Trinity Fellowship, Northwest Bible Church, and Bent Tree Bible Church are partnering together with ALARM over a three year period to provide pastoral and church leadership training in Tanzania. A primary emphasis of ALARM’s ministry to pastors is a three year certificate program called the PLTI (Pastoral Leadership Training Institute). A similar 3-year program is also offered for women (WLTI = Women’s Leadership Training Institute).
Trinity Fellowship Church and Northwest Bible church partnered to host a general pastor’s conference in Morogoro Tanzania from Nov. 15-19, 2010. The goals of the week were to represent the ministry of ALARM to the church leaders in the central region of Tanzania, and introduce the three-year PLTI certificate program. The 4-member teaching team included Keith Hileman (Associate Pastor and elder) and Randy Pardue (elder) from Trinity Fellowship Church, and Ken Fifer (Director of Missions) and Aaron Armstrong (Assistant Minister of Outreach).
The ALARM Tanzania country director Justin Kiwovele suggested that the conference emphasize two crucially-important and over-arching themes of the pastor’s personal Spiritual life and a biblical model of servant leadership. The team distributed the topics, crammed in some prep time, and flexed significantly throughout the week as the schedule demanded, need invited, and the Holy Spirit directed.
70 pastors participated in the week’s conference representing a spectrum of denominations (quite a few pentecostal, assembly of God, and a few Lutheran and Episcopal leaders sprinkled in), church sizes, years of experience, and educational background. Only a handful of the pastors any formal Bible training. One of the most exciting aspects of this group was the presence of 20 committed, energetic, and friendly Masai pastors. The Masai are an unreached people group of cattle-herders distributed across central and eastern Africa known for their diligent commitment to their cultural heritage through traditional dress, medicinal practices, and tribal identity. Beautiful pictures of tall Masai men and women in colorful tribal dress regularly grace the covers of National Geographic and outdoor magazines. However, it is estimated that the evangelical Christian presence in this hard to penetrate culture is somewhere between <.5% to 2%. We were blessed to get to know and be encouraged by 20 faithful Masai pastors, including a bishop who was especially encouraged that the younger pastors among his people were being blessed with solid teaching and the invitation for even more through the ministry of ALARM. The 2nd translator for our week (and ALARM staff member from Arusha Tanzania) Robert is also Masai. The relationship connections were truly blessed by God.
It is difficult to show an overfull week of ministry, teaching, encouraging conversations, and overflowing joy in a few pictures and movie clips, but hopefully the week’s highlights come through in the 9 minute movie linked below. Note especially the brief comments from Robert summarizing the success of the week. From ALARM’s perspective it was very fruitful. The pastor’s were greatly encouraged by the teaching and the ministry of ALARM. All sorts of doors were opened for ongoing ministry relationships. Additionally all of the pastors signed up with interest for the 3-year training PLTI program. With the Spirit’s clear direction and provision, and ALARM’s guidance the 3-church partnership hopes to begin the PLTI in May-June 2011. From that point the pastors will gather together for 2 weeks at a time, twice a year for three years covering all sorts of topics from Biblical interpretation, theology, homiletics, church leadership, and conflict resolution and reconciliation.
The Dallas ALARM partnership is also excited to offer 2 week-long general women’s ministry conferences in February and March 2011 in hopes of launching a similar 3-year women’s leadership training institute. The location of such an offering remains to be determined by the direction of the ALARM Tanzania directors Justin and Anna Kiwovele.
Thanks for your interest in the missions partnership with ALARM and Trinity Fellowship, Northwest Bible, and Bent Tree Bible Churches as we serve to strengthen Christ’s church in east Africa for sake of transforming villages, communities, countries, and continents in proclaiming the glorious reconciling power of Jesus Christ.
Share Real Life Together 