How LST Serves Mission Churches 

 Your desire is to connect with as many people in your neighborhood as possible. 
LST is here to help! 

 What is Let’s Start Talking? 

Churches and Christian organizations around the world use LST to make meaningful connections in their neighborhood or city. 

LST teams are small groups of 2-4 people who travel to an international site for 2-6 weeks.  This trained team of native-English speakers offers one-to-one English conversation practice using portions of the Bible in a friendly workbook format.   

This highly relational approach builds confidence in English usage.  More importantly it creates meaningful conversation that is often life-changing! 

Because LST teams are small their presence is not a burden on you or your church.  Once they arrive they will manage their work with just a small amount of assistance each day.

• Here is an example of an LST “Reading Session.”
  
• Here is a sample of an LST workbook. 

In most cases, LST recruits these teams, helps them fundraise, provides training and materials, arranges their travel, and coordinates with each site about their work. 

LST Partner Sites 

 Rather than trying to serve dozens of sites, we believe LST can serve mission churches best by focusing deeply on a few select sites. 

 LST’s goal is to support the ongoing outreach of a select number of sites at which we can invest deeply.  We call these sites LST Partner Sites. 

 LST invests in Partner Sites in the following ways: 

• We promote your work by focusing a significant part of our recruiting efforts on meeting your requests for teams. 
• We send LST staff to your site at least once a year to learn, assist, and encourage. 
• We invest financially to help with recruiting Readers, housing LST teams, etc. 

 Partner Sites utilize LST as a significant part of their outreach each year.  For example, one Partner Site may host two LST teams in the fall, two in the spring, and three in the summer.  Another Partner Site may host four or five teams all in the summer.     

What is a Partner Site? 

1. A site that wants to utilize LST in a significant way, hosting multiple teams each year. 
2. A site committed to LST for 2-3 years at a time. 
3. A site where the local church and church leadership are enthusiastic about receiving teams. 
4. A site where LST is a good fit:   
   1. Primarily this means a location where English is in demand and where there are several possible pools of Readers – local universities, refugee populations, etc. 
   2. A site where Workers can expect to have at least 4-5 LST sessions per day. 
   3. Click HERE to take the “Is LST A Good Fit?” assessment. 
5. A site at which a local staff person or well-trained volunteer can be the Host, available to coordinate with LST during the year and assist teams onsite. 
6. A site with the following general characteristics: 
   1. Political and economic stability 
   2. Safe for visiting North Americans 
   3. Access to good health care 
   4. Work site, housing, and local transportation options that facilitate good LST work and enable the team to function without burdening the local Host. 
   5. Easy access to internet/wifi 

Interested? 

LST can serve a limited number of Partner Sites.  If you’re interested let’s talk!  Contact us to set up a Zoom appointment.  During this conversation we will consider: 

• Is LST a good fit for your work/site?  Click HERE to take the “Is LST A Good Fit?” assessment. 
• What the Partner Site model is and what it might look like at your site. 
• The kind of commitments you and LST would need to make for form a partnership. 
• If you are new to LST we can explore the idea of a “trial” period.  Discover the benefits of hosting LST Projects before becoming a Partner. 
• The timeline for becoming a Partner Site. 

LST Seasonal Sites

Though much of LST’s focus is on our Partner Sites, we have additional sites for whom we try to provide at least one team during a season of the year that’s helpful to them.  These sites utilize LST to supplement the good work they are already doing in their community.  Though we cannot guarantee teams for our Seasonal Sites, we take their requests seriously and work hard to provide Workers for them.

Like Partner Sites, it’s important that LST is a good fit for their context, that local church and church leadership are enthusiastic about receiving a team, that there is a local staff person or well-trained volunteer who can be the Host, and that other general characteristics above exist in terms of stability, safety, and good working conditions.

Contact LST for details.

Hosts/Sites Receiving Their own Teams/Workers

Maybe you already have a short-term team coming but you want them to use LST as part of their work.  Or, maybe you have a couple of native English speakers at your site for an extended period of time. 

 LST can help! 

 We offer excellent training that will equip any visiting English-speakers AND will help you prepare for them so that their LST work is excellent. 

Contact LST for details.