A Story of a Bible School

Wherever Engage Today teams travel, we consistently hear from our partners about their needs for Bible teaching. They would like to provide it for young people considering the ministry, and they also would like to strengthen those who are already serving. It is no surprise that we hear this because conservative estimates suggest that 85% of pastors globally do not have any formal training.

A key focus of Engage Today is to help our partners with their Bible training needs. One way is to provide encouragement and Bible teaching through Leadership Seminars – conferences which ENGAGE staff and volunteers bring in person to gathered missionaries and pastors. Another way is that we seek to support locally run Bible Schools by our partners, however, we are not able to meet all the needs we encounter. Although the idea of centralizing training for all our partners has surfaced (to make training more efficient and economical), it wouldn’t be able to address the unique training needed for all the diverse contexts our partners are working in.

One of our partners, Pastor U.C., requested support to run a two-year Bible School in order to train new young people for evangelism and church planting. The budget for the school ended up being about CAD$20,000 per year for 20 students. This amount represented all the costs of the school, including some building renovations and upgrades, covering teacher salaries, and food for the students. Engage Today had received $31,500 from a bequest that we used to finance the majority of the expenditures for this missionary training project.

Six months into the 2-year program, I travelled to visit the school. Our team had several sessions with the students and it became evident that they were being prepared for frontline church planting missionary work. I recall one of the students mentioning that before coming to the school he didn’t have much of an awareness or burden to reach the unreached. However, he said that the priority of the Biblical message compelled him to desire to labour in the Lord’s vineyard reaching the lost. His testimony caused me to be even more grateful for this initiative.

On May 28, 2024, 20 students graduated from the 2-year program and will be returning to their village areas to begin their new ministry.

Pastor U.C. would love to see the school continue with another batch of 20 students. We have informed him, however, that unless the Lord provides the needed support, we would not be able to continue this program. Locally run Bible Schools are expensive. Well … they really aren’t that expensive, but we have found it difficult to consistently raise funds for this kind of program. Bible Schools are long-term mission investment. Not all graduates go into the ministry, but many of them do.

One of our partners summarized the value of Bible School training well. He said, “Do you want to know how to impact the nation for the next 50 years? Provide for a young student to study the Scriptures.”

If you would like to participate in helping this school continue, please do not hesitate to contact our office. Or, perhaps you have not previously considered putting Engage Today in your will; what a wonderful legacy this friend of Engage Today has with the resources he left behind to have 20 young people trained for two years in the Scriptures. Please contact our office if you would like more information about including Engage Today in your will.