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TechnoratiSouthern Baptists are introducing a new “twentysomething” initiative this week to get more college students onto a career path in missions rather than a short-term experience.
Hundreds of students have joined National Collegiate Week, Aug. 4-10, at LifeWay Conference Centers in Glorieta, N.M., and Ridgecrest, N.C., where seminary recruiters and mission agencies have set up booths to bring more young people into their loop. And coming out for the first time is the "Hands On" project, a new initiative of the International Mission Board (IMB) – the international mission agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.
"Hands On," which is still in its development stages, aims to recruit college students to serve 4-12 months in mission work overseas. Students will use their own interests, skills or school major in community development projects, meeting human needs or working on university campuses.
"We have a good very good missionary force, but little turnover," said Mike Lopez, director of Student Mobilization for the IMB, who wants to see more students return as career missionaries. "We want students to see missions as more than a weeklong sprint. It's an endurance race. They have to stick it out [and] understand life from the way the local people would understand it, not just from your suitcase or hotel room.
"We want to get college students in the loop to become our career missionaries in the future."
The SBC sends out 6,000 to 8,000 students each year – more student missionaries than any other agency, according to Lopez.
"We want to see that number multiplied," he said.
Numbers have declined, however, and Lopez said they're sending a lot fewer young people than there are in the denomination.
"Southern Baptists could mobilize a huge number of high school and college students," he noted.
Just a month into developing the "Hands On" initiative, the IMB is stepping up a 60-year effort of dispatching student missionaries beginning in January 2008 when the mission agency sends a group of twentysomethings to Africa in a pilot project for about half a year.
"During that time, we really think God is going to call them [to long-term missions]," said Lopez.
SBC President Frank Page commended the effort to mobilize the younger generation.
"I see the twentysomething generation as integral to reaching the world," said Page who visited Kenya last month, according to Baptist Press. "If we do not find strategies that involve them, we will not fulfill the Great Commission.
Lopez also expressed confidence in the young crowd.
"We believe in students and we believe that they are not just our future but they're our present. We believe that they can contribute to the Kingdom and nations coming to a relationship with Christ," said Lopez.
The IMB currently has about 5,000 career missionaries, noted Lopez, and hopes the young students can serve as a pool for future missionaries.
Following the pilot project in Africa, the "Hands On" initiative will roll out to 11 regions around the globe in 2009.
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