Posts Tagged ‘missionary training’
Posted by Blog Admin on Monday, May 6th, 2013
Every Thursday afternoon I go to jail… I go with 2 other friends from MTC (and a few guys who go to the guys side) and we have the privilege of teaching the Bible to the women there!
Two weeks ago, I found myself sitting on a stainless steel stool and talking with what seemed like a wonderful Christian woman who was very active in our lesson that week. We had a great conversation and I already started growing fond of her and was excited she would be a part of the study. I found out later, after reading a newspaper article, of the brutal murder she had committed many years earlier and had recently been convicted about confessing to the authorities. Wow!
It was strange to evaluate my preconceived notions and judgments I have of certain crimes and the people who commit them. When we got here to the MTC (August 2012), we got the opportunity to choose a ministry to be involved in and hopefully put to use some of the Bible teaching, discipleship, teamwork skills that we are learning here in Missionary Training.
This is the first time that I have actually taught the Bible chronologically from creation to Christ to adult women and had an actual audience! Many of the women in jail are struggling from addiction, are broken over situations with significant others and children that are living with relatives or in foster care, and have made other bad choices that weigh on them. Many of them don’t understand why they are having these struggles or why the world is so hard… teaching the Bible from the beginning, where we explain how sin and suffering and pain came into the world and how it was not God’s original plan for the world, has proven much more meaningful than just jumping into the Gospel or the New Testament.
Laying the foundations for how the world got here and telling them about God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 that He will send a deliverer to save them from their sin–just minutes after the first sin was committed–shows them the faithfulness of God and His commitment to His promise. It is worth it to take this time!
That is also part of what we’re learning in missionary training here. We are learning that when you go into a cross-cultural setting, you must take the time (several years!) to learn the language, culture, and worldview of the people and then start teaching them at the very beginning so that they have a solid foundation for understanding who and what God is. This process, although time consuming, prevents a lot of confusion and syncretism.
Overall, it has been so neat to see God using us to teach these women in jail and I feel that, as a mother, I can especially relate to many of them. I am also seeing first-hand the challenges of real ministry because it can be hard to gauge their understanding of the lessons or to decide what to do when a new lady joins in the middle of the Old Testament teaching but they don’t have any biblical background.
It is also neat to work as part of a ministry team where we have different strengths, backgrounds, and ideas. Please pray for me and my team as we continue in this ministry!
Tags: chronological bible teaching, firm foundations, missionary training
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Posted by David Abbott on Tuesday, March 19th, 2013
Romans 8:38,39 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Tags: discipleship, firm foundations, missionary training, new tribes bible institute, ntbi
Posted in Family, Katrina Abbott | Comments Off
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Thursday, February 14th, 2013
On Monday I made the two-hour drive down to Branson to share at a Perspectives class with Doug Schaible–an awesome friend and NTM representative who has had a huge impact on my family’s journey to Papua New Guinea. This Perspectives class was especially encouraging, because the pastor of the church served with NTM in Papua New Guinea for more than a decade and reached a tribe with the Gospel. Also, the class coordinators had served in in the Asia Pacific region (of what used to be called Irian Jaya) with Wycliffe for twenty-plus years doing tribal Bible translation as well! I was surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses!
I spoke about a topic that has become more important to me each and every day:
Pre-Field Training
Seven years ago, Lael and I went through Perspectives and were “ruined for the ordinary!” For the first time we heard about unreached people groups and the biblical basis for missions. We were determined to leverage our short time on earth for nothing less than this great commission to see every tribe, tongue and nation reached with the gospel. We were fired up and couldn’t wait to get out there and do “something!”
And that’s the problem. Our “something” was completely undefined. We had no idea what ministry among an unreached people group would look like. We knew we needed a plan. As George Walker, one of my favorite instructors saw, “We genuinely felt the weight of own not-enough-ness!”
The Needs You Don’t Know You Need To Know About…
That’s where New Tribes Mission came into the picture. We toured the Missionary Training Center and were blown away by how thorough the training was. Now we’ve gone through all four years of their training (two years of Bible school and two years of missionary training) and I can’t imagine what our overseas ministry would have looked like had we left straight for the field after college. There were so many issues we didn’t even know we needed to be thinking through.
