JamesTembula

ConneXions Leadership Training Institute (C.L.T.I) is one of the ministries of the LOH Global Ministries. The vision for this training program was birthed as a result of seeing the need for training among the Christian leaders in Africa, especially in the African Indigenous Churches. As a Christian leader once said, “the Church in Africa is growing like a river 25 miles wide and one inch deep.” There is no proper doctrinal foundation in most of the African church. Pastors are not trained. One example of this situation is Ruwe Holy Ghost Church of Africa in Kenya, which has over 500 local churches with no single trained pastor. Because of the outreach of Light of Hope (LOH) Global Ministries to this denomination, one of the Ruwe pastors is in a Bible Seminary studying for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Bible and Theology. This single pastor, who will hopefully be a blessing for thousands of people, is nonetheless a drop of salt in the ocean, compared to the many that are not trained in his denomination.

According to research carried out by Daystar University in Kenya, there are over 30 million believers in over 10,000 African Indigenous Churches. And new churches are opening nearly every week. It is believed that this growth will triple in a period of ten to twenty years.

Light of Hope Global Ministries (LOH) is the sponsoring organization of the Institute. It is not the desire of the LOH to create a denominational structure but rather a network working between denominations, churches, organizations, and nations to equip and prepare laborers for worldwide spiritual harvest. It is to this purpose that LOH is dedicated, to recruit, train, motivate, and mobilize a network internationally.

Light of Hope Global Ministries was conceived by the Holy Spirit in answer to a cry from the harvest fields in Eastern Africa for materials geared for training the average world-class healthy leaders. The Institute is birthed as a vision designed to move leaders from vision to reality. The curriculum takes students beyond teaching to training where participation is required. This is participation to which students are challenged for spiritual reproduction and life transformation. Jesus final command was to reproduce spiritually (Matthew 23:19-20).

Light of Hope Global Ministries’ ConneXions Leadership Training Institute (C.L.T.I) is not as inclusive as a traditional Bible Institutes because it eliminates materials not directly related the real need of the church in Africa. We are not in competition with the traditional Bible Institutes but our training is for Church Leaders both men and women who do not have opportunities, education and/or finances, for such training; then trusting God to meet these needs of both the emerging and existing leaders.

ConneXions Leadership Training Institute (C.L.T.I) equips students with creative Bible study skills to enable continued study of Scriptures following basic course training. But the primary focus of the institute is teaching what Jesus taught to move men from observation to demonstration of the power of God. Our goal is nothing less than life change or transformation in the lives of the students. This is achieved by creating environment of prayer, accountability groups, intentional fire (circumstance to prompts deep seeking of God), etc that are geared toward the same goal- transformation process in the student’s lives.

During the first part of the 20^th century, Sub-Sahara Africa was known as “The White Man’s Graveyard”, and or “the Dark Continent” because of the difficulties and apparent failures of most missionaries who tried to spread the gospel in the continent. In 1900, there were 8 million Christians in Africa. Up to 1950, the Gospel had reached less than 5% of the continent. However, in the 21^st century, those old terms as mentioned above no longer apply. No other continent has seen the growth of Christianity like Africa. Things have changed. Currently, Africa has the highest ratio of evangelicals to general population of any continent. By 1990, the number of evangelical Christians had risen to 275 million (57.3% of the total population).

Along with the rapid expansion of Christianity, there has come a need for trained leadership. It is forecasted that there will be an average of 6.5 million new believers each year in Africa alone, or the equivalent of 26,000 congregations of 250 believers each. There is, therefore, a clear and urgent need to develop and implement relevant life changing training that will equip the one and half million leaders in the local churches to disciple the millions of people that are coming to Christ.

Such rapid growth and expansion calls for urgent changes in the training paradigm. The existing training institutions, besides not being able to meet the demand, is flawed because of the following reasons:

Institutions are training people for the ministry, but they neglect to train those leaders already in the ministry.

The cost of training is too high.

Traditional training in residential schools is producing “professional leaders”, people who are so far up the educational ladder that they are disconnected from the reality of the people they are supposed to lead.

Traditional schools do not respond to the real needs of the church.

Patrick Johnstone of Operation World says that leadership training in Africa is “the critical bottleneck. There is lack of funds – in a continent becoming poorer – for training and supporting the full-time worker…”

In a nutshell, today’s crisis in African Church can be summarized in the following statement: “the church is like a sheep without a Shepherd.” The church is growing faster than its leadership.

Traditional models must give way to Training and Equipping in Action, the model of leadership training that the ConneXions Leadership Training Institute has adopted. Leaders need to be trained in the context of ministry and with the community in which they are found. This is an important point. Training them in ministry and not for ministry. This type of training will give them frontline ministry experiences that will lead toward internal and practical application of the knowledge learnt. Those leaders who are not already in the ministry should be training in a community-oriented church that is open to giving them real ministry experiences and that will allow them to operate within their callings and passions. Curricula must be developed to meet the needs of the church and not the needs of the school. The school exists to serve the church and not the church to serve the school. Doing the right thing must be translated into doing the right thing right.

The churches that LOH through C.L.T.I is targeting for training are known by the following names: Africa Independent Churches, African Spiritual Churches, African Initiated Churches or African Indigenous Churches. Basically, these are churches started by African leaders that do not have connections to mission organizations.

