Online Resource Fills Void by Training Church's Current, Future Pastors
by Allie Martin
February 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - Pastors across the globe now have the opportunity to learn from Christian leaders in the privacy of their own homes.The Global Pastors Network has unveiled a new online university that brings Evangelical Christian leaders and pastors together, offering 116 core courses and 24 electives through the worldwide web. The Network features Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and representatives from other denominations.
GPN president Dr. James Davis says the current number of seminaries and Bible schools will be unable to support the need for pastors in the future.
"The Church that started out small two-thousand years ago is now more than a billion people -- and ten years from now, it will be two billion people," Davis says. "Therefore the training must exponentially multiply. Somehow we have got to be able to train leaders while they're in ministry, not simply take them out of ministry, train them for five years, and bring them back in."
The online educational resource, Davis says, will help fill a void in pastoral training. He says statistics show that more than half of those individuals who graduate from Bible colleges or seminaries in the West will not even be in ministry five years down the road.
"Therefore we have got to get real serious about crossing the chasm of the contemporary world and getting the training where's it's so needed: in the hands of men and women while they are ministering," he says. "And the Internet and the wireless world will provide the avenues to make that happen."
The online university is available for a small monthly charge, although scholarships are available. Global Pastors Network was co-founded by the late Dr. Bill Bright.
