Together with Christians from every age, our missional challenge is to discern our place and purpose in the contemporary expressions of the mission and movement of God—as individuals, families, churches, and mission training organisations. For us at All Nations Christian College, this challenge has translated to the question: how can a Minority World training centre in the UK facilitate mission from ‘Everyone to Everywhere’ when almost 70 per cent of the global Church is located in the Majority World’?
One of our responses to this critical question has been En Route – a ten-week, cross-cultural mission training course designed to be intensive, interactive and immersive. Typically, for the UK version of the course, 75 per cent of our students are not British and have a likely destination before they begin their training. This ensures that each cohort is highly motivated and open to experiencing the depth of relationships needed to build the intercultural, learning and loving community that forms the core of each course. When this is effectively combined with our ‘Head’, ‘Heart’ and ‘Hands’ learning ethos, we witness the ‘whole person’ transformation in our students that really enables them to bring transformation to God’s world as his cross-cultural kingdom servants!
Whilst the UK has now hosted 45 En Route courses over 15 years, with 550 graduates from many nations and mission agencies; the course’s future, in line with the ‘Everyone to Everywhere’ maxim, is both local and global. Since 2018, we have been privileged to see 27 contextualised versions of En Route running in 23 different locations, across 4 continents, in 8 languages and 17 nations. These initiatives have been furthered together with friends, rather than ‘partners’ – relationships with alumni, churches, Bible colleges and mission agencies – which have led us to do training around the world. The mutual goal has been to meet the growing global demand for high-quality cross-cultural mission training that is easily accessible, affordable and appropriate for that context.
It has been extremely encouraging to see local mission training teams organically forming and growing in each location. Individuals, families, and churches have contributed their time, giftings and resources to see successive courses surpass one another in terms of quality, engagement and organisation. As with the original UK course, we also see the intercultural emphasis of the course contributing to racial, ethnic and denominational reconciliation between participants and churches, resulting in new collaborative missional initiatives.
Our prayer is that En Route On-the-Move will continue to contribute, alongside many other global mission training initiatives, towards releasing more labourers, particularly from the Majority World, into the Lord’s harvest fields (Matthew 9:35-38).
Richard & Louisa Evans
All Nations Christian College