Trains Leaders

The growth of the Church in the Two-thirds World is staggering, something about which to rejoice and praise the Lord!

There is, however, a serious problem: the church in the developing world is growing faster than leaders can be raised, let alone trained. According to Rick Warren's pastor.com site, “About 94 percent of ordained pastors in Africa have no formal training.” According to cybermissions.org, the figure for Asia isn't much better at 70%.

Unlike in the West, where training institutions are readily accessible, pastors in these regions simply look to the willing members of their congregations to go plant and pastor new churches in the next village or town. Unfortunately, the risk of syncretism and acceptance of false doctrine is rife.

Many organizations work tirelessly to teach and train these lay leaders in 1- or 2-week seminars. Others engage them in mentoring programs. A few of the fortunate are privileged to study at a seminary or Bible school. All possible means of training the vast numbers of lay leaders in the developing world should be encouraged and increased.

It is at the grassroots level where the Live School is able to make a marked difference, by making the Live School curriculum available to local pastors so they can sit in an office, church room or even a hut with five to fifteen of their people and train them.

After the 5-month teaching phase, those local people are sent to plant or run a new church, under the leadership of that pastor.

These Live School trainees are often far better equipped than any of their counterparts, having more knowledge and a deeper understanding. Apart from training those already in leadership, the Live School has proven extremely effective in raising up and training new leadership.

The curriculum and personal nature of the School lend themselves to identifying and encouraging those with the gift of leadership, raising up a new generation of men and women ready, able and equipped to do the work of the Kingdom.

Live Schools – LIVE! Lubango, Angola – One amazing consequence of the Live School is its impact on other local pastors. The Lubango Live School originally had an enrolment of twenty. About two weeks into training, the pastors in the city literally came into a class and asked that they too be trained. They had seen the remarkable change in the members of their churches who were attending the School. The Lubango School ended up having two shifts: a day shift for the original 20 students and an evening shift for 22 pastors. As part of the outreach phase of their training, those pastors started 8 new cell groups in the city. Kwa Ndebele, South Africa – A Live School was especially established to train seven pastors in this community not far from Pretoria. All the pastors said the School taught on topics which, although relevant to their daily lives, they'd never heard covered before, while other subjects went further in depth than any of their previous studies. At graduation, they testified that they were seeing both spiritual and numerical growth in their churches, way beyond their expectations. One told of the giving at his church increasing remarkably; another told of teaching some of the principles he'd learned, grounding his congregation better in the Word.