This group of churches is creating a phenomenon. They are springing up like mushrooms all across black Africa. This growth started during the era of colonial domination and widespread efforts of Christian missions. Scholars have come up with variety reasons to explain the dynamics that gave rise to these churches. Some of these reasons include:

Camouflaged resistance to an intrusive and disruptive colonial presence.

Efforts to contextualize the Christian faith and message brought by western missionaries.

Efforts to salvage some sense of self-worth and dignity amidst the daily struggles to survive as menial laborers in an economy dominated by and tilted toward a minority white population.

While there is broad variety among these groups regarding dress regulations, activities, and degree of appropriation of beliefs and practices of orthodox Christianity, there are some broad basic characteristics they all share.

All the African indigenous churches take their stance squarely within the African cultural worldview, which accepts demonic power and the practicing of the occult as a fact of daily life.

They all view life as a daily spiritual power encounter with the invisible forces of evil.

They all draw liberally from the Old Testament traditions and practices (i.e. the priesthood).

They all have exuberant styles of worship, which engages everyone present in singing, clapping, dancing, jumping, shouting, and roaring as a sign of the Holy Spirit coming upon them.

They feature healing services as regular part of the church life. These beliefs have led some churches to seek other power aside from God’s to administer healing to their members. Patrick Johnstone says that, due to the lack to training, “syncretism is a major problem in many areas” of the African church.

With long history of strained relations both with the government authorities and mission-established churches, the indigenous churches forged their own patterns of church life without the benefit of any formal and sound Biblical training. Light of Hope Global Ministries (LOH) decided to forego the usual pattern of planting yet another denominational identity, and to rather place itself at the disposition of the African Indigenous Churches (AICs). This approach has helped to open doors of opportunity for ministry among these churches. The focus of LOH is on Bible teaching, affirmation and facilitation of leadership development among these denominations. LOH currently works with 10 of the Kenya AICs.

ConneXions Leadership Training Institute (CLTI) will conduct three different training models:

Two-year Semi-residential Training Program (SRP)

This program consists of two tracks

English track

Swahili track

Church Based Leadership Training (CBLT) Program

Three one-week training conferences.

This program will focus on training leaders in ministry rather than for ministry. Leaders will come to the training center for five (5) weeks and go through three different courses on each term. After five weeks they will go back to their various churches for two months. While at home they will have light assignments or and a course that will help them apply what they have learnt. The two-year semi-residential program is designed to serve those leaders who fear leaving their church positions for extremely long periods of time and instead choose to serve without training.

The English track is meant for those local leaders who are proficient in English. However, there are leaders in many denominations who speak only the local languages. The Swahili program seeks to address this issue. Swahili is Kenya’s national language and most of people communicate in it. In Tanzania, Swahili is the official language of communication. Ugandans learns Swahili in school and most of people who have not gone to High School will prefer to learn in Swahili. Our vision is to meet the need of training for the leader who is saying, “I need training”, but doesn’t speak an international language.

Training materials are available in English but not yet in Swahili. The number of students will be limited to 25 in each track, especially for the first year.

CBLT is the field-training program of C.L.T.I. It is designed for pastors or leaders who are not able to come for the five-week Semi-residential Training because of church or family situations, or even because of finances. The purpose of this type of program is to take the training to ministers and leaders to their local areas.

CBLT works through what is called “satellite schools.” These satellite schools are in individual churches where pastors and leaders of a specific denomination meet for training. The training is conducted daily for a period of one or two weeks depending on the arrangement of the church with us. After two or so months the same group will be recalled for another one or week training session.

Some of the “satellite schools” will run during the period when the semi-residential students are with their churches and families because we expect them mobilize and facilitate these classes. After enough people are trained, thus having enough personnel, both schools will run concurrently.

This church-based institute with spirit-filled staff offers aggressive ministry training for thorough equipping of Christian leadership from their churches. We emphasize balanced doctrine, servanthood, leadership, character development and developing a biblical global perspective. ConneXions Leadership Training Institute (C.L.T.I) is a place to train men and women called to full-time ministry and those interested in becoming better equipped to serve their local church. We offer academic excellence and methods that will train you through this program to maximize your leadership skills and attitude to reach your God-given potential.

LOH will conduct three regional training conferences in a year. Two of these conferences will take place in Kenya and one in Uganda. The conference will serve a two-fold purpose: to teach and train pastors and leaders and to let other people know about the training opportunities available to them through C.L.T.I and C.B.L.T. The conferences in Uganda will serve as preparatory steps to the opening of an LOH ministry office and a Leadership school.

Currently, we are trusting God for someone who can assist C.L.T.I with curricula, books, and other relevant training materials.

The vision and purpose of Light of Hope Global Ministries through C.L.T.I is to equip the leaders in ministry through timely, cost effective, culturally relevant training that is geared to producing healthy holistic leaders. We desire to raise up a mighty army of men and women who are prepared to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through vision and spiritual preparation of the heart, and training in the Word of God, its principles and methods.

The seed of destiny is planted in the heart of each one of us. We all carry a secret passion to accomplish something of value with our lives. The need for purpose is God’s dream in your heart that yearns for expression and fulfillment. In every generation, God raises up visions to provide opportunities for every individual to fulfill his or her purpose in life. Here LOH we believe this vision given by God as a place for thousands, just like you who want to impact this and future generations by well trained, built up Christians and world class healthy leaders who will impact the world for God. There is a place for you. We welcome you to join this great adventure in Leadership development. Catch the vision, join our family, invest your life, fulfill your destiny, and operate in excellence with LOH Global Ministries in Kenya, Africa.