New ministries and fresh starts in 2022

Arriba Moves to Chile

Our popular, long-running Latin American internship, Arriba, is moving to a new home: Chile. After 40 years in Peru and Ecuador, Arriba resumes in the 2023–2024 academic year, still offering the same outstanding features. College students complete 30+ credits through classroom work and ministry practicum along with the cultural immersion of living with Chilean host families.

Veteran church planters James and Coletta Morsey (right) will lead Arriba from their base in Santiago, Chile’s capital. The Morseys’ long history of youth development—from their youth pastorate to raising children to years of hosting visiting students—make them excited to continue their work of investing in the next generation of Christian leaders.

A STEP Up for Theological Education

For years, it’s been a conversation among BMM’s theological education ministries: “We need a venue for dialogue, collaboration, resource sharing, and communicating our seminaries’ needs.” That conversation took tangible form with the creation of STEP (Strategic Theological Education Partnership), a ministry created to serve BMM’s theological educators and seminaries.

STEP’s interim director, Bruce Burkholder, says, “STEP’s primary goal is to assist BMM missionaries who minister in the areas of pastoral training and theological education. We hope to create a collaborative community to encourage one another, where we can learn and work together.” The acronym STEP also communicates BMM’s desire to take our pastoral training institutions to higher levels. One of STEP’s long-range goals is to see more of BMM’s training institutions offer advanced degrees, thus better equipping national pastors and leaders to greater levels of personal and institutional ministry.

Because BMM educators are dispersed across every continent, STEP is developing efficient means to promote communication, training, and dialogue. They hope to launch a website in January 2023 that will include a listing of BMM pastoral training institutions around the world, a forum for questions and discussion, and a repository of helpful resources on issues related to theological education.

Peru Creation Museum

When his beloved wife, Betty, died in 2018, emeritus Peru missionary Bob Whatley (below), sold his possessions and returned to Peru to pursue his longtime dream of building a Creation museum. After much hard work, Bob and his team celebrated the museum’s grand opening on July 23, 2022.

The museum not only showcases the fossils and artifacts Bob collected in his 50+ years in Peru, but it also leads visitors through a timeline of history. As guests move through the museum’s 19 rooms, they learn about the Tower of Babel, ancient civilizations, the Cross, persecution of early believers, the discovery of North and South America, and other events. Special sections highlight Peru’s historical stages from pre-Incan to the present day.

The museum describes its petrified fossils, including mastodon jaws and teeth and ancient sea shells found high in the Andes Mountains—a phenomenon best explained by the biblical Flood account. In the center of the museum lies the “death room,” which addresses concerns that both ancient civilizations and modern tribal people have about death.

The museum team tailored each exhibit to win the lost and help believers in their defense of the faith. Within two weeks of the museum’s opening, five visitors (four prisoners from the local jail and a lawyer) made professions of faith. A Catholic nun who directs the province’s most prestigious high school plans to send each of her students as part of their mandatory religion classes.

The SEND9383 Podcast

The SEND938 Podcast, hosted by BMM North America Administrator Steve Anderson, debuted April 5. Our goal for this weekly podcast is to encourage, equip, and inspire the next generation of missionary servants and the churches who send them.

SEND938 gives listeners the chance to sit in on missions conversations they wouldn’t normally get to hear, giving them a greater breadth of understanding and insights about missions. Steve regularly hosts Christian leaders, missionaries, authors, and BMM personnel as they cover topics such as the missionary call, church revitalization, and missions frontiers.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app or listen at https://www.bmm.org/serve/send...