November 01, 1991 by Ron Shaw

Throughout the 15 years of existence of the U.S. Center for World Mission, its campus has housed several institutions of higher education. This has seemed fitting because of our purpose to encourage sending out trained workers to every people group around the world. Also our predecessor, the Pasadena Nazarene College, was begun for a similar purpose.

Recently coming to join the ranks of the Logos (Taiwanese) Theological Seminary, the Armenian Bible College and the Instituto Biblico Nazareno already here is the Great Commission Theological Seminary. GCTS was begun by Dr. Thomas Wang as a branch of Gordon- Conwell Seminary to carry out the spirit of Christ's Great Commission among the Chinese peoples around the world. Begun in Sept. 1990 with Dr. Wang as its President, GCTS is now on our campus, a separate entity from Gordon-Conwell.

Dr. Wang and Rebecca Chan of Hong Kong, now Director of Administration, were recently joined by Dr. Alex Luc, formerly Professor of Old Testament Studies at Columbia Biblical Seminary, Columbia, SC and now Dean of Faculty at GCTS. With so many existing evangelical seminaries, the GCTS does not intend to duplicate what already exists, but to be a seminary with a unique focus. Chief among these are the Chinese people scattered all over the world. Early on, Dr. Wang realized that in order to reach many of them who are acculturated into their surrounding non-Chinese cultures, it would be necessary for those evangelizing them to be both bicultural and bilingual. This is one of the emphases of GCTS. An example of how this works is the recent request received by Dr. Wang to help start in 1992 a Bible Training Institute for pastors in Russia. The institute will begin with short term studies, using a Russian interpreter.

Then, also, the seminary hopes to teach new believers in the Chinese diaspora to reach out to still other cultures with the gospel. Dr. Wang feels that the still-developing missions concern of the Chinese Church worldwide requires special nurture.

The third focus of this new seminary is to seek cooperation with other institutions of the same ethos, not to duplicate but to share what each can do to train mission-minded Chinese Christians. For example, GCTS plans to cooperate closely with Logos Seminary; already the two libraries are mutually available.

Logos Seminary, by comparison, trains pastors and leaders for the Evangelical Formosan Church, hopefully helping them to grow from 25 to 100 churches by 1995. Until recently the EFC had brought its pastors over from Taiwan. But this caused a drain on the mother country and great concern among Formosan churches. Furthermore, those come to pastor in North America encountered linguistic, cultural, social and church policy differences. They were not able to fully utilize their talents and gifts. As a result, in order to foster further growth, the EFC has begun to train indigenous pastors in North America.

Logos is accredited in cooperation with Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary to offer the MDiv, MA in Christian Studies and DMin degrees, as well as church planting skills. Since there are 50 million Amoy speakers around the world, cross-cultural missionary training is given to aid in evangelism and establishing churches in a multi-cultural and multi-linguistic context.

The faculty of seven all have earned doctorates, plus many accumulated years of teaching and pastoral work.

The other two on campus besides our own WCIU are technically Bible Institutes.

The Armenian Bible College offers a full 4-year program in Biblical studies, on three levels: - Level one for those preparing for the ministry and taught on weekday evenings in English; - Level Two for Christian workers, taught in Armenian on Saturday evenings; and - Level Three, which teaches English on weekdays to Armenian immigrants. Dr. Yeghia Babikian, its President, has just announced that the College has just been accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the American Association of Bible Colleges.

The Instituto Biblico Nazareno is particularly designed to teach a seminary-type program in Spanish for the large Spanish speaking population in the Los Angeles area.

Pray for all these schools. They form an important part of this international/interdenominational community.