Why Go with Avant?

Avant believes in caring well for its missionaries as they plant and develop churches among the unreached globally. Click on the categories below to see some of what characterizes membership with Avant.

Development and Training

Avant highly values the process of spiritual formation and life-long learning. In addition to the variety of training that missionaries typically receive before becoming members of Avant, opportunities are provided throughout the entire missionary life cycle and career for ongoing personal, spiritual and professional development.

Training and development opportunities include:

Pre-field

Avant Start: Avant Start is one week program for membership candidates focusing on confirming your fit and providing an orientation to the mission, vision and culture of Avant.
Avant Go: As new members get close to field depature, Avant Go provides another week of focused training and orientation.
Other pre-field development opportunities: Member Care, mentoring, coaching, training and discipleship before you get there.
All Avant pre-field training and coaching is designed to prepare you to thrive in your cross-cultural ministry with Avant.

On-field

These are just some of the components of ongoing training and development resources available for missionaries on the field:

Language training
Ministry team development
Regional conferences and workshops
Leadership development
Coaching opportunities

Support Raising Coaching and Training

Avant works with you from day one to build the prayer and financial support team needed for effective field ministry. Most new members will attend a "support raising boot camp" soon after becoming members, and a support raising coach will help you set and reach goals during your pre-field preparation.

Other tools provided to help with this process include timely and accurate receipting of donations, a wide range of communication tools to connect well, and database services to provide you with clear and usable information and connecting points for your ministry partners.

Member Care

Avant is committed to the overall well-being of its missionaries and teams. Member Care is the process of mutually living out God’s love to us and through us, and occurs through normative, proactive, crisis and restorative care.

The Avant Member Care Team provides:

Missionary candidate assessment
Pre-field mentoring, coaching, training and discipleship
On-field pastoral care
Services for missionary children (MK's)
Personal coaching and counseling
Crisis Care assistance in the event of kidnapping, natural disaster, political unrest, etc.
Referrals for missionaries who experience crisis or need professional counseling
Restorative care following significant life transitions and crises
Post-field / end of assignment debriefing, counseling and care.

MK (Missionary Kid) Care and Education

MK Care
The life of a missionary kid can be full of rich and interesting experiences, but there are also unique challenges, especially in the face of inevitable major change and transition. Avant's Member Care Team includes trained personnel that focus on the needs of our MK's. Services include MK retreats, coaching, counseling, and assistance with life changes such as returning to their home country to attend college.

MK Education
Avant has personnel dedicated to help families with education needs and choices for their children. Some Avant ministry fields have a K-12 MK school available for missionary families. These schools present opportunities for our MKs to receive a quality Christ-based education, as well as numerous opportunities for school teachers to serve on the field as teachers and mentors for our Avant MKs and missionary children from other mission agencies.

Some of the MK schools available to Avant families...

Black Forest Aacademy - Kandern, Germany
Christian Academy of Guatemala - Guatemala City, Guatemala
Evangelical Christian Academy - Madrid, Spain
El Camino Academy - Bogotá, Colombia
GDQ International Christian School - Tirana, Albania
Puebla Christian School - Puebla, Mexico

Life and Ministry in Community

Avant missionaries serve on a local and/or regional team for the purposes of fostering community, spiritual formation, care for “one another”, and a local level of responsibility for the majority of decision making on the field.

In order to DO the work of evangelism, church planting and disciple-making, we first need to BE disciples committed to an intentional process of formation. Avant believes this is best facilitated in the context of community. Team members actively participate in the continual care and development of one another through frequent gathering together, communication, peer mentoring, mutual accountability, and prayer.

Foundation of Prayer

In the past 130 years, tens of thousands of people have been reached for Christ and hundreds of churches planted on the solid foundation of focused prayer. Avant has been a mission devoted to prayer since its founding.

Your colleagues in Avant will pray for you, your ministry and your family consistently, and the Avant home office team begins every work day with a half hour season of prayer for the specific needs of Avant's global workers. Before you depart for field ministry, you will also build your own prayer team of friends and family who will under gird your work on the field.