AWF-ICTE Young Scholars Training Initiative

Teachers stepped back into history at the end of June as they took part in the AWF-ICTE (International Commission of Theological Education) Young Scholars Training Initiative in Nyack, New York. Selected participants from around the world received training in Alliance Distinctives as preparation for future teaching in their respective Alliance World Fellowship regions. It was a significant step in promoting the Alliance to the next generation of leaders.

Over the week of June 24-28, 2019, the candidates were instructed in the historical beginnings of the Christian & Missionary Alliance and had opportunities to visit key locations relevant to the work of A.B. Simpson, the movement’s founder.

One participant wrote, “This week has been an eye-opening reminder of just who we are and why we exist as the Christian and Missionary Alliance. To walk the streets of New York that Simpson walked; to stay in the halls of Nyack where the first workers sent out by our movement were trained; to feel the fire of our cause burn anew in my heart as we learned, conversed, worshipped, and prayed together—this is what it must have felt like to experience our movement in the beginning.”

Sessions were led by Prof. Bernie Van de Walle (Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology, Ambrose University) and Dr. Ron Walborn (Vice President and Dean, Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack).

The training also focused on how the global Alliance of today could draw upon our shared C&MA heritage to add value to both current and future ministries. As a global cohort—with different vocational experiences, different cultural realities, and different historical outlooks—the participants learned from one another how the Alliance’s single vision of the whole gospel, for the whole person, for the whole world can be taken, preached, embodied, and renewed in our day.

“This week is an answer to the prayer that I made 20 years ago,” said one participant. “At the age of 18, I asked God to help me to contribute to the restoration of A.B. Simpson’s missionary vision in the C&MA. … [This is] the beginning of the realization of my prayer.”

Another called it “a life changing, mind shifting and heart encouraging experience.”

The participants from this cohort will now return to their regions to teach others while the AWF-ICTE is anticipating holding a similar event in 2021.