Overcoming Challenges in Theological Education Amid COVID-19
Our institute began in August 2017 with the purpose of providing Bible training and mentoring in a culturally diverse environment for the purpose of multiplying spiritual leaders. Our dream has been in one year’s time to provide the theological foundation and practical ministry experience to set our graduates up for a lifetime of ministry.
Since our school began, we have been blessed to graduate 37 students! We had another great school year for 2020 – 2021, and we were making continued progress and building momentum. Even in spite of COVID-19, we graduated nine quality students for the school year 2020 – 2021 and were able to continue live classes throughout the school year.
However, everything has seemed to change since COVID-19, and unfortunately, COVID-19 has impacted us as well. We were not able to do our normal recruiting, and the pipeline was dry when we tried to begin the 2021 – 2022 school year in August as planned.
We have had many inquiries, but not enough students who want to attend class in person have registered. We have had great interest from potential students who want to attend remotely using Zoom.
Our board and faculty do not feel called to just provide classes remotely by Zoom. However, we are perfectly willing to continue to conduct Zoom classes simultaneously with live classroom teaching.
We are hoping and praying to begin classes on January 10, 2022. Please pray with us for more in person students. In addition to serious recruiting while we wait, our board asked what other ways we can accomplish our organizational purpose. We had three ideas, which we have begun implementing:
- One of our board members said the youth in his church were asking why the Bible is so difficult to understand. We decided to partner with Clarkston International Bible Church to conduct a Youth Apologetics Conference for people ages 12 – 24.
- To conduct a monthly meeting with our alumni pastors to encourage them, answer their questions, and to pray together. We had our first meeting on October 15 and are scheduled again to meet on December 3rd.
- At least quarterly to invite ethnic pastors to join our alumni pastors meeting. We are presently busy collecting contact information for ethnic pastors in and around Clarkston so we can invite them to attend an alumni pastors meeting early in 2022
