Young volunteers going overseas for a year

1+2+1
1:Get your feet wet cross-culturally on a one-week Work & Witness trip
2:Spend up to two months on a summer short-term mission trip
1:Volunteer abroad for a full year

"Recently, we visited a young adult handicapped association in Sofia, Bulgaria. One of the young members there said to us: We can't heal our bodies. So, at least help us heal our souls.'" -- Don Moore with SNU volunteer group

What is it you would do even if you never got paid for it?

One dream at Southern Nazarene University is for every student to have some significant cross-cultural experience. The capstone goal would be for graduates to give a year or more abroad of volunteer service to world evangelism. It's a BHAG -- one of those Big Hairy Audacious Goals that James Collins and Jerry Porras talk about.

Among the visionaries who set that program into motion in 1994 were SNU's President Loren Gresham and then-religion department head Roger Hahn, along with Robert Scott and Hermann Gschwandtner from Nazarene World Missions. For his tenacious creativity in using youthful volunteers in missionary outreach, Herman Gschwandtner received an honorary doctorate from SNU in 1998.

SNU works closely with the Nazarene World Mission Division office to place these young volunteers. After completing approved training, that office signs the SNU volunteers to Mission Corps contracts.

SNU recent graduates have also gone overseas with organizations like Youth With a Mission (YWAM) and Operation Mobilization (OM).

"Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle." – Phillips Brooks, pastor in Boston and author of the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem"

Reasons young people say "no" to volunteering for a year overseas

  1. They are living a self-centered lifestyle in which the only focus is personal and local needs
  2. Prayer and intercession have been replaced by "sharing," fellowship, and counseling
  3. Theologically serious convictions about the Final Judgment and Hell have been shelved
  4. Obsessive concern for safety has surfaced amid news reports of terrorism, military takeovers, and tribal conflicts in various countries.
  5. Fear regarding raising support
  6. Existing debts and financial commitments

Adapted from Marching to a Different Drummer by Jim Raymo, Christian Literature Crusade

Are you interested in going as a volunteer?

"Prayer is your most important resource"
– Merritt Mann
 

"We have been challenged by the unprecedented opening of doors for evangelism . . . working together, we can seize the opportunities that God keeps placing before us" -- Board of General Superintendents, Church of the Nazarene

Entrepreneurship = The pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources at hand
    -- Merritt Mann, quoting Harvard Business School professor Howard H. Stevenson during a Southern Europe Field Partners meeting at Southern Nazarene University

    -- Howard Culbertson, >

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