FOUNDATIONS OR ADVANCED COHORT?

Our Foundations and Advanced Cohort are complementary cohorts meant to build upon one another. The Foundations Cohort is focused on implementing the first five of the Sending Church Elements. We will focus on:

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1. Cultivating Missions Awareness - Practical ways to Cultivate Awareness of Global Missions in your church. Our hope in this is to help you develop a global communication plan for your church.

2. Establishing Missions Convictions - Agreeing up on Biblical Convictions as a church leadership team for global missions.

3. Developing a Vision - Arriving upon a vision that's God-sized for your church and putting that into a clear vision statement.

4. Building a Strategy - Developing a Strategic document that clearly outlines your strategy as a church; as well as developing a sending pipeline; and developing a budget that reflects the vision and values of your church.

5. Involving the Entire Church - Landing on ways that you will involve your whole church in praying, giving, welcoming internationals, caring for Sent-Ones, going short-term, or going long-term.

The Foundations Cohort will provide the foundational aspects of being a great sending church that will be necessary to have in place prior to sending long-term missionaries from your church. This Cohort will be valuable for churches that are developing these five elements for the first time, churches that need a tune-up in these areas, or churches that want a major overhaul of their foundational strategy of being a sending church.

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The Advanced Cohort will expound heavily on the Sending Pipeline. How to identify, assess, and develop potential Sent-Ones. This particular cohort will be great for a church that has individuals in the sending pipeline, ready to be sent in the next year or two. In Advanced we will walk through elements 6-9:

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6. Evaluating Sending Models & Partners - How to choose the missions organizations you send and partner with. As well as, finding the right on-field partners that will help your Sent-Ones accomplish the goals your church desires to accomplish on the field.

7. Identifying Sent-Ones - How to work towards not only reactively sending those who are interested in missions, but how to be proactive in sending.

8. Assessing Sent-Ones - How to assess those who are interested in going overseas. Developing a list of character qualities you are looking for in your Sent-Ones and evaluating whether or not individuals in your pipeline should go overseas in light of that list.

9. Developing Sent-Ones - Putting together a development pathway for those you are looking to go overseas. What classes, projects, books you want them to read, and experiences you want them to have.

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So how do you decide between the two? Our recommendation would be that for churches that do not have foundational documents like the following that your church does the Foundations Cohort: 

• Missions Convictions

• Vision & Strategy for Missions

• Sending Pipeline

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If your church has these foundational documents in place AND has people in the sending pipeline, then the Advanced Cohort could be a great fit for your church.

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Contact Mike Ironside: mike@theupstreamcollective.org with any questions you would have or to set up a 30 minute meeting to talk through which cohort would be the best for you.