Training in Biblical Ministry in the Context of the Local Church

It’s a real challenge to provide the right training that fits with all the time, financial and personal constraints of everyday life. For most church members it is not practical to go off to a Bible College or seminary for full-time training. 

This graph shows that if this is true for the church in the West it is even more true for the fast-growing church in the rest of the world.

What Can We Learn From The Early Church?

In the book of Acts, we see that the early church had similar needs and opportunities. The church was expanding rapidly and church members had to be effective witnesses of their faith in all spheres of their lives. Paul and the apostles developed a method of training that met the needs of the church. This method was very simple in its approach, but incredibly effective and efficient.

Veritas College has done extensive research on principles that were used by the early church and has, as a result, developed the philosophy and practice of Integrated Leadership Development (ILD) as an answer to the training needs of our time.

Integrated Leadership Development involves training leaders and church members in their local church so that they can lead their own church on to spiritual maturity.

Key Benefits of Integrated Leadership Development (ILD)

• Leaders are trained in their own environment and do not have to leave their homes and professions to be trained elsewhere.
• The whole person is led to spiritual maturity.
• ILD breaks down the sacred-secular division so that faith can be integrated into all areas of life.
• People who have been trained better understand how to apply biblical principles to their work, business or profession.
• ILD requires little resources and is highly adaptable.

This unique approach has been extensively field-tested and is currently used in approximately 40 countries with more than 12 000 people in training each year.

It places God’s Word at the centre of all teaching and recognizes it as the complete authority for church doctrine and practice.

Veritas’ ILD is a tool that allows you to open God’s Word in such a way that you can get the full meaning of the text. It also equips you to apply and communicate the message in your local context.

Training Future Church Leaders

There are wonderful training opportunities in churches around the world. To utilize these opportunities to their full potential will require alternative ways to train our future church leaders. To only have available a three year course at a far away Bible College will not supply the training for all the new churches that are being planted on a daily basis nor for a new generation of believers.

This is where Veritas College comes into its own and is aiming to train up Christian leaders within the context of their local church, whether that is in an inner city or in the remotest villages. ILD is a tool that can make that happen.