Partner Highlight- CIT

Grow2Serve joyfully partners with over 30 missions organizations who share missionary learning resources or develop online courses. Today we’d like to introduce you to Center for Intercultural Training (or CIT).

We first started our relationship with CIT when Julie and Mark were just beginning to design and implement pre-field training for ReachGlobal. Mark ran into CIT directors George Schultz and Tim Wagner at a conference event for trainers. Noting how generous and willing to help both men were, Mark and Julie were soon discussing a visit out to CIT. By sharing some of their own ideas, they hoped to receive feedback from an experienced source, and to in turn learn more about what the kind of curriculum that goes into a pre-field training program. Indeed George and Tim went above and beyond this, allowing us not only take some training materials from CIT-adapting them to fit our own program- but also sharing with us where they were on the path, sharing experience open-handed. The spring of 2009 marked the start of a great relationship that has lasted in the years since.

Over the next several years, we interfaced here and there, touching base to learn from one another and grow together in our ministries. At times, they sent us personnel to help teach in our program. We shared ideas back and forth on what missionary training for the next generation would look like and how to adapt to meet it. By the time 2015 came around, CIT expressed their desire to provide on field follow-up learning for their missionaries who had once been their trainees in pre-field training. They wanted to provide opportunities for continued learning once out on the mission field. So they approached Mark with their idea. By this time, Grow2Serve was already offering a learning platform on which they offered multiple courses for missions learning. Happy to return the favor first proffered so long ago, Mark agreed wholeheartedly, resulting in the Grow2Serve/CIT partnership that exists today.

Grow2Serve helped launch and consult for CIT Next, CIT’s continued learning program for missionaries on the field. We now have ten CIT Next courses available through Grow2Serve which new missionaries, veteran missionaries, and their leaders. Our partnered goal is to grow this number to thirteen over the next few months. Together, we provide an opportunity for those on the field (both those who attended CIT pre-field training and those who didn’t) to engage with new ideas and concepts. Here, they interact with others that are in similar situations and learn together how to enact the new course concepts right away, right where they are.

In the years since we first started working with one another, it’s been a joy to work with CIT in CIT’s wonderful partnership community of 15-20 partnering organizations. As a team, we work to provide strong pre-field training and ongoing learning. It’s been a joy to see a spirit of collaboration and excellence and teamwork that is the foundations of who CIT is.

Learn more:
CIT Next online courses
CIT Next on-demand resources