The Lasting Impact of Pre-Field Training
What if one training could shape the way you live, years after it ends? Pre-field training is more than preparation for life overseas. In this article, we explore how its lessons resurface over time and why this 4–6-week intensive stays with you long after the field.
Read MoreThe Lasting Impact of Pre-Field Training
Julie Thompson | Oct 21, 2025, 13:41 PM
What if one training could shape the way you live, years after it ends? Pre-field training is more than preparation for life overseas. In this article, we explore how its lessons resurface over time and why this 4–6-week intensive stays with you long after the field.
You never know when the lessons from pre-field training will show up. Sometimes, it’s years later, in the most ordinary moments.
This spring, my 16-year-old son sat in the bleachers as his three closest friends walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. He has one more year of high school ahead, and it’s going to feel different without those guys by his side.
He’s a typical teenage boy: easygoing, not overly sentimental. But before graduation, completely unprompted, he went to the store, picked out a gift and card for each friend, and wrote a heartfelt note expressing what their friendship had meant to him.
As I watched, a little in awe, it struck me: pre-field training is still paying off.
The Power of a Good Goodbye
He learned the power of good goodbyes at pre-field training when he was just four years old. My husband and I learned it as adults. It became part of our family culture. And now, it’s part of him.
I could share countless ways pre-field training shaped our family and helped us navigate the challenges of overseas life, re-entry, and even our current ministries in our local community and the foster care system.
But the truth is, I probably don’t realize the full extent of that investment.
Because that’s what it is: an investment.
It’s expensive. It’s long. It might delay your timeline if the schedule doesn’t work out perfectly. Like many people, we went reluctantly. But like most people, we left deeply grateful.
So, what exactly is this training that leaves such a lasting mark? For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick look at pre-field training and why it’s one of the most valuable investments we’ve ever made.
What Is Pre-Field Training?
Pre-field training is a 4-6-week residential program designed for cross-cultural workers. It covers essential topics like:
- Language acquisition
- Culture shock
- Team dynamics
- Healthy transitions
- Stress management
- Grief and loss
- Cultural identity
- Conflict resolution
For families, there’s parallel training for children and teens that mirrors the adult curriculum, giving families a shared language for navigating hard topics together.
Why Is It So Important?
It’s probably easy to see that those topics are important and relevant, but the benefits go beyond the acquisition of knowledge. Let’s look at how it shapes cross-cultural workers for the road ahead.
It Invests in Goers
Preparing to go overseas is overwhelming. Many are still working, raising support, selling belongings, finalizing paperwork, and soaking up time with loved ones, all while carrying the emotional weight of goodbyes.
Pre-field training offers a break. It’s a chance to step away from the chaos and be poured into by people who’ve walked this road. It says to Goers: You matter more than what you can do or how fast you can do it.
It Invests in Families
Lauren Wells says it well in her book Raising Up a Generation of Healthy TCKS - "It has been amazing to see the transformation of kids when they realize they too can have a toolbox of ways to learn culture and language when they move overseas. They feel a sense of purpose instead of feeling like they are just tagging along with their parents, and they have a foundational knowledge of the TCK life that they are entering into. Pre-field training is a great starting place for preventative care."
It Helps Navigate Unique Challenges
Cross-cultural ministry brings a different set of challenges. Even seasoned believers may never have had to learn how to grieve the loss of everything familiar, endure the loneliness of being far away from their normal support network, or manage the daily stress of feeling incompetent in a foreign country.
This work requires not just spiritual maturity, but practical resilience. A worker’s ability to navigate these challenges can make or break their incarnational witness.
It Normalizes the Struggles
Pre-field training helps Goers set realistic expectations for the emotional and psychological challenges they’ll face, especially in the first two years. Recognizing a struggle as normal and having tools to address it can be the difference between thriving and burning out.
It Helps Avoid Costly Mistakes
One phrase from our training stuck with me: “Everyone will make a million mistakes. We’re here to help you avoid the 10,000-point ones.” Cultural blunders are inevitable (and often make great stories), but major relational or ministry-damaging missteps can often be prevented with basic awareness and preparation.
It Benefits the Receiving Team
Reliant recommends pre-field training as one of the final steps before launching. By then, Goers have likely moved out of their homes and said many goodbyes. Training gives space to grieve, reflect, and arrive on the field filled up—not depleted. It equips them with tools for culture, stress, and conflict, tools every team member wishes their new team member had.
The Lasting Impact
That graduation moment reminded me how deeply pre-field training holistically shapes us.
It isn’t just in the weeks spent preparing. It is found in the lifelong resilience and growth it fosters.
It embeds patterns of resilience, reflection, and relational health that quietly guide how your family walks through every transition—from a foreign culture to a familiar one, from childhood to adulthood, from one season of life into the next.
It’s not just preparation for ministry. It’s preparation for a lifetime.
If you’d like to explore pre-field training options and find a program that fits your church or ministry needs, reach out to Reliant's International Team. We’d love to help.
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