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 an association for young adults with disabilities in Sofia, Bulgaria. One of the young members said to us, ‘We can’t heal our bodies. So, at least help us heal our souls.’” — Don Moore, with an 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 substantial cross-cultural experience. The capstone goal would be for graduates to devote a year or more to volunteer service abroad in support of world evangelism. It’s a BHAG—one of the Big Hairy Audacious Goals popularized by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.

Among the visionaries who set that program into motion in 1994 were SNU's President Loren Gresham and then-religion department head Roger Hahn, together with Robert Scott and Hermann Gschwandtner from Nazarene World Missions. For his tenacious creativity in using youthful volunteers in missionary outreach, Hermann 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 the volunteers complete approved training, the office places them under Mission Corps contracts.

Recent SNU 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 Prayer and intercession have been replaced by "sharing," fellowship, and counseling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
  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, hculbert@snu.edu

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