Many Bible colleges and Mission training institutes in the West are struggling. They have often inherited beautiful large buildings and campuses, from an era when upkeep and labour was much cheaper than it is today. This, together with modern safety regulations, academic requirements and the high cost of living, has made full-time study and living on campus incredibly expensive. Colleges have diversified into shorter courses and online options, but attracting students for a three or four-year degree, has become very difficult. Many colleges have to sell their buildings or close altogether.
Letting go of this style of training for mission and ministry is not easy. It was and is a great way to prepare people. Academically rigorous, allowing the time to go deep and reflect, and shaping students by living in an (often international) campus community, these colleges produced generations of students that have blessed the world. Many of them look back on their training with deep appreciation.
Initially, this model was duplicated around the world. In the ‘golden age of mission’ in China, roughly from 1850-1950, many such Bible colleges were built on missionary compounds, often along with schools and clinics, often with large donations from abroad.
However, this model was not sustainable after communism took over. The buildings missionaries had erected through these decades, were either destroyed or confiscated by the government. In the new era of government persecution, the church had to organise their training in a different way.
When things began to loosen up a little after the cultural revolution ended in the late seventies, new Bible schools sprang up. These were often based in remote locations in the countryside, in someone’s home or farm. Small groups of students, usually no more than 20, would live together with whoever was teaching them. They could not go out for security reasons and would often stay in the school for the duration of the course, which could be from several months to two years long. Students had to embrace a basic lifestyle, with little comfort, privacy or variation in diet.
Whereas Bible colleges in the West teach a lot besides the Bible, these schools were all about scripture. On a typical day, students would spend six hours in class studying the Bible. They would also be required to read 40-50 chapters of scripture daily (a rate at which you can read through the entire Bible in less than a month) and memorize a chapter every day. Weekends were spent preaching in nearby house churches and joining in their ministry.
These Bible schools still operate in a very similar way. Often with the added requirement that students do not take a mobile phone for security reasons. When China started training missionaries for service abroad, this style of training was also implemented. Mission schools are also often informal, small scale, home based, and very flexible. If one is raided by authorities, another one is opened somewhere else.
Because of the added requirements of mission training, schools are also opened in other countries in East Asia. There, students have more opportunities to learn English and other languages, and it is easier to have teachers come from various places to lecture on mission specific topics. But the home-based model is still used.
Not having a beautiful campus, a well-resourced library, an army of experienced professors, comfortable lodgings, bright classrooms and other facilities we are used to in the West, is certainly a loss, if you knew such things existed in the first place. But this home-based style of mission training, brings it within reach of many more people who could never afford such facilities, and works around the restrictions of governments hostile to such training.
But it also is much closer to the reality of working and living on the field. The small teams, the regular ministry practice, the simple way of living, the cross-cultural stresses and language barriers are all very similar to what their life will look like when they are placed in a mission team. For students in the West, it is often a huge transition to move from academic study on a beautiful campus to the reality of the mission field. At least these home-based mission schools produce graduates who know what they are getting themselves into. And perhaps a time will come when we have to implement some of this model in the West.
Hi Jane, your article was great! I had no idea how different missions training is in the East. it actually sounds way cooler than schools out here (California). I’d assume the eastern students are more transformed by the end of their schooling, than the western ones. They sound beautiful.