Today around the world, many Christian leaders are experiencing a theological famine. Would you consider joining us to end this famine for 1,000 pastors and missionaries?
The Need
By some estimations, there are as many as 50,000 new baptized believers each day. As Ramesh Richards notes,
“…if a pastoral leader is able initially to provide pastoral care for a group of 50 believers, 1,000 new pastors are daily needed to serve the 50,000 new believers baptized every day. We are rather behind. How may we quicken the pace of pastoral training … while increasing the quality … everywhere?”
The Opportunity
According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity:
“The CSGC estimates a total of 5 million pastors/priests in all Christian traditions worldwide (Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and Independents, including bi-vocational). Of these, we estimate that 5% (250,000) are likely to have formal theological training (undergraduate Bible degrees or Master’s degrees). This is based on incomplete responses in survey results from colleges and seminaries in our Global Survey on Theological Education. Roughly 70% of these pastors are in Independent congregations. Independent pastors, in particular, have little theological training, even in the West.“
- There is one theologically trained pastor in the majority world to every 450,000 people, whereas in the US it is one theologically trained pastor to every 230 people. By some estimates, as many as 95 percent of pastors around the world have no seminary education.
- At Lausanne 2010 in Cape Town, many global Christian leaders were asking Western mission agencies to focus less attention on doing evangelism and church planting, and to bring more theological education. These leaders felt like they could do the evangelism and discipleship, but they were not prepared to train pastors.
- Many scholars agree that we must not compromise on theological education in our missionary efforts as it will ensure the ongoing healthy growth of a movement and help prevent heresy.
- Western seminary education is financially inaccessible as well as irrelevant to the majority world.
You Can Help End a Famine!
Through our Ephesiology resources, we are training and equipping leaders in more than 100 countries. And, with our partnerships with Kairos University and Mission India Theological Seminary, we are providing accessible theological education where most needed. If you want to impact the world for Christ and help ensure health churches, mature disciples and leaders, then please consider partnering with us to train and equip pastors and missionaries around the world.
Would you help?
Please prayerfully consider helping us end the theological famine.
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