This month, several nervous participants are arriving at beautiful Emerald Hills, Team Expansion’s 61-acre campus outside Louisville, Ky.
They’re coming to be Launched.
Three times each year, Team Expansion provides a two-week training event for missionary recruits. For 10 days, these potential missionaries will crash into a whirlwind of information, from raising support teams to budgeting to spiritual warfare to global safety. And a whole lot in between.
In honor of our recruits for this month’s Launch, here are 5 lessons we hope they learn.
Everything Starts with Prayer
OK, technically, Launch starts with breakfast. But immediately after delicious pancakes, we’ll introduce our Launch candidates to our daily, intentional, extraordinary prayer. We begin each work day by praying for the nations. Each month, we make it through every country in the world, praying specifically for the nation, its leaders, and that God’s Name will be known and worshiped throughout that land.
Our candidates don’t have to be with us long before they realize our commitment to prayer is not a feeble platitude – it’s the heart and soul of the entire organization.
Root, root, root for the Home Team!
Until you’ve experienced it in action, few people realize how much the home office (in Team Expansion’s case, we’re called International Services) does for the missionaries on the field. Each Launch group experiences the full scope first-hand as they meet with person after person specifically focused on helping them thrive in every area of their ministry.
Team Expansion’s office has people who focus on member care, missionary kids, finances, coaching, training, prayer, communications, security, team building, interns, strategy, support teams, church relationships, technology, cultural adjustment, and much more. And each one of those specialists cannot wait to celebrate with the missionaries as the prepare, enter, thrive, and multiply disciples in their future field.
In fact, they’re so committed to the role, they each raise all of their own support to be there, too!
There is a LOT of Insider Lingo. Sorry about that.
DMM. BAM. 3/3. DBS. RAM. UPG. 10/40. CAC. BUGTACC. M!. M2. M3. BLESS, IS, POP, DSOTO Etc.
We all have areas where something becomes so familiar to us that we forget it’s not everyday to anyone else. There will be many times during Launch that the candidates need reminders about which acronym means what and which strategy is the one with the prayer walking.
But before long, they’ll be speaking just like the natives and spreading the Good News with the shorthand of champions.
Multiply. Multiply. Multiply.
Team Expansion exists to multiply disciples and churches among the unreached. We don’t want missionaries to go into a country, create one foreigner-dependent church, stay there 30 years, and then leave the ministry in a lurch when they come off the field. We want the Gospel to spread like wildfire in each unreached nation. The urgency is just too great.
Because of this, each Launch group will REPEATEDLY hear the principles and necessity of creating disciples who create disciples who create disciples. Who create disciples. We do not know how long our window is in any given nation, so we need to spark a movement of the Gospel in the time we do have.
Things Get Real. And Silly. And Real Silly.
Each group of Launch candidates inevitably finds some survival bonding in the trenches. As they go through each day of training together, they’ll discover a deep and lasting bond. There are days of hope, of anticipation, of excitement. And days of exhaustion, overwhelming information, and sincere doubt. Through it all, they’re walking right alongside other believers just trying to be faithful in answering the common call you all feel toward something greater. It’s a beautiful connection.
But as they all process the journey, their exhaustion and long hours together almost always results in some moments of pure hilarity. Later on, they probably won’t be able to explain what was so funny, but they should be prepared to cherish some inside jokes that establish a life-long bond.
