Self-paced Pre-Requisite courses:

PIPEDA (Privacy Protection Policy)
CVPP (Child/Vulnerable Persons Protection and Harassment Prevention)

IMEQ 100 | Partnership Development Course

Under Development

Summer Term Cohort (May-June) – Intensive

KAIROS Course - Biblical, Historical, Cultural and Strategic overview of God’s Mission

Further information about this course is available at: www.kairoscourse.ca

IMEQ 101 | IM Vision, Mission & Values

This course will introduce the participants to the strategic focus as well as the foundational missional actions, priorities and underlying biblical values and imperatives that shape PAOC International Missions. Understanding PAOC’s Vision, Mission, and Values is essential to ensuring good working relationships and will enable all PAOC Global Workers to develop effective ministry plans. It will assist each student to better align their work with the intended direction and culture of the PAOC.

IMEQ 102 | Finance, Policy and Charity Law

This course will delve into the Canadian charity world and uncover the unique opportunities and responsibilities of Christian charities in the spirit of Romans 13. This session will help participants relate what we learn about charity law to how policy is shaped. Finally, participants will discover how policy then helps us manage the resources that God asks us to steward while participating in what God is doing globally.

IMEQ 103 | Current Trends and Issues in Mission

The call of God is fulfilled in a world full of both challenges and opportunities. Understanding our current world is essential to shaping our ministry plans and ensuring effective ministry. This course will expose participants to current societal trends and issues and help them to engage in mission with greater confidence and with servant hearts as modelled by Christ himself. 

IMEQ 104 | Cross Cultural Transitions

The focus of this course is on the relationship of culture to communication of the Gospel. Understanding that cultural dynamics can hinder receptivity to the messenger and message, cross-cultural ministers need to not only cope with cultural differences, but to understand and adapt to the host culture in order to bear culturally appropriate witness and to make disciples. The need for adaptation on the part of the messenger and for the empowerment of the Spirit in the face of cultural complexities is explored and applied to the relationship of messenger and host people and to the dynamics of cross-cultural communication. 

IMEQ 105 | Spiritual Vitality, Gifts and Warfare

Spiritual Vitality, Gifts and Warfare teaches global workers of their need for spiritual vitality so they can deploy the divine resources at their disposal for furthering the mission of God. They will be taught how to use this vast armory of spiritual weapons. To ensure their success, they will learn how to come against the powers of darkness aligned against them. To this end the course will teach God’s workers how to become more powerful in spiritual battles, how to discern evil, how to protect themselves against it and how to overcome the enemy.  

IMEQ 106 | Language Learning

In endeavouring to understand and participate in another language, it’s important to know that the focus cannot be merely about a language, but rather its focus needs to be on people (and people talk a lot!!). It’s about human life together, which is highly interactive. Language does not stand on its own, and words don’t amount to much, if they are seen apart from people and the life they are woven together with and understood through. Thus, growing participation is particularly about red-blooded, feeling, responsive people connected in relationships and groups – especially groups of people who can u understand each other’s speech, but live in a world where a majority cannot understand their speech. This course will introduce the growing redemptive participation approach that involves combining life-style growth activities (immersion) with special-growth activities through 6 phases.

IMEQ 107 | Fruitfulness: Strategy & Context

A biblical understanding of fruitfulness is essential to a healthy expression of missional purpose, and foundational to effective disciple-making. The successful engagement of Jesus’ teaching about harvest and the roles we are called to fulfill in laboring with God are key in directing our lives to accomplish ‘His’ work, in ‘His’ vineyard. These building blocks must inform and empower practices that we intentionally live out and invite others to hold us accountable for as part of our communal habit. Using biblical examination, group discussion and personal reflective activity, this session will lead the participant to implement the value of fruitful practice as the core criteria for discipling unreached peoples and the most vulnerable of our world.

IMEQ 108 | Volunteer Hosting

An essential component of participation in the Great Commission includes coming alongside other Canadians to disciple them towards missions. If we value God’s call to mission, we will participate with God in His calling of others. This session will introduce the participants to the PAOC resources available for building capacity to host various types of volunteers as well as the resources available for the equipping of both volunteers and short-term team leaders.

IMEQ 109 | Effective Community Development

What if you could bring true transformation to your host country? Community Development means that communities are developing. It means that transformation is taking place. What does this look like? Who is involved in the process? What results can we expect? In this module participants will have the opportunity to explore community development and to discuss examples of the Church responding well.

FALL TERM COHORT (SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER) 

IMEQ 110 | Security and Emergency Preparedness

Religious fundamentalism, politics, and regional crises, etc., cause our world to increasingly complicate effective cross-cultural ministry long-term. Living out the gospel in a manner that navigates these challenges requires the Global Worker to embrace a posture of care for the security of themselves and others, develop an authentic identity suitable to the arena of ministry in which they reside, and an effective structure of plans to manage risk for themselves and those they work with. With a backdrop of the least-reached and most vulnerable of our world in view, these sessions will lead the participant to understand the current challenges and risks involved in delivering the gospel, cultivate communication and technology strategies to mitigate these risks, and develop/maintain a personal preparedness plan for emergencies. 

IMEQ 111 | Understanding Poverty

Understanding Poverty is one of the foundational learning modules created by ERDO for global workers and program partners.  It covers ideas and specific concepts related to poverty and will provide the participants with methods and tools with which they can effectively analyze and respond to poverty in their context.  (The content has been field-tested with global workers and partners who minister in very challenging socio-economic contexts.)

IMEQ 112 | Culture, Community and Care

At the heart of all leadership endeavours are some basic skills and principles. In these sessions we will look at three key areas: Self-leadership, Trust and Conflict Resolution. Building on the Birkman Profile we will look at the importance of managing oneself and how that effects trust. From there we move to the key organizational skill, building trust by your character and competency. Finally, when the inevitable comes, why does conflict happen and how do we diffuse it in a non-anxious way.

SPRING TERM COHORT (JANUARY-APRIL)

IMEQ 113 | Cultural Intelligence

The most crucial aspect of this course is to grasp the concept of being a “lifetime learner”. Cultural Intelligence is not something one achieves but rather something that one moves toward. Flexibility, adaptability, humility, forgiving and seeking forgiveness, commitment, and serving are all elements the course addresses in the context of crossing cultures. The course will use the acronym L.E.D. (with God as the foundation) each week to guide the discussions and to highlight key concepts that determine effectiveness in ministering in a new environment and context. 

IMEQ 114 | You and Your Family on Mission

An important aspect of global worker life is the dynamics associated with family. Each of us is part of a family network of some kind and living out a call to serve on mission with God impacts these vital relationships. Our parents and siblings are affected by how we live out our call. Our spouses and our children are also affected, whether they are part of the overseas assignment or have already left ‘home’. This course is a chance to consider and reflect on you, your family and mission. Participants for this course will meet in smaller cohorts so that we can address specific issues that are distinct for different ages and stages of life. There will be a cohort for single global workers, another for married and married with young children, and a third cohort for those global workers who do not have children relocating with them.

IMEQ 115 | Making Disciples/Disciple Making Movements

Central to every calling, in every context, is the commitment to making disciples as commanded by Jesus. Students will reflect on their own journey of discipleship alongside a fresh look at the biblical account to clarify the priority, approach, and methods for making disciples. Addressing the often-held opinion that “proselytism and conversion is unethical neo-colonialism” will empower students to live out the great commandment to love by making disciples and not just caring for the vulnerable. The basic principles and approach of Disciple Making Movements (DMM) will provide understanding for students to ascertain if they should pursue further learning and implementation of DMM in their ministry.