The Journey Began Years Before It Started

There were events that occurred years before that were key to events that happened on this trip. The entries that follow will explain.

Background:

Class Name: IC 571 Mission Immersion Experience – Rosebud Sioux Reservation

Dates: July 12-18, 2008
Professors: Richard Twiss & W. Jay Moon

There are certain aspects of ourselves, culture, and faith that we can only learn by deeply engaging ourselves in another culture. This short immersion experience will expose and challenge you to wider aspects of God’s kingdom.

Course Description: A one week trip participating in intercultural Christian ministry. The location is the Rosebud, Lakota/Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota. As an immersion experience, you will learn from various speakers, interact with community members and participate in some traditional ceremonies. In this course, you will learn some of the critical aspects to consider in contextualization, as well as learn from mistakes in the past to become sensitized concerning how ’not’ to do missions in a cross-cultural context.

Course Objectives: Expose students to aspects of culture, religion and faith that they normally are not exposed to in order to sensitize them to the issues, needs, and opportunities for living out ones faith in Jesus in the midst of “otherness.” One of the major benefits of a short cross-cultural experience is the opportunity to recognize ones own cultural ways, biases and prejudices more clearly as they closely observe those of another. This unique experience will challenge and assist participants to discover God’s work in all cultures and the unique role of Jesus in the Creation story. The following objectives strive to reach this goal:

• Encounter another culture and begin engaging yourselves with others in that culture. In the process, we learn to love one another as ourselves.
• Gain a better grasp of the dynamic of clashing worldview assumptions in the process of cross-cultural communications.
• By learning some mission’s history among the tribes of North America, a person will gain a greater understanding of the larger context of intercultural ministry and global missions.
• Help prepare and be a part of a team to be stretched, molded, and used by God in your own as well as another culture. 
• Begin to understand and practice some basic principles of intercultural ministry, holistic/integral discipleship, critical contextualization and cultural adjustment.
• Understand opportunities for future involvement in intercultural ministry such as prayer, research, funding, serving, & encouraging.
• Begin to understand what neo-colonialism is, some of the root issues, and some of the possible Christian responses.

Partnership: This course is one representation of the partnership between the Sioux Falls Seminary (SFS) and the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies (NAIITS). Team teaching will be utilized by Richard Twiss, DMiss Candidate, President of Wiconi International and board member of NAIITS, and W. Jay Moon, PhD, Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies at SFS. Richard is a Lakota Sioux and he is originally from the Rosebud reservation.