The Need: Equity

There is 1 trained pastor for every 250 people in the United States but only 1 trained pastor for every 450,000 people outside the United States! Research shows that 95% of all pastors and church leaders outside of the United States have little or no theological training for their ministries. As a result, our ministry with Global Training Network (GTN) is seeking to invest all of our energy and resources into resolving this inequity. When asked: “If you saw ten men trying to carry a heavy log and nine of the men were carrying the lighter tapered end … and only one man was struggling to carry the wider heavier end, which end would you jump toward to give your help?” — our response is to help the struggling man at the heavier end.

The Plan: Targeted-training

At GTN we employ a “laser” rather than a “shotgun” approach in our teaching. We want to meet the real needs in the lives of the people we serve. This means that we teach the foundational principles of God’s Word that must always be present for any ministry to be fruitful and God-honoring. These are the essential truths that we teach to leaders among the nations. But then there are also further areas of God’s Word such as specific Bible studies, doctrinal areas, and practical ministry skills that the pastors and church leaders themselves realize they need help in understanding. We receive that information in advance of our conference trips and then specifically prepare our studies to meet both of these areas: essential truths plus requested areas of Biblical teaching to meet the current needs of those we are training in their own ministry environment.

The Method: Transferable-equipping

It has well be said that if you feed a hungry person a fish you meet his need for a day, but if you teach him how to fish you meet his need for a lifetime. In our GTN conferences we do both. We “give the hungry person a fish” but we do so in such a way as to simultaneously “teach him how to fish for himself.” We teach God’s Word to pastors and church leaders (men and women) to meet spiritual needs in their own lives as followers of Christ, but we do so in a manner that equips them with the tools to go on learning on their own as well as to pass on the teaching and training to those in their churches.

The Tool: Indigenous Church Leadership Conferences

Our training teams work in coordination with key indigenous pastors among the nations who are Christian leaders in their country and who are experiencing the result of God’s blessing upon their evangelistic and church planting ministries. These pastors have ministries in which there is a great need for help in training the pastors and church leaders being placed over the local churches.

The indigenous leaders are people who possess the necessary gifts of vision-casting and administration to effectively serve as our primary contacts within their country. As our conference organizers they, along with their team of assistants, provide the logistical planning and implementation necessary for organizing and publicizing the conferences through which we are able to provide teaching, training, encouragement and prayer to the church leadership in their country.

As GTN staff members we raise our own living and ministry support and all the funds necessary for providing the conferences to the church leaders who attend (food, lodging, teaching materials, etc.). As a result, pastors, church leaders and spouses who otherwise would not be able to afford the training can receive the training we have prepared. This typically amounts to $25-$35 (US) per conference attendee for a three or four-day conference. A conference attended by 300 people typically will generate a cost of approximately $9,000 [$30X300] (US). This is funded from donations to the GTN accounts of the trainers on the team serving in that conference. As a means of being good stewards of time and travel, multiple conferences in different areas of the country are scheduled whenever possible as a GTN team travels into that area of the world.

Since 2004 GTN trainers have provided teaching, training, resources, encouragement and prayer to pastors and church leaders in the following countries: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Congo, Dominican Republic, Grenada, India, Iran, Kenya, Malawi, Moldova, Morocco, Panama, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Result: Multiplication

After we have trained an indigenous pastor he takes the Word of God that we have passed on to him and multiplies that Word into the lives of an average of 100 people in his church! In 2007 our GTN teams trained 25,000 pastors and church leaders among the nations, which has now potentially impacted the lives of 2.5 million people as those leaders went back to their churches and passed the teaching and training on to the people under their spiritual care. Ours is a ministry of multiplication, not addition, thus fulfilling the mandate of 2 Timothy 2:1-2:

“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

 

The Goal: Eternal Glory!

As the churches among the nations grow in strength and fruitfulness through the training the Lord provides us to give, the result is a God-glorifying increase in the number of world-wide worshipers of our great and gracious God — which is our ultimate goal!
Acts 9:31 – As [Paul and Timothy] went on their way through the cities … the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.
•    Psalm 86:9 – All the nations You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, and shall glorify Your name!