…And the Africa Institute Begins!

Here is a brief updated from Jason Ferenzci (VP of International Partnerships at OC), giving a brief context of the Institute beginning in Ethiopia today! 

Evangelical Theological Seminary is hosting the Africa Institute this year.

The Institute for Excellence in Ethiopia is up and running this morning! Our 100+ attendees come from 45 seminaries all over Africa. The topic for the week is , “financial sustainability and change” which was chosen after surveying seminaries all over the world in 2010.  Each school will send between 3-4 members of their team for the week, covering a portion of their travel and lodging costs as an investment in their team. This is a critical time as theological education (and education more broadly) faces immense changes. This Institute isn’t a “chalk and talk” workshop where a bunch of western experts share the “proper” way to do things. Rather, this is a big discussion, drawing on the decades of experience in the room and the real challenges that these men and women face. A lot of time will be devoted to group work among individual school teams, seeking to facilitate application exercises and creative thinking about individual situations.

My investment has been largely on the front end, through a lot of work with my African colleagues (Victor Nakah of Zimbabwe and Philippe Emedi of the DRC) and the director of our Institutes (Scott Cunningham, who himself lived and worked in Africa for more than 25 years). It is a privilege to work with a team like this.

It is our hope that this week will lead to:

• a sense of commonality and fellowship among participants (many look forward to this gathering every year)

• serious and practical reflection on the topic of sustainability of seminaries in Africa, including interaction with some leaders from other parts of the world (including Daniel Aleshire of the Association of Theological Schools in North America).

• reflection on what it means to lead change within communities. While some of this will be rather “nuts and bolts,” utilizing John Kotter’s materials, we are deliberately focusing more on the human element of change leadership, for it seems to us that this is the most critical, especially for Christian institutions.

• personally, I look forward to learning a lot and having good fellowship with African friends.

Thanks for the update Jason!