with African-American, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong, French and

Native American congregations and members, only 7 percent of the U.S.

Mennonite population is from underrepresented groups. Boyer suggested at

the conference that multiculturalism doesn't all need to happen on campus --

some of it happens "out there in the world" through SST.

Challenges for Service-Learning and International

Education at Church-Related Colleges

However imperfectly, international education is one way church-

related colleges can prepare students for a postmodern world andremain

connected to their supportive denominations. This is particularly true in cases

where study-abroad programs are integrally related to the religious and

cultural ethos on campus. International education may even allow for

"conversions" toward a church and its distinctive commitments as students

critique certain liberal assumptions; come to grips with their self-identity and

self-formation; examine and even "deconstruct" their communities of origin

and their religious traditions; recognize the legitimacies of various truths

(even while maintaining some particular religious commitments); and humble

themselves as they hammer away at their ethnocentricity by learning to

respect other cultural and religious traditions. Through international

education, even cautious and skeptical church-related colleges may open

themselves to a one-armed embrace of postmodernism. For those

denominationally-affiliated colleges and universities pushing out students'

boundaries through study-abroad programs, several observations emerging

from Goshen College's success -- and failure -- may be instructive.

1. Where possible, church-related colleges should make clear to

students, faculty and constituencies the historical or theological rationale for

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