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students for SST, faculty need to clearly acknowledge the origin of the

experience in Christian discipleship.

  1. In some cases, church-related colleges would be wise to make

appropriate connections with overseas mission and service workers from

their denominations. When Goshen's SST program began, faculty and

administrators were wisely reluctant to forge this institutional link too firmly.

However, given the international respect organizations such as Mennonite

Central Committee have garnered, and given the sensitive and sophisticated

perspective of most MCC and Mennonite Board of Missions workers overseas,

Goshen's study abroad program has been and will be served well by

strengthening these connections. Given that SST is an educational venture,

students ought not be co-opted into doing the church's "mission work," but

they can learn from lectures by service workers, and by observing their

manner of graciously relating to and learning from their hosts. In Dominican

Republic, Costa Rica and Africa students have opportunities to interact with

church-related mission and service personnel, and elsewhere SST is connected

with indigenous Mennonites, who provide homes for some students. When

Mennonite and other students worship with Mennonites in Indonesia or Costa

Rica or East Germany or Dominican Republic, they are stimulated to critique

what is uniquely "American" about Mennonite churches or their own

denominations, and what may be distinctive to particular religious traditions.

Other church-affiliated schools with institutional representatives or clusters

of congregations in given countries overseas may benefit from tapping into

such resources, helping students better understand their own religious

origins or those of the college they are attending.

  1. In order for study-abroad programs to effect long-term

transformation, colleges and universities must pay close attention to re-entry


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