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eXtreme Walk Frequently Asked Questions
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What is eXtreme Walk? eXtreme Walk is a formative 11-month, cross-cultural church multiplication and discipleship experience. Formative: Our prayer is that the Lord will form you in new and immense ways to be totally His. We hope to inspire you to catch a global and local vision for making disciples and multiplying churches. We want you to be malleable clay in the hands of the Lord. 11 month: The first three months are devoted to intense language acquisition and culture learning on location. The following seven months are for you to learn from local church planters to multiply local churches. This is a spiritual, relational, and incarnational ministry. And, one month is devoted to pre-field training and debrief. Cross-cultural: Through eXtreme Walk, you are sent and received into a community with different values, customs, and worldviews. This community has different strengths and weaknesses than your native community. Church multiplication: Through evangelism and discipleship, eXtreme Walkers work to start worshipping bodies of believers that start other worshipping bodies of believers. Discipleship: In eXtreme Walk you will both learn (from local church multipliers) and teach (persons in the local community). This will provide you with multiple opportunities to both grow as a disciple as well as make disciples. We hope you will give prayerful consideration to leading other young missionaries on eXtreme Walk after you return from your first eXtreme Walk experience. Experience: Learn “hands on,” by observing and doing, with the freedom to learn from failure. This takes initiative, responsibility, humility, and a continual focus on Jesus. What will I do on XW? eXtreme Walk (XW) is an opportunity to learn from and serve alongside local church planters. What you do will involve being trained by the locals to share the gospel and make disciples in their culture, language, and community. Sharing the gospel can take many different forms - all of which depend on prayer for effectiveness. Embodying Christ’s love along with local Christians is a major part of this. You will live among the people you seek to reach with the wholeness that Jesus brings. Making disciples involves investing yourself - your time, your energy, your life - into a few faithful, available, and teachable disciples. Our prayer is for you to share the gospel extensively and invest yourself intensively in a few people while the local workers and other missionaries invest in you. How long is XW? From pre-field training to the final debrief, eXtreme Walk lasts about 11 months. The rough and flexible timeline: Pre-field training - 3 weeks; language, culture, and discipleship training (on-field) - 3 months; ministry deployment - 7 months; debrief - 1 week. We try to allow enough time on the field for you to build deep and meaningful relationships and see the Lord transform lives through those relationships. And we try to keep it short enough so you can commit to it freely and confirm how the Lord is calling and leading you. How much does it cost? We try to place you at the same economic level as the local workers you serve with, but we also aim to take care of you. The cost for eXtreme Walk varies from country to country, but the usual cost is about 12,000 USD, everything included. Some countries cost much more. How much involvement with local people will I have? You will be immersed in the local community, learning their language and culture from them. Our prayer is that you can develop deep, transforming relationships with the local people. As a part of eXtreme Walk, the XWers in a certain country get together every 4-6 weeks for a mini-debrief retreat. Your XW team leader (called a Sherpa) also regularly visits each XWer. So while you are immersed in the local community you are also connected to the on-field missionary family and the other XWers. Who will I work with? OMS has a worldwide church planting ministry called Every Community for Christ, or ECC. As a part of this ministry, OMS trains and sponsors national workers to plant and multiply churches. eXtreme Walk places a new missionary on one of these ECC teams, to learn from and serve under the supervision of trained and experienced local church planters. We have found that XWers are a great blessing to the local ECC teams. Who can go on XW? What are the requirements? eXtreme Walk can be very stretching and difficult emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. On eXtreme Walk, learning a foreign language, cultural adaptation, and spiritual warfare often happen at the same time. Because of this, we ask that applicants:
When does XW begin? eXtreme Walk begins in both January and July of every year. When is the application deadline? The application deadline for the January XW is Oct. 1, and the deadline for the XW beginning in July is April 1. How do I apply? The first step is to fill out the Getting to Know You form found and we will contact you and send you the application and the steps to service. Where can I go on XW? The countries offered for XW can change from year to year. (Current opportunities include Latin America, Europe, Asia and there should be new opportunities in Africa soon.) Contact us to find out the latest opportunities. Patrick & Rachel Whipple eXtreme Walk Directors This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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