General Information | Constitution | Core Values | Mission Statement | Philosophy | Statement of Faith

The Next Step: North American Partnership In Missions Training, Inc. is a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization registered in the State of Florida.  Leadership is provided by volunteers within the association.  There are no annual dues; necessary funding is provided by profits from its annual conference registration. 

The Next Step began in late 1996 and early 1997 in response to concerns raised in the new book, Too Valuable To Lose (ed, William D. Taylor, WEF, 1997) which cited lack of training as a significant contributor to missionary attrition.  A strategy adopted by the participants from mission agencies, churches, and formal education institutions was to form a partnership of agencies to offer training together for those within the partnership.  “The Next Step” after receiving a calling to missions would be training for effective missionary service, and that is how the partnership received its name.

After some other strategies toward cooperative training failed, we offered The National Missionary Training Forum as a conference to focus on training the trainers.  We were able to underwrite such things as our task force on developing best practices in missionary training, which we call the Missionary Training Assessment and which is available on this website.  The Next Step now defines itself as a professional organization of missionary trainers who network among each other, constantly engaged in improving the quality and extent of missionary training for cross-cultural workers.

The Next Step is also associated with the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) Mission Commission’s “International Missionary Trainers Network” as its North American representative.