In July, over 350 church leaders from India participated in a weeklong online workshop led by top church network leaders. BILD was able to provide them an online platform using EQUIP, our online training tool, and leaders were able to register for one of three pathways offered.
These workshops stem from a series of online workshops that occurred last year throughout BILD’s entire global network during the summer and fall. However, these more recent workshops were organized and run by our network partners in India as they continue to press forward in training their own church leaders to lead and establish churches.
This summer’s online workshops were notable in that eight native Indian languages were represented, and this allowed numerous church leaders to join that hadn’t previously.
Leaders were able to choose from one of three pathways offered: Teaching the First Principles, First Principles Series 1, and First Principles Series 3. The leaders were again able to use the time to make progress through the resources and upload their work, which they can use in their own ministries.
One of BILD’s missions is to empower leaders to train their own leaders from grassroots to national levels, and these online workshops have been a significant demonstration of this as network leaders have taken ownership over the development of their own church leaders.
This was also illustrated as second-line leaders across the church networks took the opportunity to facilitate the workshops. Joy Stephen, a top network leader who oversees the training and development of these leaders, said, “Witnessing them step into these new leadership roles with grace, skill, and passion was truly remarkable.”
Joy said he was deeply encouraged to see the initiative taken by these leaders, especially in the planning they undertook before each session, coupled with the deep, meaningful discussions engaged in by the participants in the workshop.
Another mission of BILD is to see the Church spontaneously expand by returning to the model of planting and establishing churches found in the New Testament, also known as the way of Christ and His Apostles. The pathways chosen for this session of workshops aim at doing just that by: establishing one’s faith in the context of the local church (Series 1); being able to accurately interpret the New Testament, understanding how Paul established churches by shaping the church around the Apostles’ teaching, and understanding God’s plan through Christ’s church (Series 3); and using Teaching the First Principles to help their leaders develop the skill set needed to establish believers and churches in the faith.
“Participants are grasping the new paradigm effectively and striving passionately to implement these ideas within their church networks, despite facing cultural and traditional hurdles,” Joy said. “To sustain this momentum, they will benefit from continued guidance, encouragement, and active support from key national leaders at the forefront of the [way of Christ and His Apostles] movement.”
It is exciting to see what is unfolding in India as these leaders take ownership over the biblical principles that they can implement in their own ministries and churches and be faithful to God’s plan.
Read more about last year’s online workshops here:
BILD hosts online workshops for multi-level leadership development