WICHITA, Kan. – Five students and one professor in Tabor’s ministry entrepreneurship and innovation master’s program visited Turkey in June as part of the program’s international component.
The group visited several sites, met refugees from Syria, walked the streets of Antioch, and learned about the Church in Turkey. The trip featured a mix of cross-cultural interaction, observation of entrepreneurial ministries, community building, spiritual formation, reflective practices, and sightseeing.
Tabor’s MEI program requires a course in an international location with the goal of offering students the opportunity to see entrepreneurial leadership in a different cultural context.
The trip was led by Rick Bartlett, Director of Theological Education at Tabor.
Last year, Bartlett took students to Thailand, but chose Turkey as this year’s destination for several reasons. The country was highly recommended by two different MB Mission employees, and one of the students on the trip lives and works in Thailand, so Barlett wanted to go somewhere new.
“Finally, I thought [Turkey] sounded fun,” he said.
MEI student Kristen Poljansek said the trip helped her to see entrepreneurial leadership from a new perspective.
“When you’re an entrepreneur, you need to build your relationships and contacts from all over,” she said. “Loving mission trips, I never had seen the ‘business’ side of things overseas.”
Poljansek said she was surprised by the reception the group received from the Muslims they interacted with.
“I found that many of the people that we came in contact with had just as much love as we had to share with one another,” she said. “We would never hear something like that in the media. I was able to watch many Muslims as they celebrated Ramadan and took in a whole lot from the people.”
Fellow student Vern Hyndman described Turkey as possibly the “most hospitable place on the earth.”
“Most people were curiously friendly and open, even to an American giant,” he said. “A group of Turkish Harley folks literally threw me the keys to their Harley and invited me to take it for a ride. Trust me, this act happens nowhere else on earth.”
Time spent with Syrian refugees was a highlight for several students, as well as Bartlett.
He recalled visiting a children’s center for Syrian children who are out on the streets. The story of the center’s director was especially inspiring to Bartlett.
“[The director] had been captured by ISIS and had escaped after 10 days,” he said. “He had come to Turkey to find a better life, but instead had realized that the kids in this community had a much worse life than he had. He was able to pull together about a dozen people to help him, for free. I was moved by his story and his entrepreneurial spirit.”
Bordering Syria, Turkey is currently a location of conflict. In fact, a terrorist attack on Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport took place less than two weeks after the group returned home.
With this in mind, Hyndman said he viewed Turkey as “a paradise that exists in war zones.”
He said, “If there was one dominant experience, it’s that I was treated hospitably in a place in which I’m a minority, and in a place that I’m hated for whom I love, and for what my country has done.”
Poljansek said she did feel a little anxious about going to a location with so much unrest.
“As it quickly approached and while were there, though, I never once felt unsafe,” she said. “God was definitely leading us with His peace.”
To learn more about the master’s degree in ministry entrepreneurship and innovation, visit tabor.edu/MEI.