Now we have a game plan for things like: acquiring a new culture and language, pushing through culture shock, creating an alphabet, developing a literacy program, setting up a medical clinic, running a house completely off of solar, implementing Bible translation techniques, creating chronological Bible lessons that aim at worldview level issues, understanding an animistic worldview, maintaining a healthy marriage in a stressful situation, protecting our children, taking a newborn church on toward maturity in Christ through strategic teaching, discipleship and outreach, preventing and addressing team conflict, tailoring a unique homeschool curriculum for our girls, avoiding syncretism, modeling discipleship from day one, preparing for emergency situations, leveraging various translation and linguistic software, adjusting to an event-oriented culture while maximizing time management, and counting the cost now. That’s just from the classroom side of things.
I can’t begin to describe all the valuable lessons I’ve learned from daily rubbing shoulders with staff and instructors who have been there and done it. God has used the discipleship process here in at the MTC to not only strengthen my walk with Himself, but I’ve also learned some incredibly important leadership principles.
If you’re planning to go long-term, get extensive pre-field training this side of the ocean.
One more thing. NTM has an incredible language, culture, and translation consultant program. When we’re out in the tribe trying to learn a difficult language and a strange culture, these consultants will come out regularly to help us get unstuck and reach the next level of proficiency. Doug Schaible likes to say that NTM’s consultants are like the wench on a Jeep. When you get stuck, they pull you out so you can get back on the road. I’m so glad that NTM has people in place who will be able to continue equipping us at each new leg of this long journey toward seeing a mature tribal church who is glorifying God.
Thanks again for joining us on this journey!
-Jack
Tags: animism, Brooklife Church, chronological teaching, Church planting, CLA, Culture, discipleship, evangelism, firm foundations, George Walker, Jack Crabtree, Lael Crabtree, language learning, learning language, Linguistics, literacy, missionary training, missions, mobilization, MTC, New Heights, New Tribes, new tribes mission, ntm, training, tribal, worldview
Posted in Family, Ministry, Training | Comments Off
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Thursday, February 14th, 2013
This semester, I’m working in the development office here at the Missionary Training Center, while Lael takes the linguistics course. While working on some mobilization materials today, I came across the pledge NTM’s founders made back in 1942. Here are a few excerpts. I hope they inspire you to walk with God and finish this task like it inspired me!
“We hereby pledge ourselves to work for the completion of the Bride of Christ until death…to measure all our effort in the light of this task…to refrain from doing even the good things if they do not contribute to the most important thing, namely, reaching the last un-evangelized tribe in our generation…to do nothing that would hinder or detract or render us powerless in the accomplishment of this goal.”
Let’s keep moving forward! Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us on this journey. It’s a joy to be about God’s work together!
Sincerely,
Jack
Tags: Brooklife Church, evangelism, Jack Crabtree, Lael Crabtree, language learning, learning language, Linguistics, missionary training, missions, mobilization, MTC, New Heights, New Tribes, new tribes mission, ntm, training
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Posted by David Abbott on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
Katrina at the Interface missions course in Papua New Guinea.
When I was a little girl growing up, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I lit up because I knew the answer, “I want to be a missionary.” My whole life has been influenced by this desire because I knew the need, I knew God’s heart for people and I wanted to be the one who went.
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Tags: missionary training, missions, new tribes bible institute, ntbi, perspectives on the world christian movement, waukesha
Posted in Family, Katrina Abbott, Prayer Requests | Comments Off
Posted by David Abbott on Thursday, January 31st, 2013
Pastor Jean: “For several years, my wife, Sylvie, and I have had a burden for unreached peoples."
Jean is an African pastor who shared recently, “Experience working with the church does not prepare me for ministry among unreached peoples. I am struck with the need to be trained before starting work in this context. …We think that NTM, in light of their history and experience, can provide us with the skills we will need.”
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Tags: missionary training, new tribes mission, ntm
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Posted by David Abbott on Sunday, January 20th, 2013
Making a coffee drink to encourage a friend.
It all started Sunday night. I hadn’t eaten very much because from the time I got up till the time I went to church I was working in the office. After I finished in the office I went straight to church and then straight to work. As I was vacuuming at work all I could think about was food.
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Tags: missionary training, new tribes bible institute, ntbi, waukesha
Posted in Family, Katrina Abbott, Prayer Requests | Comments Off
Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013
Suduwama preaching on an outreach.
One of my favorite teachers, George Walker, served for many years among the Bisorio people of Papua New Guinea. Today the Bisorio church is thriving and has its own tribal Bible teachers and elders. One of the church leaders, Suduwama, asked George to pass this stirring message on to those of us in training at the Missionary Training Center.
