What Conferences Are Held about Missionary Member Care?
Short & Simple Summary
The short and simple answer is that conferences and similar events are held in many places around the world. The two oldest, largest and most widely known conferences in the USA, as well as a relatively new one attended by people from around the world, are in this chapter as well as links to where the reader can find out about others currently offered. Here are the topics covered in this chapter.
Mental Health & Missions Conference
Midwest Conference on Missionary Care
Global Member Care Network (GMCN) Conference
Other Similar Events
Does It Help
If you want more detail and links to other sources, read on.
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Attending conferences is a great way to learn about a topic as well as getting to meet people who are leaders in the field and others interested in the topic. Of course, the presentations vary in quality, depending on who is leading them, but there is nearly always something helpful in every presentation. Here is some advice about attending a conference.
· Room on-site. Meeting people in the hall can lead to important discussions that people staying in less expensive off-site lodging may miss.
· Eat on-site. Our most important contacts have come from eating with people. Every meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—is an important time to network.
· Talk to people during breaks and free times. You can rest after the conference is over.
· Do not always eat with your friends. Try to eat with different people at every meal so that you make as many contacts as possible.
· Go to sessions whenever they are offered. You may sleep through an important opportunity when you take a nap.
· Pick up handouts not only from the sessions you attend but also from others occurring during the same times.
· Take notes. You will be amazed at how much you do not remember because you are overwhelmed with information for two or three days.
Mental Health & Missions Conference
Every year since the first meeting in 1980 the Mental Health and Missions (MHM) conference has met in northeastern Indiana in the lodge of a state park in November. MHM is an annual gathering of primarily Christian North American mental health professionals who gather together for mutual encouragement and professional development in the care of Christian cross-cultural workers. Recently between 200 and 300 people have attended the conference each year.
MHM is meant for counselors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health providers. Such individuals will find this conference relationally rich and professionally invigorating. Although member care personnel, leaders from mission agencies, and students are welcome, they must remember that presenters will be targeting mental health practitioners.
The conference begins with dinner and a plenary session Thursday evening and ends with Sunday brunch. The schedule includes many workshops, a few plenary sessions, and the Research & Resource fair on Saturday evening. The R & R Fair is an interactive venue for sharing relevant research and ministry resources. Held Saturday night, the fair showcases 20-30 organizational resources, literature reviews, and presentations of research.
The conference is sponsored by Mission Training International, and current information is available at http://www.mti.org/programs/MHM .
PTM Conference
The PTM (Pastors-to-Missionaries) Conference was birthed in 1989 to gather those whose hearts were tugged toward encouraging those whose ministries called them to far-flung places around this planet. PTM Conference seeks to build, equip and network member care workers in a Christ-centered community environment.
PTM Conference Values are:
· Pastoral Care of Cross-cultural Missionaries: By providing a primary focus on pastoral care giving.
· Personal Encouragement for the Caregiver: By providing refreshment and encouragement.
· Professional Development of the Caregiver: By providing instruction and resources for continued growth in attitude, knowledge, and ministry skills.
· Proactive and Preventive Response to Missionaries Needs: By providing pastoral caregivers with models, tools and skills to help missionaries with their normal missionary development. In addition, we will provide training in how to respond to crisis situations.
· Partnership with All Involved in Care giving: By providing a safe place for dialogue among those who give pastoral care to missionaries including field personnel managers, local sending churches, sending agencies, pastoral care providers as well as missionaries themselves.
The conference is usually held in the fall from Tuesday evening through Friday morning and is sponsored by Barnabas International. Current information is available at http://ptm.barnabas.org/.
Global Member Care Network (GMCN) Conference
The first GMCN Conference was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, during five days in April 2012 with more than 350 people from more than 35 countries attending the conference. Each day of the conference focused on a different aspect of Member Care, namely:
· Status Quo of Member Care
· Continuing Spiritual Development
· Crisis and Catastrophes
· Relationships: Marriage, Family, Singles, TCKs
·
Sending Churches and Mission Agencies
These aspects were emphasized through the devotions, plenaries and
workshops. In addition short member care reports with voices from different
regions were given from:
· Asian and Pacific region
· Europe and North America
· Africa and Middle East
· Latin America
Twenty one workshops were presented in 4 sessions during the course of the week. The outcome of the conference could be seen on different levels:
· Focusing on God and spending time in His presence
· Encouragement of individuals – spiritually and in terms of their Member Care involvement
· Stimulation of the further development of regional member care networks
· Formal and informal networking
· Positive feedback from participants about having another GMCN conference
Another GMCN conference is scheduled to be held during January/February 2015, in Antalya, Turkey with reservations made for 400 participants. For more information see
http://www.globalmembercare.com/index.php?id=187&L=0.
