Developing International Missions Opportunities in You Own Backyard.

You can truly have an international missions work in your own backyard & on your college campus. In Acts chapter 2 we see Peter preach a sermon to a group of Jews visiting Jerusalem from all parts of the Mediterranean world. The people then took the message back home. We see it again in Acts with Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch and in the Epistles with Paul and the church at Colossae.

We have the same opportunity in Texas on college campuses and in our neighborhoods. It does not matter if you are trying to reach Asian students here for studies or day laborers here trying to feed their families. We can follow the same principles to reach these “people groups” that are in our own backyard and prepare the ground work for them to return home with the gospel and for us to send missionaries into their midst. Here are some principles you can use to engage your students and local church: Pray, Serve & Share, Send.

Pray:

·         Pray for repentance. We have not done a great job in North Texas ministering to the people groups in our midst; we need to repent of that.

·         Pray for God to open the eyes of your students and yourself to the opportunities to engage people groups from other geographies & cultures.

·         Pray for open eyes to see the needs that they have.

Share & Serve: Identify the people group you want to engage.

·         Serve the group identified. Service without asking anything in return is the fastest way to build a relationship with another people group or culture.

o        Ideas:

§         Water bottles for day laborers waiting for work in the Texas heat.

§         Host dinners for the different foreign student associations on your campus.

§         Offer free ESL classes.

·         Share your faith. Sincerely share the gospel after building relationships & in roads. Continue to maintain & build relationships. This is the work of generations.

Send:

·         Send them home: Some students and foreign nationals truly struggle to make it home as often as they would like. Once you have seen fruit in sharing & serving, help the people you have discipled go home as needed. Help them take the message.

·         Send them support: don’t disconnect from those you have reached that have returned to their home country. Stay in contact, send them support, and continue the relationship and discipleship. Find out what they need.

·         Send missionaries: As this work continues and you build inroads and relationships, be prepared to send your students and yourself.

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity. If you have any questions contact our offices.