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"Prayer is your most important resource" | ||||||||
"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." | ||||||||
"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.'" | ||||||||
SNU's goal is for every student to have some significant cross-cultural experience. The capstone goal would be for graduates to follow the "Mormon model" in giving 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 the effective use of youthful volunteers in missionary outreach, Herman Gschwandtner received an honorary doctorate from SNU in 1998.
SNU works closely with David Cooper, Marty Hoskins, and Duane Baty of the Nazarene World Mission Division office to place these young volunteers. After completing approved training, that office signs the SNU volunteers to one-year Mission Corps contracts.
Our volunteers have also gone overseas with organizations like Youth With a Mission (YWAM) and Operation Mobilization (OM).Reasons young people say "NO" to volunteering overseas
- They are living a self-centered lifestyle in which the only focus is personal and local needs
- Prayer and intercession have been replaced by "sharing," fellowship, and counseling
- Theologically, serious convictions about the final judgment and hell have been shelved
- Concern for safety amid news reports of terrorism, military takeovers and tribal conflicts
- Fear regarding raising support
- Existing debts and financial commitments
Adapted from Marching to a Different Drummer by Jim Raymo, Christian Literature Crusade, 1996
Are you interested in going as a volunteer?
- Raising support
- For visual learners: a video on support raising
- Fund raising
- Fund raising slide show
A PowerPoint presentation that may be viewed online or downloaded. Advice on fund raising for short-term volunteer missions trips.- How to build your support network
- Sample fund raising letters
- Will you survive your re-entry home?
- 10 easy ways to ruin a short-term missions experience
Tips for safe travel
- Spiritual Warfare slide show
A PowerPoint presentation that may be viewed online or downloaded.- Contact Dee Kelley or Howard Culbertson < > about current openings and opportunities
Current and past volunteers
- Countries in which we're involved and letters which volunteers have written
- Information on opportunities in Romania is on a web site produced by a volunteer from Eastern Nazarene College
- Stories in the Echo, SNU's student newspaper
Fund raising help, survival tips and other helpful information on the Internet
SNU's Missions Heritage
Learn more"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
Howard H. Stevenson, quoted by Merritt Mann
during the fall 1999 Southern Europe Field Partners meeting at SNUChristian Gap Year (a British take on young people giving a year of volunteer missions) service
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Howard Culbertson, Southern Nazarene University, 6729 NW 39th, Bethany, OK 73008 | Phone: 405-491-6693 - Fax: 405-491-6658
Copyright © 1999, 2001 - Last Updated: January 11, 2008 | URL: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/voluntee.htm
