Conservative seminary training gaining ground outside U.S.

Providing theological education and ministry training is a challenge for Baptists in many places around the world, but Global Leadership Development is making it easier.

Southern Philippines Baptist Theological Seminary is one example.

Southern Philippines Baptist Theological Seminary

Edgar Aungon, president of the seminary, reported on how Global Leadership Development has helped his school.

The seminary started as an idea in 1953, when Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board missionaries Elaine Crotwell and Clyde Jowers saw the need for a training program for pastors in the Philippines, Aungon said.

“Jowers was appointed as the first director of the Davao Baptist Bible School” in 1955, Aungon added, noting Baker Cauthen was then-executive secretary of the Foreign Mission Board.

Between its founding and 1982, the Bible school developed into a seminary with the financial and personnel assistance of the Foreign Mission Board, later to be renamed the International Mission Board.

In 1996, the IMB changed its mission strategy and “withdrew their financial support and teaching personnel,” Aungon said. “My seminary was left to fend for itself.”

In an effort to earn enough income to continue providing the theological education needed in the Philippines, the seminary started offering general education as early as elementary and kindergarten. Unfortunately, general education became the focus, causing theological education to suffer.

Aungon said there are 1,800 Southern Baptist churches in the Visayas island group and on Mindanao. Of their pastors, 19 to 20 percent are trained, he added.

Global Leadership Development “helped the seminary … develop a Master of Theology degree and provided professors to teach the 36-hour degree,” David Mahfouz, pastor of First Baptist Church in Warren and a Global Leadership Development ambassador, explained in an email.

How Global Leadership Development helps

When asked how Global Leadership Development helps seminaries strengthen and grow, Mahfouz said the effort does so in several ways.

“We provide consortiums that they join. They agree to recognize each other’s academic credits and maintain parity among their degree offerings. Also, they can share faculty and syllabi, and we provide staff development,” Mahfouz said.

“We send visiting professors to teach classes. They go at their own cost. The seminary provides housing for them,” he continued.

“We provide digital resources through the deployment of our Alexandria Library, [which contains] 2 million books and journal articles.”

“We identify faculty … and help them gain access to further academic studies by raising scholarship funds. We also identify the top 2 percent of students at a seminary and recruit them to pursue higher academic degrees,” Mahfouz explained.

Much of this is facilitated with the support of Champion Churches. Mahfouz’s church became a Champion Church in partnership with Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Baptist seminary in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2016.

Growth of Global Leadership Development

In August 2021, Global Leadership Development counted 90 related seminaries with an estimated combined enrollment of 27,000 students. That same year, Mahfouz reported 354 Champion Churches partnering with Global Leadership Development.

Mahfouz reported by email the number of Champion Churches and partner ministries is now 250. Among those partners are Baptist associations in Texas such as Enon Baptist Association and Golden Triangle Network, along with International Evangelical Association, Kingdom First Ministries and Baptist Distinctives. The Association of Korean Southern Baptist Churches also is a partner.

Though the reported number of Champion Churches has decreased since 2021, the number of related seminaries has grown to 140, with an estimated combined enrollment of 42,000 students.

Theological perspectives

Representatives of the partners gathered April 14 for a meeting of the Global Leadership Development Pastor’s Consortium hosted by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

Jimmy Draper, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Euless and retired president of the SBC’s Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources), addressed attendees by asking, “How are we going to fulfill the Great Commission?”

With an examination of Acts 16:6-10—the story of God forbidding Paul to preach in Bithynia—Draper concluded God doesn’t expect Christians to figure out how to fulfill the Great Commission, but to listen to God and obey what God tells them to do.

“God had a plan that included the whole world,” Draper said after suggesting Lydia, who became a follower of Jesus after Paul followed God’s call to Macedonia instead of Bithynia, was instrumental in evangelizing Asia through her salespeople.

Following Draper, Matthew Scott, global digital director for International Evangelical Association, showed an instructional video about disciple-making by Billie Hanks Jr., IEA’s founder and president.

Saying disciple-making is the weak link and the Achilles’ heel in completing the Great Commission, Hanks distinguished between discipleship and disciple-making. Discipleship happens in groups. Disciple-making is one-on-one. Additionally, disciple-making is “intentional, relational, highly specific.”

Along with other markers of disciple-making, Hanks noted women are to disciple women, and men are to disciple men for two reasons. One, men understand men’s spiritual needs better than women do, and vice versa. Two, men discipling men and women discipling women guards against temptation and inappropriate relationships.

Multiplication is a result of disciple-making done right, Hanks said.

Global Leadership Development started in 2012 as the Patterson Center for Global Theological Innovation, named for former Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson. A Christian Index article described it as “a Conservative Renaissance in seminaries around the world.”