Cross-cultural training on the field. Great Commission living in action.
Why is a global perspective important in this day and age? That’s a
broad topic . . . but a simple answer would be that the world is at our
doorstep, and we have been commissioned to reach it with the Gospel. At
Northland, we’re all about the Great Commission. It may be that our
graduates will serve in the midst of an unreached people group, or
perhaps they will be active participants of a support network back
home. In either case, their training should include experiences that
would take them beyond theory. They should be able to see, touch, hear,
smell, and taste the world that belongs to the Ecuadorian Quichua
mountain people, or the francophone urbanites of Montreal, or the
Mukhuwa tribesmen of Mozambique. One could only imagine what might
happen if every graduate of Northland had a global perspective because
each participated in a program where he or she actually engaged another
culture for a significant length of time. The missions programs of our
churches would be infused with new energy; missionary recruits would be
better prepared, and the flow of new candidates would increase; new
fields would be opened, because the pioneering spirit of veteran
missionaries would be captured by these new recruits.
Northland’s GO Study Abroad
program is designed to allow students to spend one semester of their
college experience in hands-on ministry in a cross-cultural setting,
while maintaining the sequence of their academic program. This program
is a unique blend of internship training combined with Northland Online
courses that extends for fifteen weeks or the normal length of a
semester. The internship portion of this program provides for
cross-cultural ministry involvement, mentoring, and evaluation by the
missionary who lives on the field. The online course work adds
additional credits (number of credits may vary) to the student’s load,
providing the needed classes for the student to continue his program of
study while on the field. GO Study Abroadwill launch in the fall of
2009 with five pilot students studying in France, Zambia, Chile,
Australia, and China. For the program launch, we have specifically
chosen these sites based on their location and the various challenges
each location might present. The program is designed so that any number
of students can participate in a given semester. So, in the immediate
future, we anticipate upwards of twenty—and later even up to eighty or
one hundred—students participating in GO Study Abroad each semester.
To learn more about the GO Study Abroad program or to chat with someone at the Northland Center for Global Opportunities, click here to contact us.