By Morgan Smith, Faith Editor

New York City is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States.

During Spring Break, from March 11-19, a group of 20 OBU students will take on New York City as part of a Global Outreach (GO) Trip.

“This will be our fourth time to go to New York over Spring Break,” Dr. Joy Turner, the Director of Global Outreach, said.

“The purpose of the trip is for them to experience and come along side church planters, pastors, leaders in New York that are serving in a variety of ministries.

Students can choose to shadow a church planter, say, that’s worked with Indian peoples, just all different people groups.”

The group will join 180 other students from other universities across the country.

“We have contacts in New York that made us aware of the program that was started there by the Baptist Association,” Dr. Turner said. “They put this together for university students, so they invited us to send students to be a part of it.”

The team will work alongside church planters, pastors and other church leaders to help with a variety of ministries.

Students may choose to work with people in the international or homeless community.

“We hope that they’ll catch a vision for reaching the nations in America,” Dr. Turner said. “New York is multi-cultured with many different types of needs of people, not just internationals, but Americans living in that context that might be homeless or have special needs.

“We just want them to catch a vision for mega-cities that have very different needs from rural settings that students might have experienced before.”

Three weeks prior to the trip, the students on the team will begin orientations to prepare for the trip.

In addition to learning how to share their faith, they’ll learn safety issues and how to navigate the city’s complex train system.

“We’ve done this before and students really enjoy it,” Dr. Turner said.

“They get to experience New York and have their eyes opened to the nations living in America, and what their needs are.”

She said that she hopes that the trip will allow students to interact with people from a variety of cultures, while also staying aware of the needs of people in the United States.

“We think it’s a really important trip,” Dr. Turner said. “When we go on trips in the United States, it’s easy to think it’s not as important as going on trips overseas, but we think the mega-cities in America have vast needs and we want our students to be aware of that.”

Logistics coordinator, Taylor McDannel will be one of the staff members participating in the trip, along with Kimberly Dussetschleger and a new member of the Spiritual Life Office, Clay Phillips.