How to Integrate Missions into Your Chapter
by Rich HendersonPrayer meetings
1. Regularly pray for the area(s)of the world where you have ongoing relationships/programs.
2. During "regular" prayer meetings, periodically pray about whom the Lord would send out from your chapter into cross-cultural mission.
3. Occasionally have international students come talk about their countries and cultures. Then pray for them and their country.
4. Pray through InterVarsity's purpose statement.
5. Integrate prayer for chapter members involved in cross-cultural ministry into the regular prayer meetings - before they go and after they return. Create a chapter listserve to distribute prayer requests for those participating in cross-cultural ministry while they are on the project.
6. Periodically pray through the world section of the newspaper.
7. During a prayer meeting, pray for the country on a label of an article of your clothing.
Small Group Bible Studies
1. Add one question to the Bible study each week such as, "Does this passage
have anything to say about God's heart for the world?" or "What does this passage
say about God's heart for those of differing ethnicities or cultures?"
2. Get your small group members involved with International students (i.e. as conversation partners, by leading a GIG (Group Investigating God), inviting international students to your group to talk about life in their country).
3. Find a creative way for your members to get involved with people who are ethnically, culturally, or economically different than themselves (i.e. serving at a homeless shelter, living on a different part of campus).
4. Encourage members to get cross-cultural ministry training such as Student Training In Missions (STIM) or a Perspectives missions course.
5. Be active in supporting those from your group/chapter who are going on and returning from cross-cultural ministry experiences.
6. Check out the follow-up options on "urbana.org" together and help each other figure out appropriate next steps.
7. Go on a cross-cultural project as a group.
Large Group Meetings
1. Work to integrate God's heart for the world into one aspect of the large
group meeting each week.
2. Specifically focus on countries to which students from the chapter have gone and are going (i.e. have international students from those countries speak about their homeland and culture, have chapter members research various aspects of these countries and give reports during large group meetings).
3. Regularly have missions-minded speakers (i.e. have at least one talk per year where mission as a part of discipleship is presented, have testimonies from Christian international students, have missionaries speak - possibly on "non-missions" topics such as prayer, dependence on God, or the power of the Holy Spirit).
4. Reflect the world in musical worship by incorporating songs from different languages/styles into the normal repertoire of the chapter.
5. Think of creative ways to involve members who have been and will be involved in cross-cultural ministry.
6. Do icebreakers from another culture.
7. Do announcements in another language and see who can figure them out. Eventually give them in English.
Retreats and Conferences
1. Pray and take an offering for your overseas partners.
2. Arrange for students/staff from your overseas partnership to be at the event.
3. Periodically get missionaries or international believers to be speakers.
4. Incorporate worship songs from several different languages/styles.
5. Have one meal be an unusual international meal.
6. Have a time and place for interested students to talk with staff or students who have been involved with cross-cultural ministry.
7. Play games from another culture.
Fun Stuff
1. Have a "dress foreign" party/dance playing international music.
2. Participate in some of the events sponsored by the International Student Office or other ethnic/cultural organizations on campus or in the community.
3. Have a scavenger hunt - gathering objects (and/or people) from different countries.
4. Form an "international restaurant of the month" club.
5. Have a "proverbs" party with international students - sharing common proverbs from different cultures.
6. During a social gathering, stop and give a prize to the person who is wearing clothing made in the greatest number of different countries.
7. Celebrate a few international holidays throughout the year.
Leadership
1. Look at Scripture and prayer together regularly to grow in your understanding
of the centrality of God's heart for the nations.
2. Implement a "2-2-2" strategy - getting chapter members on a trajectory of 2 week, 2 month, and 2 year cross-cultural involvement.
3. Talk specifically about how missions ties in with your chapter goals for the semester.
4. Work with missions leadership in the chapter to brainstorm ways to "integrate" mission rather than "isolate" it within chapter structures.
5. Be active in sending, caring for, and receiving those in the chapter who are involved in cross-cultural ministry.
6. Look at how you spend a typical week thinking through how missions could be integrated in simple ways into the things you already do (i.e. use cross-cultural illustrations in your teaching, expose people you disciple to other cultures [in Scripture, local restaurants, …], have one of your regular appointments be with someone ethnically/culturally different than yourself).
7. Consider going on a project together as a leadership team and/or with those you disciple.
* Bonus ideas:
- Check out mentoring resources on urbana.org.
- Check out other missions integration resources.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register