The Short-Term Mission Leader’s Conference was held on campus last weekend. This was the first time the conference had been held as a partnership between Bethany International and STEM Intl. It was a very successful event! Huge thanks to Bethany’s STEM Ministries team - Ryan Schlangen, Alison Goldhor, Jim Levin, and Rachel Norman - who worked so hard to make this conference a great experience for short term mission leaders from around the country. It was great to see such a strong showing by Bethany College of Missions students who also participated in the three-day conference.
The STMLC conference theme this year was Becoming the Best Partner You Can Be! Author and speaker, Daniel Rickett challenged us in our thinking on what it looks like to form authentic partnerships saying, “We assent to the idea of relationship in the West and we think we’ve done it because we are “nice” to them [our partners]. But in fact it’s perfunctory relationship, easily forgotten until the next time we show up. It’s not intimate relationship. It’s acquaintances, but not intimacy. Partnership is more about communing with God and one another than anything else. It’s a way of thinking and being that Jesus modeled for us. Why do we look for more of a base for mission than this one reality? Communion is the ultimate end, not mission. We will still have communion when our mission is done. Communion should be the dominating paradigm. It’s more than just friendship or fellowship. It’s about life together the way that Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote about it. It says, ‘I’m with you’.”
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