One of the things ISI City directors get to do is visit the local seminaries to share with students about international ministry and ISI. It is actually a lot of fun. I usually get to visit both Dallas Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was able to make these visits this week.

The purpose of these visits is really two fold. First, we look for students who are interested in helping out with the ministry, potential volunteers who are generally motivated to serve and have some skills that they want to try out. Further, almost all the intro to mission students are required by their professors to develop a relationship with an international person to pass the class. This usually gets them even more interested if they weren’t enough already.

We usually introduce them to opportunities to be friendship partners, english partners, camp/retreat helpers, Friday/Saturday ICF/Bible Study, volunteers etc. It’s a win/win situation for everyone. I’ve heard stories where students have mantained the relationship they made with an international student through this program years later, even after the seminary student is long gone from seminary. Wow!

The second purpose is to expose these students to international student ministry in general. They will be the future pastors, missionaries, and seminary/bible school professors who will be the gate keepers of churches and the like that our ISI missionaries all over the country/world will be interacting with. If they had a good experience here, (most do) they will likely be more open to working with us to reach the over 600,000 international student all over the US that ISI seeks to reach through church volunteers (and their own work too). There have been several testimonies from staff where this has been the case and its exciting that we can “lead block” for our other colleagues around the world. It’s kind of cool being in Dallas/Fort Worth. With the flagship Southern Baptist and Evangelical/Bible church seminaries in the area, we have the opportunity to make a different in reaching student all over the country.