Baptist Mid-Missions and Central Baptist Seminary of Virginia Beach have created the Study Abroad program for graduate students interested in church planting overseas.
The program will place graduate students at the BMM Bible institute in Algrange, France, for a four-week module course. The first two weeks will be purely academic, with missions-related courses taught in the context of cross-cultural ministry. During the remaining two weeks, students will be placed with a missionary for intensive training in church planting cross-culturally. Study Abroad launched during summer 2007. The program is able to accommodate both singles and couples.
BMM Field Administrator for Africa and Europe, Rev. Vernon Rosenau, sees it as an ideal way to introduce students to the vast potential for missions in Europe. Central Baptist Seminary is highly interested in increasing its missions emphasis on campus, which created an ideal partnership.
Rev. Rosenau foresees the program being flexible enough to be adapted to other continents: “I can see this one day being called ‘Global Studies Abroad’ as we expand it to Asia, Africa, or South America.”