MK forum

thanks, verily, and i appreciate your bringing up this topic!

Excellent comments jmg!!! Also, I would add that NTM needs to make sure this kind of child education takes place at all training centers world wide. That may explain the difference between what you remember vs what I remember.

I remember being 17, and coming across a reentry brochure. I showed it to our Canadian principal, and asked what he thought of it. He said that his advice was to rely on the Bible and the Holy Spirit . . .so I created my own reentry program, and within two weeks of landing on campus started dating a 23 year old

I think any MK can appreciate HnH's post. As a PK & MK, I felt tremendous pressure, not by my parents, but by the expectations of others to "go to Bible College" and enter the "ministry". Thankfully, I recognized at the time that "ministry" is NOT restricted to missions or the pastorate. There are many gifts, many roles, and all are to glorify God . . .which, really, is the only requirement or the criteria for all we say or do.

Wherever God places you, that place, that time, that task, is your ministry as unto Him. I know many of my NTM MK friends must have dealt with tremendous pressure to "go to Waukesha" and if they didn't they were "outside God's perfect will". I know for many that any outside vocation other than missions was frowned deeply upon and discouraged. I know that some were ostracized for choosing another path, as if Almighty God could only work through NTM and that and only that was His perfect will!?! I wonder if NTM's leaders ever considered whether those who were supporting their missionaries were in God's "perfect will" or not? All can't go. I digress, but the larger issue here is the "cult-like" atmosphere of using, once again, spiritual "truth" to pressure impressionable teens/young adults into believing that is NTM's highway or God is displeased with you for life.

That, along with so many other things is what disgusts me about the culture of NTM, back in the day, and, it seems that culture still prevails on some fields, even now.

From one MK to others, it's not like we didn't have enough pressure on us already without being told our Heavenly Father would be disappointed with us if we didn't become missionaries!!

Good grief!!

This is SUCH a good discussion. Again, I wish it were mandatory for any MK wishing to become a missionary! Yes, Your post, HnH and others' resonate with me! It is really good to hear so many others express what I felt (and sometimes wondered if it was just me or just the field I grew up in)!

I'd like to add that I was never told in actual *words* that "to serve God any other way, in any other forum, is sub par." As I imagine you all were not *told* that either. I imagine our parents or former teachers/dorm parents or former NTBI instructors might be agast at the suggestion. But, although not said, it was nevertheless very clearly communicated! Perhaps even more effectively communicated because of the lack of words, being communicated as it was, through actions, comments, raised eyebrows, lack of applause for NTBI grads not going on to the NTMI, etc.

Well, I concede that perhaps it was communicated in words to some of you. But I mainly felt the pressure rather than heard it. Yet it was so tangible!

Oh, and after graduating NTBI I was *shocked* to find myself in church alongside believers whose passion for and walk with the Lord was stronger than any I'd seen before. How could this be?! I was taught that the church in America was dead and devoid of zeal for Christ or for ministry! I was fully prepared to be a guiding light to the complacent church goers. But instead I found myself humbled and in need of learning...and re-learning!

Hurt-n-hopeful, not only did we call it THE Mission, but we also called it THE Work! I remember meeting one of our former Bible School teachers, who was by then retired and living in THE Homes in Sanford. By then, our own children were grown, and his single question about them was, "So, are your children in THE Work?" The Work??? The hidden message I felt very keenly from him was that that would be the test of whether we'd made him proud or not, whether we'd raised our own kids in loyal NTM fashion, the proof being that if we'd done it right, they would be back in THE Mission.
THE sigh ....

@ Raz: what you just described was the insidious, silent pressure that pervades so much of NTM. It's not overt, but it is there. At the moment it feels vaguely as if the one at which it is directed has failed . . . not measured up, in some way.

That is what it boils down to, in so many areas: approval seeking through deeds done in THE work, on THE field, otherwise your Heavenly Father is deeply displeased with you and you "wasted" your life.

I'm surprised NTM didn't sell indulgences on the side!