Lausanne World Pulse – Education and Training for Missions and Evangelism

July 2007

By Kumar Abraham

With the presence of the Holy Spirit and with the equipping they had received, the early disciples turned their “world upside down” in one generation. The Church today, on the other hand, has taken many generations to reach the nations and peoples around her even with thousands of educational institutions to help do the training. The disciples’ professor, Jesus, was willing to show them how, even though he knew “all” the theologies one could know. Bruce Larson says,

Years ago, before seminaries existed, future ministers were trained by sitting under the mentorship of pastors, studying the scriptures with them and working alongside them. Now this process is available to lay people through the mentoring relationship. I believe that there is no more significant ministry for gifted pastors and strong churches than to mentor younger Christians in their daily walk.5

It is not involvement in programs that matters, but involvement with people, qualifying us to know who our audience is. Making time for people is costly. The “with him” method of training is very slow and can seem to be tedious; however, it can have amazing results. Michael Green states it like this:

These are believed to be vital elements in this “hands-on” training. First, do the ministry yourself, learning as you go and reflecting on how others can be involved. Second, draw others into doing the ministry with you. Third, let them do the ministry as you stay alongside, supervise and encourage. Then comes the transfer of the responsibility for the ministry to them: They report back to you on how they got along. And finally, the responsibility for training others is passed on to them.6

Here are some suggestions for your own personal study and reading:

  1. Missions reading. Missionary biographies such as Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson and William Carey. Resources such as Operation World and Evangelical Missions Quarterly. Books such as David Bosch’s Transforming Mission (1996, Orbis Books). Books about the culture you will be entering.
  2. Evangelism reading. Biographies of Billy Graham, Luis Palau, D. L. Moody, George Whitefield, Alvin Reid7 and Michael Green.8
  3. Classroom missions topics. Intercultural Communication, Foundations and History of Christian Mission, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Urban Ministry, Theology of Mission, Contextualization, Mission Internship, Introduction to Church Planting, Religious Pluralism, Biblical Theology of Mission, Foundations of Church Growth, Anthropology for Christian Mission and Intro to World Religions.
  4. Classroom evangelism topics. Foundations of Evangelism, The Content of the Gospel, Evangelism in the Local Church, Theology of Evangelism, Evangelism Internship, Discipleship and Evangelism, Witnessing to the Cults, Evangelism Methodology and Evangelizing the Secularists.

III. Skills
This is an aspect that is “more caught than taught.” Training should be on the job and missionaries should be trained by those who have apostolic gifts.

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Dr. Kumar Abraham is a Sri Lankan national living in Melbourne, Australia and has served as a missionary in the Philippines for twenty-one years. He is an evangelist, a trainer of evangelists, equipper of Christ-followers in evangelism and a Bible school lecturer. He can be reached at: [email protected].