Member Care Course--Overview

Let's say that you are going to offer a one or two week intensive course that overviews member care.

What topics would you include?

Here are the topics that we include in a 10-lesson course that we have offered. Next week we'll post the readings/materials that we use for each of these topics.

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Lesson 1--Overview of Member Care
Goals--Define the nature, scope, and relevance of member care. Overview the current status of this field and give various examples of member care.

Lesson Two--Biblical Foundations of Member Care
Goals--Explore examples of caring for the people of God in the OT and NT, in the context of God's desire to bless all the peoples of the world. Show how member care is both a Biblical responsibility and a key strategy of world missions today.

Lesson Three--Stress and Adjustment for Mission/Aid Workers
Goals--Overview the main challenges facing missionaries based on research and the CHOPS grid, highlighting burnout, reentry stress, spiritual warfare, and cultural adjustment.

Lesson Four--Families in Mission
Goals--Review family strengths needed to succeed in missions and the special challenges families face in raising children overseas (MK identity, education, common problems, and reentry), the mission family life cycle, and resources for couples, children, and family life.

Lesson Five--Personnel Selection and Assessment
Goals--Explore the qualities needed to work in missions, the criteria used for selecting missionary personnel, and practical helps for identifying "good-fit" and "at-risk" people.

Lesson Six--Consultation and Counseling
Goals--Discuss different approaches to providing services to mission agencies and their personnel: member care teams, assessment tools, brief counseling principles, field consultation logistics, the use of email, and helping with depression, conflict, deliverance.

Lesson Seven--Ethics in Member Care
Goals--Outline basic ethical issues that occur in member care and identify ethical principles to guide member care services.

Lesson Eight--Team Development
Goals--Develop precise thinking about what makes a team cohesive and effective, including understanding team characteristics, relationships, roles, team stages, multinational teams, the use of team building tools and with a special emphasis on conflict resolution.

Lesson Nine--Crisis and Contingency Management
Goals--A clear overview of how to prepare for, handle, and provide care for several types of traumas and crises affecting mission personnel

Lesson Ten--Preparation for Member Care and Future Directions
Goals--Identify the training and life experience necessary to work effectively in member care. Explore strategic ways to further develop the member care field internationally.

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Reflection and Discussion
**What suggestions do you have for additional or different topics?

**How much time is needed to do such a course?

**What types of settings could be used to offer such a course? (e.g., on-line, within an organisation, following a conference, at an academic institution, etc.)