Missionaries must know God, be able to relate well to other people, understand and engage with another culture, and be able to use the Bible in a way that informs all aspects of their lives and ministries. Missionary training must address each of these areas if it is to help Christians to be effective in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Effective training has been shown to prevent people from prematurely leaving the field. It also reduces the danger of cross-cultural workers uncritically exporting culturally bound forms of Christianity. This book details four key areas that every missionary training program, whatever its context, must focus on developing. It shows how these can be holistically addressed in a learning community where trainers and trainees engage in cross-cultural ministry together.

This close look at what the Lord is doing to spread the gospel highlights the key scriptural principles that help Christians reach out in love to share the gospel in their own community.

Today, the world mission has unprecedentedly become a task of every national churches and believers on earth. Missionaries are being sent out from every nations to every nations! Strategists have previously noticed that Africa, along with East Asia, would emerge as the key fulcrum for world missions in the 21st Century. 2010 Lausanne Congress held in South Africa proved that to be true. Along this path, Evangelical Alliance for Preacher Training/Commission (EAPTC) opened their missions training schools in Kenya and South Korea, using this book as their training text. It was through the efforts of those missionary trainees that their work expanded into over 200 new church plants in 11 countries today. This book was put together mainly for Two-Thirds World missionary candidates who often find themselves limited with sound missions training opportunities around, while the lessons in this manual apply to all who are mission-interested. Going as a missionary or sending a missionary without proper training is quite reckless. The principles of cross-cultural mission presented in 11 chapters of this book are field-tested nuggets that can certainly equip anyone aspiring for missionary work. The training has been scientifically validated effective through research and used in Africa, Asia, Americas and Oceania. This manual is also available in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Amharic.

This manual is an invaluable resource for anyone from the global evangelical community who is involved with training people for ministry. As a textbook, it presents a biblical and educational framework for holistic training as well as a context-sensitive process for the design of new programs and the evaluation of existing programs. Packed with practical examples and aids, it is a tool trainers will keep handy and use often in their course planning and implementation. This book was published in partnership with the World Evangelical Alliance.

The author's study of missionary training has taken him all over the world. In this work, he shares lessons learned from both Western and non-Western missionary training regarding training, clear objectives, getting started, the profile of a trainer, selecting trainees, the marks of effective training, holistic equipping, contextualized curriculum, and careful assessment of the entire training process.