Ethnos360 members spend two years learning from more experienced missionaries. Many candidates start out wondering why they need the training. After two years, they realize that they need much more training — and that there is a team of experienced people who will help them along the way.

Prerequisite to Ethnos360 Training is a practical working knowledge of the Bible. After all, you can’t teach what you don’t know, right? If you don’t yet have that knowledge, Ethnos360 Bible Institute is one of the best places to meet the need.

When it comes to missions, how do you learn what you don’t know that you need to know? There are two ways: the school of hard knocks (failure), or education from people who have already been there.

The questions the training answers

What is a thriving church, and how do you go about planting one? Who do you ordain as indigenous elders, and when? What Bible lessons must be taught, and where do you start? How do you translate the Bible — and why is a translation necessary when you could use an interpreter? Why bother teaching people to read, and what does a sustainable literacy program look like? How do you decipher a mysterious, hidden culture — the meaning behind the words? How do you learn an unwritten language to high fluency, and why must a missionary be highly competent in it? How do you provide for your family in a remote place, build a home in the jungle, handle basic medical care, and work through government red tape? How do you build relationships so that people will trust you with their unwritten language, and establish peaceful contact with a people group with whom you have little in common?

It takes a team — and it takes preparation.

Why take two years to train?

In missions, people often see little value in taking time to be trained by experienced missionaries. “The urgency of the task is too great.” “Dying people are separated from God.” What is often missing is the painful experience of having unintentionally misled people away from God through enthusiastic miscommunication and lack of cross-cultural knowledge. Missionary training cannot fix everything, but learning to walk with God in an “impossible” ministry, with the knowledge of the experience of other missionaries, greatly helps effectiveness. Ethnos360 Training facilities are staffed by experienced career missionaries whose objective is to give new missionaries the insights and skills that will help them succeed in completing their Biblical mission.

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