I realized looked up free missions courses. I wanted to find courses to strengthen my knowledge and understanding before going on the mission field. I decided to write a blog post about the best mission courses I found.
Where can you find free missions courses? You can find many free missionary courses from Bethany Global University. They are an accredited missionary training school that offers free mission courses on their website.
Here are 13 free courses you can take to help strengthen your walk with God, and better prepare you for ministry.
1. How to Share the Gospel Course
Have you ever had a passion for evangelizing, but don’t know how to share the Gospel with someone? Or maybe you have, but want to get some training to help you be as clear as possible when sharing the Gospel.
This course goes through a step-by-step guild to show you ways you can best practices this fundamental skill for the Kingdom of God.
This course goes through:
- What the Gospel is and isn’t
- Theology of Evangelism
- Tools and techniques for sharing the Gospel
This course includes 11-course lessons and takes a total of 120 minutes to complete.
The author of this course, Kenny Ortiz, has a BS in Organizational Psychology and is pursuing an MDiv from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
He has been a youth pastor, conference speaker, school administrator, entrepreneur, author, and the host of the podcast Theology For The Rest Of Us.
2. What To Know Before You Go Course
For those who are planning on going on a short-term or long-term mission trip, this course will be beneficial to help prepare you. When going anywhere new for the purpose of missions, it is wise to talk or learn from those who have gone before.
Steve Eliason, the Missionary Preparation Coordinator for Bethany Gateways, will break down what you might need to know before going to the field.
This course includes 12 lessons, in the span of 90 minutes.
The topics cover:
- Defining What A Missionary Is
- The Hurdles To Becoming A Missionary
- A Preview Of Missionary Life
- A Look At What Made Previous Missionaries Successful
The author of this course, Steve Eliason is a doctoral candidate in Intercultural Studies with Bethany International University.
He has a MA in Intercultural Studies from Bethany International University, a BA in Theology and Missions from Bethany Global University, a BS in Missions Education from North Central University.
He has 11 years of field experience in cross-cultural missions, church planting, and is a missionary preparation coordinator with Bethany Gateways.
3. Maximized Mission Trips For Leaders
The author of this course, Kenny Ortiz, has lead over 40 short-term mission trips, and walks you through step-by-step on how to best lead a group, and make an impact on those serving and served.
The course includes 7 lessons, within a total of 90 minutes.
Course Topics Include:
- Trip Priorities
- Recommended Leadership Skills
- How to Prepare Yourself
- Creating a Healthy Environment
When leading a trip, it is your responsibility to make sure everyone is doing the best they can to be the most effective on the field. This starts with the unity of the team.
Be prepared but know not everything will go smoothly, and remind your team to be flexible loving each other before yourself.
4. Maximized Mission Trips For Goers: Enrichment Course
For those who are not leaders, but plan on going into missions, or on a missions trip, this course is for you.
Course Topics Include:
- Going in with the Right Attitude
- How to Share Your Testimony
- How to Work with a Translator
- How to Share the Gospel
- What to do When You Return Home
This course has 11 lessons within 120 minutes. It is for anyone seeking to be as impactful as possible on their mission trip.
Short-term missions shouldn’t be taken lightly, and on some occasions can do more damage, than good.
This course wants to provide you with what you need to know to be the most effective for everyone involved with the ultimate goal of bringing glory to God, doing his work.
5. World Mission of the Church: Biblical Training
This course is about recognizing the responsibility of all Christians to complete the Great Commission. This course takes you through the historical progress of worldwide missions.
We can look back to learn from previous missionaries and mission’s movements to be strategic in missions today.
We can look at the local congregation to help fulfill its worldwide biblical mandate.
In this course, there are 18 Lectures to go through.
- Lecture 1: Course Introduction
- Lecture 2-3: The Missionary Heart for God in the OT
- Lecture 4-5: Great Commission Passages in the NT
- Lecture 6: Great Commission Passage in the Gospel of Mark
- Lecture 7-8: Acts Chapter 11
- Lecture 9-10: History of Modern Mission Eras
- Lecture 11-12: Windows into the World of Missions
- Lecture 13: Major Issues in the Context of Missions
- Lecture 14: Top 10 Things You Should Know About Missions in the 21st Century
- Lecture 15-16: Becoming a Missionary
- Lecture 17-18: Missions and World Religions
In the first lecture, it goes over the course requirements, reading recommendations, and more specific purposes of this course. I
f you want to know what you would be getting into when doing this course, I would recommend starting with the course introduction to see if it is something you’d want to continue.
