation together until they learn how to do it effectively.

This project is extremely important because it bridges the existing gap between what the PCA is so good at—knowledge—and its practical implementation. Currently the training in cross-cultural church planting and team ministry that MTW missionaries receive is largely inside the classroom. The Missionary Apprenticeship Program seeks to minimize learning by trial and error and to maximize and leverage the expertise of experienced missionaries and Latin America leaders for the benefit of new missionaries.

The project is also important because it gives Latin American leaders some influence in how we train our personnel. Latin American leaders throughout the region have requested that MTW missionaries learn better how to minister cross-culturally.