Sojourn
Written October 14, 2015
Sojourn is a discipleship and ministry training program designed to invest in, train up, and send out the next generation of missionaries, teachers, leaders, mothers,….members of the church. It will function as a gap year or “pause” year for young people ages 18-23 who want to take a year to live and serve abroad. During that time they will study God’s word, learn more about how God has created them uniquely to serve His Kingdom, be trained hands-on in ministry and missions, and then be sent out as a short term missionary with MTW.
The entire program will take place outside of the United States. Students will spend their first 8 months at the Sojourn base. They will be in classes in the morning and serving together in the church and community in the afternoons. They will be living in community with one another, be mentored and poured into by program staff members, read through the entire Bible, and grow in their understanding of how they are made for ministry.
The morning class structure is split in half. The first half will be taught by pastors who will walk students through an overview of the Bible from its beginning to the end. The second half of the morning will focus on lots of questions, using scripture as our guide as we seek to answer them. They are big questions falling under the main themes the character of God, worldview, gifts, and mission. Major guiding questions that molded this part of the curriculum are Who is God, What is God’s Mission, Who am I, How has He created me to love and serve Him, What is the Church about, and How do we do missions/ministry?
In the afternoons the students and staff will be taking the worldview and missions training they are receiving and they will go out into their host community to serve. They will do this by working alongside the local church and doing outreach to those outside of the church in the community. They will also be involved in small groups with one another and will have one-on-one discipleship with a member of the staff regularly.
After 8 months of teaching, training, serving, and living in community with one another, students will be sent out all over the globe to serve for 3 months as interns with MTW missionaries in the field. The hope is that they will be well equipped, not just for the 3 months on the field, but for a lifetime of ministry wherever the Lord may lead them. Students will return to the base for one week at the end of their internship for a debrief and a time to tell one another of the work the Lord has done.
What I was after with this program can really be summed up in one word: Purpose. My heart is that the Lord would use Sojourn to raise up the next generation of the Church to understand God’s purpose for the world, His purpose for their hearts, their purpose in His plan, and that they would be transformed, prepared, and sent out to live: on purpose.