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For several years our dream has been to establish a training center for preachers and leaders. Particularly in the rural areas there is a great need since the difficulty of travel makes it almost impossible to come to the capitol for training. Our goal is to bring the teaching closer to the men and women who need it the most, organizing extension classes in some of the outlying towns and villages. We actually have been doing this on an informal basis for a long time with our training seminars. Now we hope to take things up a step with regular Saturday classes and a high level of academic supervision provided by the Center for Urban Religious Education, an outreach of St Louis Christian College in Florissant, Missouri. The classes are open to preachers and leaders from any church but the teaching is strictly oriented around the central principles of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, chiefly, the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. In fact we see that our strong emphasis on the Bible’s authority places us in a unique position to inject a healthy balance into the Kingdom’s work here. We see that most churches here that affirm a strong belief in the authority of scripture have lapsed into a legalistic retreat from the realities of modern life. At the other extreme we see groups that have abandoned the foundation of the Word gravitating toward extremes of charismatic expression and other experienced based forms of belief.
Besides a strong emphasis on the authority of the Bible we hope to equip a new generation of leaders that are able to help the church confront the realities of life in Nicaragua today, specifically poverty. We can see no more urgent task for the church here than to develop and implement a coherent response to the abject poverty that enslaves so many people her. Such a response must be based on Biblical teaching and reflect the personality of Jesus Christ.
Currently classes are being offered at three locations, Tipitpap, Granada and Acoyapa. For the time being our strategy is to bring these extension classes out to the communities that will receive them. We are currently analyzing where we can locate a permanent facility that would allow for the possibility of a residential program.
Nadia Vasques Barahona is our administrator and Efraim Picado Tellez and Roberto Ortiz are professors.
Please pray for this new work, our hope is that it will have great impact for the Kingdom. Many men and women here have a real calling to serve in leadership ministry and we see an open door to help them prepare for service.
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Bible Institute: Introduction to Old Testament –Acoyapa, Chontales. Professor Efraim Picado
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