Day 4: NWSOM Orientation in Boise

The Northwest Schools of Mission began in 1949. The idea was to invite a handful of missionaries to visit the churches in this area of the country, to educate them on what was happening in missions (thus the "School" in the name). The NW was divided, originally, into six different regions, with the missionaries moving from region to region, taking one region per week. Within each region, each missionary would be given a different itinerary of six or seven churches in which he/she was to speak, one each night and two on Sunday. Originally, neighboring churches would cooperate and visit a given church where a missionary would be speaking. In this way, there was a potential for a missionary to have exposure to up to a hundred or so churches within the six weeks. There is a stress and a focus on missions education, so we do not see this as a fund-raising event, although sometimes that is a by-product of churches and individuals coming to know the missionaries and their works. A continuation committee, including regional coordinators, does all the planning and scheduling each year.

When I did this marathon in 1996, it was down to five weeks. This year, it's four. It has become increasingly difficult for churches to gather a crowd on a week-night to hear a missionary speaker. Many of the larger churches have their own missions programs and don't participate anymore. But the NWSOM continues on, and I believe it still has value. From my perspective, where else can you get to tell your mission's story at so many different churches in so short a time?

We had Orientation yesterday (Friday, my birthday), in the beautiful old Capitol City Christian Church building in downtown Boise. Gary Anderson, former missionary to China, son of Carl and father of Steven, is the senior minister and our host for the two nights we're here in Boise. We got to meet the other four missionaries who will be doing this along with us:
--Dr. Glen Basey, representing Christian's Haven, a children's home in the Philippines
--Johnny Orr (with his son), with Rancho de los Pinos (children's home) in Honduras
--M/M Eldon Shaw, with TLC (Teaching and Training Leaders for Churches and Countries, International) in the West Indies
--Jaffet and Norma Perez, with Spanish Evangelism based in Puerto Rico

Each of us got to give our presentation and critique each other. It was good to see who all will be speaking on the NWSOM. After the presentations, which took most of the day, we met with the regional coordinators to get our schedules, and our up-front cash for expenses, had a prayer time send-off, and went home to our host's home, which in our case was the Andersons. I stayed up fairly late talking missions with Gary. It was fun, and informative.

Phil