By David Long,
Theological Education Team,
One Mission Society
In Haiti, a witch doctor’s son accepts Jesus as his Savior
and is called to a ministry of evangelism and church
planting. A recent convert from Hinduism in South Asia
has his eyes opened to the needy hearts around him and
becomes active in sharing the Gospel in his country and
beyond. A young man in East Asia becomes a believer
when his mother asks him to read the Bible for her prayer
group, and the Lord leads him to leave the life as a gang
member and eventually become a significant leader in a
rapidly growing church. These are only a few examples
of transformations that are occurring every day in great
numbers throughout the world. What do these new
leaders have in common? Each must have the mentoring of well-grounded believers to mold and equip
them to be the leaders needed by the church that
God is growing in unprecedented ways.
Well-trained leaders are essential to the health
and growth of the church. One of the tasks of the
Theological Education team within One Mission
Society is to strengthen leadership training
through the 35 formal theological training
institutions with which we partner. These
institutions have a daunting responsibility.
They are entrusted with the task of preparing wise, compassionate, theologically
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discerning and pastorally capa ble servants who can
lead the church and our societies through the increasingly complex challenges of the 21st century.
We are guided as a Theological Education
team by Paul’s admonition to Timothy, “Now
teach these truths to other trustworthy people, who will be able to pass them on to
others” (2 Timothy 2:2 NLT). Consistent
with the OMS mission statement’s focus
on making disciples, we realize that the
measure of a truly effective program of
theological education is whether or not
it has produced something more than
“ivory tower” theologians. Knowledge
is important, but not as the final measure of theological education. Rather,
a program’s success is measured by
whether it has produced true disciples
of Jesus Christ. These are servant
leaders who are able to serve the eternal purposes of God in ways that are
relevant and meaningful to the people
God has called them to shepherd.
Teaching for transformation of
character and ministry is the most
difficult of all teaching challenges.
An institution may excel in the transfer of information, but transformation
requires intentionality in mission and
program design. It requires that the
institution recognize and take responsibility for the critical need for character
and spiritual formation. Many have written that spiritual formation is a key element in the training of any leader of the
church. Mel Lawrenz writes, “This is the
heart of spiritual formation—the intentional,
sustained re-patterning of a person’s life after the pattern set by God when he created
human beings in his image, but made possible only by divine transforming power.” Since
such transformation goes to the essence of the
Christian life, it must remain central to our task in
Theological Education as we support the mentoring of leaders the church around the world.
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