Other Similar Events
Although they are not national or international conferences in the same sense as the ones described above, numerous other gatherings are held. They are called such things as seminars, consultations, workshops, courses, and so forth. Many of them offer valuable education to people interested in missionary member care. They are held in different parts of the USA as well as in other countries around the world.
Beginning in 2007, the Midwest Conference on Missionary Care has been an annual event co-sponsored by Minnesota Renewal Center, Barnabas International, and Transform Minnesota (formerly the Greater Minnesota Association of Evangelicals).
The aim of this conference is to inform, inspire, and educate the church – including laity, pastors, leaders, mission coordinators, and mission committee members – in providing effective care to their overseas missionaries and missionary families. The event is held every February in the Twin Cities area (Minnesota) churches. Attendees come from around the upper Midwest and throughout the country. Speakers and workshop leaders include local church leaders, national mission leaders and missionary care professionals.
The conference is held Friday evening and all day Saturday. The schedule includes a few plenary sessions and many breakout sessions. Current information is available at http://www.mctwo.org/ .
Another good one of these is “Continuing Education in Counseling and Member Care,” an intensive counseling seminar for missionaries, pastors, and other Christian workers. It is sponsored by the Narramore Christian Foundation and is offered annually in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
For more than 30 years the Narramore Christian Foundation offered intensive two week seminars in counseling in the United States. More than 2,000 people have taken this training. With minor modifications related to member care this seminar is available in Asia. Although this seminar is designed especially with missionary member care personnel in mind, the sessions include a broad range of counseling, problem solving and growth topics that apply to anyone in a people helping, pastoral care, or counseling ministry. For further information see http://www.ncfliving.org/seminar_thailand01.php. The Narramore Foundation also offers the seminar in western Asia.
Other member care events occur across the United States and around the world throughout the year. Many of these can be of great help. The best place to find out what they are as well as when and where they are going to be held is in the monthly Global Member Care Network (GMCN) Newsletter to which you can subscribe at
http://www.globalmembercare.org/newsletter/user/subscribe.php . You can find out more about the newsletter as well as look at some of the archived newsletters at http://www.globalmembercare.com/index.php?id=57.
The last section of the newsletter is “Global Member Care Events.” Here are some of the events that appeared in 2012.
Of course, the Counseling and Member Care Seminar sponsored by the Narramore Christian Foundation was in this list as well.
Much is available to people around the world who want to become involved in missionary member care. Individuals can attend events lasting anywhere from a couple days on a weekend to two full weeks.
Does It Help
Some Individuals may question whether such training will make them able to help other people. During the 1970s and the 1980s people began to question whether or not individuals had to be professionals to be able to help others. Dozens of studies appeared in professional literature, many of them in Psychological Bulletin which is not available free on-line. However Andrew Christenson in the UCLA department of psychology published “Who (or what) can do psychotherapy: The status and challenge of nonprofessional therapies” in Psychological Science, of the American Psychological Society. Christianson’s abstract of that article begins with the following:
Research suggests that paraprofessional therapists usually produce effects that are greater than effects for control conditions and comparable to those for professional therapist treatment. Other nonprofessional psychological treatments, such as self-administered materials and self-help groups, have also demonstrated positive effects…
You can read the whole article, including a list of references directing you to the literature which shows that paraprofessionals can be quite effective in helping others at http://data.psych.udel.edu/abelcher/Shared%20Documents/7%20Professional%20Issues%20(25)/Christensen%20Jacobson%201994.pdf.
One of the most important things in missionary member care is for the missionary to know that someone cares for them enough to spend time with them and really listen to them. Just knowing that someone cares is therapeutic.
Note to the reader: If you have suggestions about other things that would better answer this chapter’s question, please email those to me at ron@missionarycare.com. In that email please tell me three things: (1) what you believe needs to be included, (2) links to relevant websites if available, and (3) how it better answers the question “What conferences are held about missionary member care?” I plan to periodically update and expand the book with these suggestions.