By Kenneth Eagleton, Director of Global Partnerships, IM, Inc.
Eighty-five percent of senior leaders of Bible-believing churches in the majority world have never had formal biblical or ministerial training. What an astonishing statistic! Obviously, this offers fertile ground for the development and propagation of misguided teachings, even by well-intended preachers and teachers.
It is not surprising false teaching abounds. How can we expand rapidly while ensuring the genuine gospel message is proclaimed and sound doctrine is taught? The best way is to quickly establish training programs to ground leaders in the basic truths of the Scripture and give them tools to plant and grow healthy churches.
These training programs are important for: 1) providing biblical instruction, equipping ministerially, and enabling and releasing for mission; 2) providing leadership for sustained growth; 3) diminishing outside dependency; 4) giving sustainability to nationally run works; and 5) preserving Free Will Baptist identity.
IM has intentionally focused on setting up training programs in all our fields and partnerships. Our strategic goals call for us to be involved in 12 such programs by 2025, which we surpassed last year.
Please pray as we seek to overcome the following challenges:
Scarcity of training materials in the local language often requires the translation of materials.
Each field has unique needs. Training must be adapted to different levels and a variety of time schedules and locations of those being trained.
Creative methods of training delivery need to be developed to reach the greatest number of those who need it.
The local availability of technology to permit the multiplication of resources.