“Don’t turn back form the work which you are learning about and being strengthened in. Do not turn back from that work which God has given you to do. Be strong. If you give up and turn back and do not go to tell those who have never heard, then who will go and tell them? Those people will continue living with their total sin debt. But so that they can be forgiven and free from their sin debt, they must be told God’s Word. Be strong in continuing to do the work of God.”
Thanks for helping me keep the real vision in the forefront of my heart, Suduwama.
-Jack
Learn more about missionary training >>
Tags: animism, Bisorio, Brooklife Church, chronological teaching, Church planting, CLA, Culture, discipleship, evangelism, firm foundations, George Walker, Jack Crabtree, Lael Crabtree, language learning, learning language, Linguistics, literacy, missionary training, missions, mobilization, MTC, New Heights, New Tribes, new tribes mission, ntm, training, tribal, worldview
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Posted by Jack and Lael Crabtree on Tuesday, January 8th, 2013
Believe it or not, our 3.5 years of pre-field equipping with New Tribes Mission is drawing to a close, and we’d like to take a few moments to share with you all about our future. With that said, we have posted several new blogs that are more reflections on and lessons learned from the last three years of training. Click the link at the bottom to go to the blog.
Christmas break:
We’ve been bouncing around between Oklahoma and Arkansas ensuring that grandparents get their much needed grand-baby time! Now we’re back in Arkansas and will be at New Heights on Sunday worshiping together and touching base with some of you all.
This Spring:
Lael will be receiving specialized (and very intensive) linguistic training. We all have received some linguistic training during the normal 3 semester track here in Missouri, but Lael will be focusing on this specific problem: how do you accurately break down an unwritten language and produce a usable alphabet (i.e. create an orthography)?
To remedy this problem of developing an orthography, Lael will be taking the equivalent of a 20 hr. semester class load (not including several hours of practical homework each night) of solid linguistics classes. The alphabet Lael will create in the tribe will be extremely important, because it will be the foundation for literacy, Bible lesson development and Bible translation for the tribal people.
While Lael is developing her linguistic muscle, I’ll be working on staff with the mobilization and development office at the training center. I worked in that department as a student last semester for my campus work detail. I’ll be working on developing/writing/editing digital textbooks for some of the specialized courses on campus, as well as scripting various mobilization video projects. That journalism degree keeps coming in handy : )
This Summer:
We’ll be focusing on reconnecting back in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. We’ll also be trying to finish raising our recommended financial support, so we can make it to Papua New Guinea in 2014. A sincerely humble thank you to everyone who has been faithfully partnering with throughout our years of training! We couldn’t do this without you, and we wouldn’t want to! Drop us a line, if you’re interested in joining our partnership team.
This Fall:
Lael will be putting her linguistic skill to the test as we go to a Cherokee reservation in Tahlequah, OK for the LING Practicum. For six weeks, Lael will be working with a Cherokee language helper and develop her own alphabet for the Cherokee language. Practice makes perfect….and perfect is close enough!
2014:
Papua New Guinea accepts new missionaries in February and August (due to their six-month national culture and language program). Please pray for us as we endeavor to be wise stewards of our time and accomplish two vitally important tasks: taking the time to build relationships and plug back into life at our sending church and with friends and family, and completely raising our field-recommended financial support.
We want to accomplish both of those things well before we leave. This means that if we make it to our required financial amount, but have not had enough time to connect with our church, our ministry partners, our family and friends, we will probably go in August instead of February. Conversely, we don’t feel right about leaving prematurely with only 75% of our recommended support with a hope of just “getting by”. Getting by often translates into having to shift focus away from where it should primarily rest: the tribal people among whom we’ll be serving.
Please pray for us as this year unfolds, and God continues to surprise us with plans far more beautiful and rewarding than our own could ever hope to be.
Looking to Him,
Jack
Tags: baby, baby girl, Brooklife Church, Canopy Church, Cherokee, Church planting, discipleship, evangelism, Fayetteville, George Walker, Jack Crabtree, Lael Crabtree, language learning, learning language, Linguistics, literacy, missionary training, missions, mobilization, MTC, New Heights, New Tribes, new tribes mission, ntm, Summer, Tipping Our Kings, training, waukesha, Wisconsin, worldview
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