QUESTION From: "Karen C. Simons" <70420.776@CompuServe.COM> Jan Bell of KidsCan has a conceptual model for teaching missions in the local church. Applying a set of easy-to-remember words beginning with the letter P, to stories and teachings a teacher/leader can broaden the perspective of his/her student so that much more of a worldview is achieved.

In my own organization, our conceptual model for teaching missions consists of looking at praying, giving, learning, going/doing synergistically so that one leads to the other or even overlaps.

Is anyone aware of any other "conceptual models" for missions education?...

ANSWER From: Rick Reid <rick_reid@MENTORG.COM> My own conceptual model for teaching missions, which is currently in the beta phase (that is my Sunday school class are the guinea pigs) is a bit like learning to tie your shoes.

Phase One: You don't know what you don't know. Me: "Hey your shoes untied" Them: "It is?"

Phase Two: You know but you don't know what to do. Them: "My shoes untied" Me: "Well, tie em" Them: "How?"

Phase Three: You know and you know what to do. Me: "...And that's what you do to tie your shoe. Got it?" Them: "Got it! I loop the right string over the left and then ..."

Phase Four: You know what you know and you know what to do. Them, tying shoes while talking to parishoner, "And as I was saying Bob, we have just recently adopted the xxx people and we are very excited about the...

These phases also go by the more scientific nomenclature of: Unconscious Incompetence, Conscience Incompetence, Conscience Competence, Unconscious Competence. Currently we are in the in transition to phase three. Our overall goal is to change from being a mission reactive church to a mission proactive church. One of the first things that we started to do was to make sure people were well established in the basics, Cristo Centric, authority of the Word, etc... It's been a fun process and we aren't near finishing but we keep striving forward.

ANSWER From: Bruce Sidebotham <73362.1503@CompuServe.COM> I have what I feel is a pretty good model for teaching missions. It's patterned after a military operations order. I call the series a Great CoMISSION Briefing. There are five sections: 1. Situation: One needs to know the situation before the mission makes sense. The Situation paragraph of an operations order covers both friendly and enemy forces. It's a great model presenting the situation of the church around the world, the situation of the unreached peoples, and the gulf that exists between them. 2. Mission: This is the who, what, when, where, why (not How). It's a brief and distinct statement, but the implications and interpretations are involved. I use my own paraphrase of Mt 28:19-20 as the mission. 3. Execution: This is the "How." I use Jn. 20:21, the book of Acts, and Phil 2:5-10 and base it on the idea of incarnation. 4. Service and Support: This is the logistics section of the briefing. It's where I talk about the part that they play and how the different agencies, support organizations, churches and so on interact. I have a neat flow chart that illustrates the complexity quite well. 5. Command and Signal: (or control and communication) As you can imagine, clear lines of control and communication are vital to a military operation. It's not that obviously vital in missions. This is the section where I talk about new paradigms in missions ministry and structures and talk about unity in diversity under the headship of Christ. It's important to know who is in charge. There, I'll bet you've never met that conceptual model for teaching missions before. It's strength is in placing the mission at the center and immediately in a dynamic operational and contemporary context with respect to the situation, resources, and authority, rather than developing the mission out of the more static traditional contexts of history and theology as the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course does. I'm very excited about this paradigm for teaching missions and would be happy to help anyone with it.

..I have another model developed by my father-in-law, Roger Dixon, which is for actually doing missions in cross-cultural unreached people contexts. It's a process approach like Bobby Clinton's book on Leadership and goes through the following stages. Stage 1 = preparation. Stage 2 = arrival. Stage 3 = orientation. Stage 4 = mentoring. Stage 5 = negotiating. Stage 6 = engagement. Stage 7 = development. Stage 8 = closure. Like Clinton's work on leadership the stages are character and relationship oriented rather than task and management oriented. Each stage has it's own stumbling blocks and important lessons that must be mastered before one can move on to the next level. The principles seem to be universal with respect to cross-cultural work. Understanding the process from stage 1 to 8 can help one avoid getting stuck on a plateau in the pursuit of ministry effectiveness. I am hoping to develop this model into a book or workshop form for my doctoral project.

EOF