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Missionary Apprenticeships by Global Frontier Missions

Our Missionary Apprenticeships are perfect for people that want to "try out" missions for a season before taking the plunge to raise support and go full-time. This program is designed for people that want to continue working or studying 30-40 hours per week while getting training and hands-on missions experience outside of work hours. This form of missionary training is ideal for people that plan on becoming tentmakers or using a Business as Mission (BAM) platform in creative access countries because it forces interns to balance the demands of work, life, and ministry in a cross-cultural setting. These Missionary Apprencticeships are basically a group of singles, couples, and families working normal jobs while living together incarnationally and getting trained/discipled "on mission" in a very multi-cultural community.

Missionary Apprenticeships are 10 month "after-hours" internships geared for equipping people for long-term missions service among unreached people groups. The apprenticeship takes approximately 15 hours per week of time commitment: 3-4 hrs/week in personal spiritual growth, 3-4 hrs/week in training (1 night/week in mentor’s home), 2 hrs/week in independent reading, 2-3 hrs/week focused outreach to refugees, immigrants, and international students; 2-3 hrs/week sharing life in our Jesus Community (Sunday evening house church). All of our interns live within walking distance of each other and close to internationals from many different countries and ethnic groups.

Our Missionary Apprenticeships are based in very multi-ethnic cities in the United States and teach interns the principles necessary to reach out to Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Chinese both locally and globally, with the love and message of Jesus Christ. During this apprenticeship, interns live in Biblical community where the values and skills of Church Planting are shaped, embraced, and embedded to prepare them for unleashing rapidly reproducing Jesus communities when they get to the mission field. We want to learn from the early church that exploded from 20,000 to 200 million in a couple of centuries. We must keep experimenting until the DNA flowing through the church in China flows also in our veins, until God can use us to plant millions of Jesus Communities among every people on earth.

Missionary Apprenticeships are all about first doing over here what we must eventually do over there. And so we are the church rather than merely learning about church. We don't just memorize verses of the Bible; we share Jesus stories with Muslim refugees. We don't just learn about the Qur'an; we use it as a bridge to help Muslims cross into the Kingdom. We read very little about Mohammad and Islam but we enjoy hours of dialogue each week with Mohammad, our Muslim neighbor and friend. We’re taught a simple inductive Study method (takes ~ 30 minutes); then we inductively study the Bible daily for the next ten months, and we fast and we pray, and practice other spiritual disciplines, and grow to be like Jesus. In fact, we develop a personalized Curriculum for Christ-likeness and we use it to help us become like the One we treasure. After all, we are preparing interns to do all this...over there.

We want to see the people that finish our Missionary Apprenticeships go out to the nations and deliver entire people groups from the kingdom of darkness and usher them into the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son. But before we go do that over there, we must first learn by doing missions right here. We know we can plant a church just about anywhere in the world. What we can’t seem to do (very often) is launch movements that look like the book of Acts. So, we want to learn how to launch church planting movements over there by first trying to see one started here. We want to see our missionary apprentices learn some Arabic here, lead a Nepali to the Lord, disciple a new Somali believer, start a little Burmese Bible study, see what it is like working in a church planting team, and live out the body of Christ. THEN, we want to send them out to the unreached people groups of the world and do the same thing there.

Unlike our Missionary Training School which is a bit more formal, our Missionary Apprenticeships are very informal. No intern will write an exam, receive a grade or earn a degree. But interns will learn! We have three core passions.  We are blood-earnest to provoke all three in those we apprentice:
a passion for Jesus,
a passion for His Kingdom and
a passion for going strategic… in that order.

Missionary Apprenticeships Core Values

We exist to fulfill God’s Vision for mankind: That the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea – Habakkuk 2:14
We TREASURE Jesus supremely! We believe Jesus is the best in every conceivable way - His Worth, Words, Wounds and Ways are the best humanity has ever known!
We “gossip” about the Gospel of the Kingdom: With zeal we share the Gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus shared, rather than just simply preaching the Gospel of Sin Management.
We plan strategically: We value lifelong learning and discovering fruitful practices that help fulfill God’s vision
We learn by doing: we are committed to first do over here what we must eventually do over there.
We do everything reproducibly: We desire to make each component of Missionary Apprenticeships reproducible and thereby model the importance of simplicity and end-visioning to bring about the rapid reproduction of Jesus Communities where the church is not…yet.

Missionary Apprenticeships Core Components

1. Missionary Apprenticeships lasts 10 months
2. Missionary Apprentices meet in a home-like setting
3. Missionary Apprentices attend a Weekly Half-Time (Eat together, discuss Jesus Stories, share their experiences with international friends, discuss the independent reading)
4. Missionary Apprentices Learn and Share Jesus Stories
5. Missionary Apprentices complete 100+ hours of face-to-face time with Internationals
6. Missionary Apprentices are required to complete the Weekly Reading & Response
7. Missionary Apprenticeships include 3 Weekend Boot Camps (Know yourself, Team Dynamics and Peacemaking, Contextualization Training)
8. Missionary Apprentices Curriculum includes three passions (Jesus, His Kingdom, Strategic/Contextualized Gospel Proclamation)
9. Missionary Apprenticeships includes some of these Field Realities: Spiritual Warfare, Influence of Affluence, Suffering, Cultural Incarnation, Career Options, Language Acquisition, Male-Female Challenges, Emotional Cycles of Crossing-Cultures, Support Raising, Team Building,
10. Missionary Apprentices meet weekly as a Jesus Community during the House Church Module
11. Missionary Apprentices are required to work or go to school full-time, which requires them to learn to prioritize their time and to be more intentional in reaching out.
12. Missionary Apprentices create and maintain a personal Curriculum for Christlikeness
13. Missionary Apprentices participate in an Overseas Practicum practicing Abundant Gospel Sowing
14. Missionary Apprentices meet regularly for Corporate Prayer learning to use a variety of prayer methods like listening prayer
15. Missionary Apprentices work through a Gospel Reading Plan for the 10 months
16. Missionary Apprentices spend 3 hours a week in quality time with God

We currently offer Missionary Apprenticeships in Atlanta and soon hope to have them in Houston as well.