Grace Ministerial Academy!!!

Introducing the official start of Grace Ministerial Academy. If you have been reading our updates for a while you may remember me mentioning this. Well, It has begun! This past week I had seminary classes at the church. This was our first module which is two full courses worth of lectures over the course of a week. There were two lectures from a seminary in Zambia. James Williamson (American) was teaching Legalism, Lawlessness and the Gospel of Grace. And Isaac Makashinyi (Zambian) was teaching Christian Ethics. Both courses were absolutely wonderful and very practical for us here. Over the course of the week we received 10 1hour-1.5hour lectures from Isaac, and 14 lectures from James. It was a packed schedule. We will now have the next three months to complete the assignments and read the required readings.

Now, why is Grace ministerial academy important? One because our aim is to train pastors. This is ministerial training! Many men here who may even be in ministry already have no opportunity to enter into any seminary or have not had good training. So in a sense we bring the seminary to them. These lecturers come in and give intense lectures for a week and then the students complete the assignments over the next three months allowing them to stay in there local churches or jobs. Our curriculum is not second rate either. It is equal or greater than that of most seminaries.

As I mentioned in our previous posts, I am not only attending the classes but also organizing them. This first module went well. We had 5 students including myself. Like i mentioned the two courses were wonderful. All of us really enjoyed them and are now busy working on reading the required books. We are hoping to even double our number of students by the next module in August.

A few things to pray for. Please pray that God would lead us in decisions for the academy. Also we are praying about the use of kindles for the academy. Being that books are so expensive and sometimes hard to find, the use of kindles may be the best option. If we do go this option we will need to raise money to subsidize the cost so the students could afford them. Please pray for wisdom because there really is not much money for this.

Thank you all for your support and prayers. I have included a few pictures of our week.

Buddy