It is designed for those wanting to serve as pastors, for what you need to know about missions to be effective in the local church, and for people preparing for missionary service by considering topics dealing with practical and theological aspects of missions.
For everyone, regardless of your vocation, this course will challenge you to become a world Christian.
-World Mission of the Church
6. Kingdom Culture in Everyday Life
This course is about learning and understanding Kingdom Culture in everyday life as a Christian. The course provides 11 videos (about 15-20 minutes per video).
When signing up for the free course, you will also receive a downloadable course workbook that supports practical applications of Kingdom Culture.
The topics in this course include:
- Jesus’ Favourite Sermon – Seeking First His Kingdom – The Vehicle of the Kingdom
- Healing the Waters of the City – Architects of Culture – Discipling Nations
- Continuing the Work of Creation – The Voice of Vocation – Everything is Spiritual
- Spiritual Authority and Influence – Binding, and Loosing
When we discover how our understanding of the Kingdom directly influences the nature of every believer’s mission and purpose, new levels of spiritual authority and supernatural power, are released enabling us to live a life that brings transformation into every area of our world.
This course is designed for any Christian desiring to go further in their walk with God connecting truths of Scripture to everyday life in the workplace, in school, in church, in the community, in your city, and in the nations.
7. Christian Leaders Institute Study Program
This course gives you access to free college-level classes that will help prepare you to be a leader making an impact for Christ.
How to enroll:
- Sign up
- Confirm your enrollment in your email
- Start the admissions class
- Take free courses
- If you seek Collegiate Credentials, you will need to enroll at Christian Leaders College, which requires you to take the Collegiate Credential Class. An administration fee applies. But if you want to just take the free courses, you can do that as well.
Once you sign up, you can see the leadership classes provided.
9. Global Frontier Missions: Online Missionary Training School
This organization has networked with some of the best churches, missions organizations, and Bible schools, to come up with the most strategic materials to train laborers to make disciples among all nations.
They provide a whole missionary training school to enroll in and the first course is available for free.
If you are looking into getting a significant amount of training, consider enrolling in this free course, which may give you an idea if you would want to continue to get more training.
GFM’s Online Missionary Training School is comprised of 20 courses or modules, each module typically takes between 20-30 hours to complete.
Once you have finished the free module, you have the option of paying per module or paying for the remaining 19 modules as a discounted bundle.
10. American Patterns: Understanding Your Culture
This course is helpful in understanding your own culture if you are from the States, so you can recognize how you respond and act, to better help you understand other cultures.
By being more self-aware, you can more skillfully break down cultural walls to better learn new ways of speaking and interacting with people who don’t share your same patterns.
I believe learning this is crucial for those going overseas for missions, especially if you have never been overseas before.
This course is divided into different lessons. Each includes a video, discussion, and activity. The course allows you to move at your own pace, and your instructors will be participating in the discussions and interacting with you throughout the course.
This course includes 12 lessons total, and ideal for those who:
- Are moving into a new culture/language
- Are ministering across cultures
- Are working with employees or customers from different cultures
- Are sending people to minister cross-culturally
- Are going on a short-term trip
Not only is being self-aware crucial for ministry, being self-aware of your own culture helps when ministering overseas. It is something missionaries are often missing and can take years to adapt to new cultures.
11. DCI Evangilsm Module
This course is done through a global online training school designed for the 21st Century church and mission leaders.
The course moves through various interlinking themes in an order which seems to most useful to the churches in the developing nations.
They go over topics of evangelism, mission, discipleship, basic discipleship for new believers, discipleship advanced level, call of God, believing God for finances, leadership training, building the church, and the kingdom comes.
They go through 10 topics in total:
- Course Introduction – how to get the most from these lessons and how to share them with others.
- Good News – knowing God; Jesus is alive, grace; life after death; a return of Christ and the last day
- Ask God – prayers that move God’s heart; move your feet and lips, and remove the enemy.
- Preparation Points to Salvation – overcoming fear of speaking, preparing our hearts, our message, and approach to people.
- Lifestyle of the Evangelist – if an evangelist will do today what Jesus did, people will be drawn to Christ in the same way.
- By All Means – Being effective, Jesus a friend of sinners, being sensitive, focused, knowing where to start.
- Equipped – discover how God supports your testimony with the power of his word.
- Signs & Wonders – signs and wonders from God helped the early church to grow but are they for today?
