The May 2008 assignment service at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Mequon, marked the first time a student was assigned to be a graduate mission associate—a new category of world mission assignments created by the seminary and WELS World Missions. Graduates will now be able to gain cross-cultural experience in world mission fields without foregoing important stateside training their vicar year.

Jonathan Bare of Owosso, Mich., was the only mission associate assignment this year. He will serve in Southeast Asia and provide spiritual care for American volunteers teaching English as a Foreign Language to Chinese-speaking people.

“I’m very excited to go over to Asia and be part of this new ministry,” says Bare. “Doors are opening up that allow us to share the gospel message with people who are starving to hear it, and what a privilege and honor that is.”

According to seminary President Paul Wendland, this new assignment category was created in response to the growing number of requests for vicars to serve in mission settings. He says the cross-cultural experiences students receive in foreign mission fields are an important part of ministry training—but after their senior year, most graduates are assigned to a stateside parish.

“If they go [into world mission settings] as vicars, they may feel a deficit in experience in their call to a stateside parish,” says Wendland. “For that reason, we thought the best of all possible worlds—where a person can have both the cross-cultural experience and [stateside] experience as a vicar—is to send them out as graduate mission associates.”

Requests for graduate mission associates come from the various world fields and their administrative committees. Associates are then selected by the Assignment Committee. 

Mission associates serve for two years and partner with workers already in that field. Following an evaluation at the end of their two years, the mission associate may receive a permanent call to that field or be reassigned to a stateside parish. “If it doesn’t seem to be a good fit, well, that’s unfortunate—we just lost some time and foreign missions are an expensive prospect,” says Pastor Dan Koelpin, administrator of WELS World Missions. “But we are still benefitting by getting people exposed to cross-cultural work.”

Wendland agrees. “I think more and more that servants of the Word in the Wisconsin Synod need to grow in our understanding that we are citizens of the world. Therefore it becomes critically important to increase our cultural understanding and our ability to handle the changing culture without losing our moorings on the unchanging Word.”