Theological Education Network

By Anthony:

I am excited to share with you about a theological education network that I've been coordinating since December 2020. I hadn't shared about it yet because it started slowly with few people and we have only met three times in total. The goal was to meet every quarter, but covid slowed down our plans. 

I have always had a passion for bringing different denominations together in unity to focus on Christ and our common goals while also keeping our distinctions and even debating our different beliefs. In my context here in East Africa, my impression is that there are many small Bible colleges and programs led by different denominations or missionaries and often they are quite isolated from each other and compete with each other. I've written about that in this article. I have a passion to see how we can have our schools working together better and learning from each other. Theological education is incredibly important in a country in which the vast majority of pastors have no training or only a little informal training. And yet there are common frustrating challenges of illiteracy, material poverty, staff shortages, and many others. 

The idea I started with was to have all of the Bible colleges of our region in Uganda come together one time to see how we might find ways of partnering and strategizing for theological education together. After the first meeting, the idea morphed into an ongoing network for mutual learning with participating institutions consisting of both formal Bible schools offering accredited programs, as well as informal Bible training programs offering unaccredited certificates. The first two meetings were at our home, but then we grew from there. The participants have been mostly principals of each school, but also other teachers and bishops from different denominations.

From those first two meetings we came up with our group purpose:

We are a group of theological educators and church leaders who are committed to improving theological education in North Eastern Uganda. We keep our diverse identities as we come from diverse churches, but we commit to humbly listening to each other, learning from each other, and sharing ideas with each other for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Together we can develop a more cohesive strategy for theological training of church leaders in our region. We strive to make each of our Bible colleges more financially sustainable and more effective at transforming church leaders as we share advice and information and make partnerships together to address the enormous need of theological education in North Eastern Uganda.

The last meeting we had was held in Deliverance Church Soroti in October 2021. We were very grateful for their willingness to host us. Every time our group meets we discuss a different topic and have different people facilitating. Future topics could include: analysis of overall picture of schools in our region, curricula choices/library books, income generation and financial sustainability, setting up online programs, governance/board, denominational loyalty, partnerships, scholarships, skills/livelihood training, mutual projects or advertising events/conferences to do as a group together, issues of language, and many more.

I was very encouraged to hear that some of these schools, even of different denominations (Pentecostal and Presbyterian), were already working together to share professors.

The facilitators for this October meeting were from Kampala Evangelical School of Theology (KEST). Philip Wandawa, the principal there, did his PHD at Calvin Seminary and we met him in Grand Rapids before we went to Uganda the first time in 2009! KEST was the only school represented that was not from our region. Philip and his colleague Emmanuel led an important conversation on how accreditation works in Uganda and how to obtain it, but more importantly talked about the advantages of both accredited and unaccredited informal theological education programs, and why both are extremely important in Uganda. Here is a picture of Philip speaking to the group:

So far we have 23 schools/programs within our network from our region. They are nearly 50/50 in terms of formal and non-formal. With Soroti as a geographical center, they include other surrounding places such as Lira, Amuria, Karamoja, Kaberamaido, Kumi, Mbale, and Kapchorwa. They represent various denominations: Pentecostal, Anglican, Presbyterian, etc.

It was nice to have a mixture of Ugandan leaders as well as a few foreign missionaries. It was also a time of great fellowship and reunion for everyone. Some people were meeting with their former teachers after many years. 

Resonate has an ongoing partnership with PAG Uganda as a denomination, so it was also nice that we had both the current principal of Pentecostal Theological College there, as well as the former principal who was there with us in 2009. Here is Patrick on the left who we worked with in 2009-2010:

The current principal Erich:

We don't know yet what fruit will come out of these meetings, but so far people are finding them helpful. And I love seeing the fellowship and partnership towards the common goal of theological education. Please pray for us that God would use this group to equip and help each of the schools.