- Heal the Sick – God’s healing power and how to bring healing to physically or emotionally sick people.
- Cast Out Demons – if people are gripped by evil powers and how to release them in the name of Jesus.
This course will grow you as you learn more about missions and leading.
12. DCI Church Growth Module
The DCI Free Training is designed for people who want to know the Lord, and see people in your home church, the nations, community, and unreached peoples of the world be discipled by first putting their faith in Jesus.
They have full modules specifically on evangelism, like the previous course I introduced, and have a mission module, discipleship module, leadership, church growth, and money module.
For the church growth module, it will go over the types of different churches with an explanation about each one.
I’ll list each course, with their explanation of the type of churches you would be going over.
Lessons for Church Growth Module:
- Course Introduction – How to get the most from these lessons and how to share them with others.
- A Growing Church – What does a good church look like and which way does it grow, and how?
- A Harvest Church – Gather the end-time harvest & survive the opposition.
- A Servant Church – Servant leadership or the lordship of the secular & religious world.
- A Discipling Church – How to new believers into disciples without great expense.
- A Mother Church – It is good to win one soul, but with today’s population, it is never enough.
- A Cell Church – No costly buildings, mobilize many people, protection from persecution.
- A Living Church – What is the church & what should happen there when you go?
- A Spirit-Led Church – Who is the Holy Spirit, what does he do, what does this mean.
- A Militant Church – Two very different Kingdoms totally opposed to each other.
- An Apostolic Church – Are apostles for today, if they are who are they, what do they do?
- A People’s Church – Mobilizing every member to reach their world and the wider world.
- A Missionary Church – All about goals for prayer, training, giving, going, & sending.
- A Sending Church – How you can be fishers of men, what it means to go & to send.
- A World-Changing Church – A house of prayer for all nations, their peoples, & churches.
- A Revival Church – Revival is every believer’s dream, but how does it come?
This course likes to take an approach originally taught and practiced in the early 20th century by author Watchman Nee in China. Later from the mid-1960s, this principle was taught by Juan Carlos Ortiz in Argentina and more recently became widely accepted through the growth of the world’s largest church, that of Pastor Yonggi Cho of Seoul, South Korea.
At the end of the 20th century Pastor Cesar Castellanos of Bogota, Colombia taught this same principle to the Spanish-speaking world and through which Castellanos’s congregation grew from 8 to 120,000 people in ten years. He wrote:
I began to see Jesus’ ministry with clarity. The multitudes followed, but He didn’t train the multitudes. He only trained 12, and everything he did with the multitudes was to teach the 12.
Then the Lord asked me another question: ‘If Jesus trained 12, should you win more than 12 or less than 12?’
Jesus chose 12 to reach the multitudes. He stayed with these 12 permanently, until they were trained and He released them, gave them authority, and empowered them to disciple the nations.
-Pastor Cesar
Their aim is to work together and train believers to become mature people of faith to go and do the work of the ministry (in evangelism, discipleship, and in caring for the poor).
13. The Gospel Coalition: Discover the Bible & Christianity, Explore the Bible, Navigate the Christian Life
The Gospel Coalition provides free online learning about theology & life.
They have over 200 free courses available from the Christian foundation, Church history, the Old Testament & New Testament, Pastoral Theology, Bible Doctrines, and Practical & Public Theology.
I couldn’t pick just one course to list from the Gospel Coalition, so I chose the top 3 that stood out to me.
Discover the Bible & Christianity (this one is good for any Christian, new to the faith, or wanting to be reminded of the power of the Word exploring foundational gospel truths).
They include topics such as:
- What is the Gospel?
- Gospel Fluency
- Basics of Systematic Theology
- Worldview Basics
- World Religion Basics
The next one is Explore the Bible Course. This course goes through an overview of the story timeline of the entire Bible to grasp the over arching theme throughout it.
This course includes:
- God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible
- Seven Arrows: The Basics of Bible Study
- Bible Basics
- Old Testament Basics
- New Testament Basics
- Mining God’s Word
Next, Navigate the Christian Life is for believers who want to live according to God’s will for us. This course takes you through what the Lord calls us to as Christians.
Here are the topics for this course:
- Sharing My Faith
- Making Disciples
- Living Joyfully
- Maintaining Purity
- Practicing My Faith In My Workplace
- Keeping a Spiritual Journal
I would encourage you to go check out all the courses the Gospel Coalition has. They have many excellent free courses you can take.
I hope you will check out these free mission courses. Remember, God is with you on this journey as you learn and grow.