Spotlight on Christian Higher Education

Spotlight on Christian Higher Education

More and more students see marketplace jobs as inroad to missions

By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist

Kristen Jenkins says that, from a very young age, she felt God tugging at her heart to do missions.

But she also heard something else.

“People kept telling me that I would make a good teacher,” she said. “I had a passion to work with children.”

And about a year and a half into her missiology studies at Judson College in Marion, she realized that the two didn’t conflict.

“I started to realize from my classes that most places I would like to go overseas wouldn’t let me come as a full-time missionary,” Jenkins said. “I felt like I was going to have to go another direction about it.”

That’s when the teaching passion came into play — she realized she could be a teacher anywhere, and that would give her the open door to live in a number of otherwise closed countries.

“As I started studying education, and being in the environment where I am at Judson, everything confirmed that this is something that the Lord can use anywhere,” said Jenkins, whose home church is First Baptist, Rainsville.

Need for teaching

It was further confirmed when she spent the summer in Southeast Asia.

“There is a need for teaching there, and there are multiple ways to go about that,” she said. “I will be able to share the gospel through my job. I don’t really know what that looks like right now or how soon I’ll get to go, but I know that’s where I’m supposed to be.”

A marketable major

More and more, students who are interested in missions are being encouraged to consider getting training in a marketplace job — teaching, medicine, business, engineering or a thousand other things — with the intention of leveraging those careers for the spread of the gospel.

J.D. Payne, a missiologist and pastor for church multiplication at the Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, said the Church needs to move away from the idea that “tent-making” like the Apostle Paul is for the “junior varsity missionaries” who aren’t as committed as those who go into full-time ministry.

“We need to cast the vision before college students to obtain marketable skills and degrees to be used in the global marketplace while they simultaneously labor to share the gospel, plant churches and raise up and train elders for those churches,” Payne explained.
These kinds of jobs can put students in places they couldn’t have gotten to otherwise. It will give them financial support as they go. It can give them credibility in the place where they live and work.

Doug Wilson, dean of the office of global engagement at the University of Mobile, said recent alumni are now serving overseas through their majors in nursing, elementary education and business. But they are careful to avoid being identified as training for international missions while they are earning a degree, because being identified as such now may later be used by a closed country as a reason to deny them entry, he said.

“Such students often fly under the radar by choosing tent-making training and strategies,” Wilson said. “If their intent is to have marketplace skills to use in otherwise closed countries — closed to traditional missions agencies — publishing their names and strategies may undermine their goals.”

Missions mindset

Some students with missions in mind major or minor in intercultural studies and pursue additional training in marketplace skills “so that they can live and work as global Christians with a Kingdom mindset,” he said. “In fact, we have built-in language competency in three of our Intercultural Studies tracks: French, Spanish and Teaching English as a Second Language.”

New avenues of sharing the gospel

This mindset can open up all new avenues of sharing the gospel, said Chris Mills, student missions mobilizer for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.

In recent years, the North American Mission Board and International Mission Board have done a good job in challenging Southern Baptists to think outside the box of full-time ministry when it comes to missions work, he said.

So Mills and other student ministers have come together to make a way to help students who have chosen that path.

The initiative — called Career Plant — was designed by Jerrod Brown, Baptist campus minister at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, and connects students with church planters across the nation.

“As students graduate and consider where they want to work, they can use this network to find a church planter to come alongside,” Mills said.

For example, one young woman who majored in pharmacy feels called to South Asia, but she and her husband didn’t feel the time was right to go there (see story, below).

“They have connected with a church plant in New York that works with South Asians, and they will go there to come alongside them and be involved members of the church who tithe and do ministry and give them support,” he said. “She will be able to continue to work in pharmacy and her husband will continue his work as an engineer.”

On the flip side, for instance, if a new graduate got a job in another city, Career Plant could connect him or her with a church plant in that area.

It would be a blessing for any church planter, Mills said.

“If you are a church planter and you have a solid follower of Christ who could come and plug into your church and has a job, understands tithing, has a desire to serve and knows the need — how valuable could that person be on your team?”

He said he and other student ministers want to help students see that there is a place for them — the need is great, and the options are vast.

“I love it when a student tells me they are going to serve as a Journeyman,” Mills said of the IMB’s two-year overseas missions program. “But I also love it when a student tells me they are going to be a businessperson and use that for the spread of the gospel.”

EDITOR’S NOTE — Student name has been changed for security reasons.

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Career Plant points students toward cities where they can live, work strategically

By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist

When John Turner met his future wife Courtney at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, he found one thing out quickly — she had a heart for the nations.

And he really didn’t.

“My faith was more of a personal thing up until that point,” he said. “We met at the BCM and I got challenged by others to pray about it. So I told God, ‘If I’m really supposed to care about other people, I need you to give me that heart.’”

God answered those prayers, he said. “That’s when everything changed.”

And over the months that followed, as God brought international students across John’s path and led Courtney to South Asia for a semester, their hearts became certain.

They wanted to get married, and they wanted to do missions.

“We wanted to go to South Asia, but we have student loans, so we can’t do that right now,” said Courtney Turner, who studied to become a pharmacist.

John Turner, who majored in engineering, had begun to wonder lately if he had made a mistake in choosing his career.

“But what we realized was that we could take our jobs anywhere, to any city and live and work there and be part of what God was doing among internationals,” he said.

That’s the heart of Career Plant, an initative designed by Jerrod Brown, Baptist campus minister at the University of South Alabama, which connects graduating students with church planters across the nation (see story, above).

“It’s like your job search done backward,” John Turner said.

Before you look for a job, you find people groups in need of a gospel presence.

One way to do that is to use a map provided at peoplegroups.org that shows where groups are concentrated in the U.S.

“Then after you find the people group you want to connect with, Career Plant helps you connect with a church planter there,” John Turner said. “And then you can find a job.”

That’s what he and Courtney Turner did — they followed their heart for South Asians to New York City and got connected with an existing church plant among that people group in the city.

“It’s already there, we just get to come alongside what they are doing,” Courtney Turner said. “Church planters need solid members who can serve alongside them consistently and tithe regularly. You can live somewhere and work there and have all of your free time to be invested in that community.”

This way, they can work, pay off student loans and not have to wait years to take the gospel to South Asians, she said. “We wanted to be where the internationals are.”

If God has gifted you to do a particular job, He has ways He wants you to use that, she said. “That might be in Alabama but that might be in some other way too.”

EDITOR’S NOTE — Names have been changed for security reasons.

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UM’s new journal issues call for submissions

The forthcoming Journal of Christianity & Higher Education (JCHE) is issuing a call for papers for the inaugural volume, set for publication in October 2018.

JCHE, produced by University of Mobile (UM), is a peer-reviewed journal that aims to broaden empirical knowledge about the interchange of Christianity and higher education theory, practice, administration and experience, according to UM.

Submissions are due May 15.

JCHE, an interdisciplinary and interdenominational publication, seeks to enhance knowledge of the intersection of the Christian faith with all areas of higher education through quality articles that highlight robust research and stimulate dialogue.

JCHE uses a double-blind peer-review process. The views and opinions expressed in the JCHE are those of the authors and are not necessarily representative of the editors or the sponsoring organization.

Interested contributors should visit ojs.umobile.edu for more information and submission. Questions may be directed to the editor, Kyle Beshears, associate dean of the UM School of Christian Studies, at kbeshears@umobile.edu. (UM)