1. Creating a Bridge to Long-Term Service
Designed to provide an onramp to fruitful service, increase effectiveness, and reduce attrition, Inbound seeks to train and mentor relatively inexperienced new cross-cultural workers for long term discipleship. Inbound unfolds in prepared contexts as experienced facilitators intentionally mentor new workers through the 7 core elements of the program in a year of orientation, discovery, and support.
2. Abiding as the Pathway to Joyful Endurance
A growing relationship with Jesus is the starting point and the sustaining element for long-term cross-cultural service. New members are led to grow emotionally and spiritually through a year-long devotional journey, personal reflection, journaling, and discussions – developing a deeper understanding of prayer, fasting, spiritual warfare, humility, submission, and a theology of suffering. The overarching spiritual journey parallels their learning and cultural discovery.
3. Everything is Practical
The one-year program is real life in a real cross-cultural context – where participants engage in life with mentors by their side and peers to share the experience. Inbound’s curriculum coaches and challenges through readings, discussions, and real-life experiences-home-stays, site visits, and observations. As participants work through the program, they are gaining timeless, fundamental tools for future cross-cultural service. Every part of Inbound has a practical application.
4. Language as Central
Language is central to all we do and needs to begin well. Inbound emphasizes the value of language learning right from the start, equipping participants with training, tools, and opportunities for practical application as they walk through the process of actually learning a local language during their year. Through exposure to various language learning techniques, immersion in the culture, and personal relationships, language is a daily part of Inbound.
5. Cultural Discovery
Healthy cross-cultural service calls for us to expand our understanding of other cultures. Inbound enables members to become culturally observant as they study a new culture from the inside, including local religion, decision making, conflict management, and the concepts of justice and poverty. Recognizing individuals’ cultures and how they differ from others allows us to interact in healthy ways across cultures.
6. Clarifying Direction
Inbound aims to empower new workers by helping them clarify their focus for future service in discipleship relationships. Members have opportunities to discover, develop, and grow in their cross-cultural knowledge and skillset through lived experience and being exposed to different locations and areas to serve. Over the course of the year, participants shape a vision of future service through a better understanding of their own calling, giftings, and limitations.
7. Cultivating Effective Team-Members
Whether in a very structured team or in an informal group working side by side, we all work in some way as ‘team’. Through regular community days and the ongoing support of others in community, participants learn how to work together and thrive as a community – gaining skills in decision making and conflict resolution, and learning to act interdependently. In the context of a multicultural community, participants develop their inter-cultural identity, fostering inclusive interactions among each other. Close relationships, mentorships, and shared experiences and challenges, foster team growth – cultivating the necessary personal and corporate disciplines for effective service for each member.
8. Cultivating Partnerships
Learning to cultivate and value partnerships – with both the national church and sending partners – is essential to sustainable cross-cultural ministry. Wherever possible, members partner withLearning to cultivate and value partnerships – both nationally and globally – is essential to sustainable cross-cultural service. Wherever possible, members partner with a local fellowship, submitting themselves to local leadership and serving the body. Members develop an appreciation and understanding of a posture of submission before they find themselves in positions of leadership. Effective workers also require robust prayer partners behind them – fellowships and individuals who understand the focus of the organization, the part their member plays, and their own role in prayer support. Inbound helps reinforce the skills needed for effectively communicating vision and maintaining partners for long-term service.
9. Readiness for Service
To be a worker is to enter into an enduring practice, one that we are constantly learning. Inbound allows new members to essentially build a resumé of education and exposure that will prepare them to serve with a relevant depth of understanding. These skills prove invaluable for future service, wherever it may be, but also enable members to grow: to continue to discover, develop, and use their strengths. Inbound’s year of orientation, discovery, and support provides a solid orientation for workers to be equipped and ready to step into an identified service or any emerging opportunities.
Inbound Key Result Areas
Grow in skills and habits, both individually and corporately, in spiritual disciplines such as prayer and Bible reading. Develop an enduring practice of Abiding in Christ.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Understand better the value of feeding themselves spiritually; with habits formed through daily Bible reading and journaling and spiritually centered conversation.
Obtain knowledge and practical skills for managing daily life in an unfamiliar context and be able to transfer that learning into a new context. Grow in becoming comfortable and competent doing life in a different culture.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Have learned what are their daily needs and how to meet them – including food, transport, cleanliness, communication, community relationship, etc.
Learn and practice key language acquisition methods and skills, leading to confidence and growth in language learning and providing a toolkit for future learning.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Have gained skills in how to learn the lingua-culture of the people in their local setting while building purposeful relationships, as well as having a greater understanding of the value of communicating in a local language.
Observe, study, and experience local culture in practical and positive ways that develop the perspective and discipline to be a lifelong student of culture.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Be more skilled and knowledgeable in how to make/maintain healthy relationships and become a valued belonger in the community.
Experience a healthy inter-cultural community – learning to appreciate and value other perspectives and offerings, and develop skills for future team life: mutual respect, focused listening, and conflict resolution.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Have greater appreciation of diversity of those working in community together, and ability to adapt to an inter-cultural team.
Observe, understand, and be part of various Scripture-based, culturally appropriate discipleship and CP methods and models.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Have strategies in CP and discipleship
Experience and understand other contexts in order to learn more about culture, approaches, and further explore personal giftings and God’s call.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Have made at least one visit a different location, identifying how God is working in the area including through the local fellowship, other partners etc and be challenged to how God could use him/her to contribute positively in a new location.
Reinforce the skills needed for effectively maintaining partners for long-term service.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Communicate regularly with prayer partners to share what God is doing in their own lives and prayer needs.
Be introduced and integrated into the values, and organizational culture.
By the end of Inbound, new members will:
- Understand the organization’s purpose/ how to function well and create supportive networks.