Bible Institutes
Teaching Tomorrow's Leaders Today
The World Reach Bible Institute partners with local overseas churches to provide biblical, theological, and practical leadership training to national pastors, aspiring pastors, and other church leaders. Our unique model sends the teacher to the students in targeted international fields. We send teachers to students because students are most often bi-vocational, which does not allow them to leave home or work to attend a three or four-year seminary.
World Reach trains national pastors, aspiring pastors, and other church leaders in the inerrant, infallible Word of God so that they, in turn, may further the kingdom of God among their own people. We aim to equip church leadership to develop both healthy and reproducing churches. Courses deliver not only biblical content, but also essential ministry skills, and facilitate building Godly character within our students’ lives. Bible college level curriculum is used, and in most cases, classes of students are trained over a three-year period in which courses are generally taught every two months. We rotate highly-qualified teachers in and out of courses at regular intervals.
Through the World Reach Bible Institute, students’ lives are transformed, and overseas churches are prepared for future Kingdom work. 2 Timothy 2:2 is exemplified both in the hundreds of men and women who have graduated from our Bible Institutes and also in the nearly 100 churches planted by our students.
How can you participate in this ministry?
- Pray with us that the Lord will use World Reach Bible Institutes to effectively train pastors and leaders in churches and communities around the world so that the local churches grow and thrive, and new churches are planted
- Contribute to Bible Institutes to help sustain and expand this ministry
- Apply to teach at our Bible Institutes
Read more about the history of World Reach Bible Institutes
The idea of the Bible Institute began in Honduras in the early 1990s. Honduras was the site of World Reach’s first church plant and its first Bible Institute. The Honduran missionary team labored for many years equipping Honduran pastors and lay leaders, and recognized a need for a defined curriculum and program. Our strategy of taking school to the student —making it mobile —was born.
Pastors in developing countries are most often bi-vocational, which does not allow them to leave home to attend Bible college or seminary for 3 to 4 years. Their family, pastoral, and job responsibilities cannot be laid aside for that length of time. As a result, World Reach takes the training to the students.
World Reach conducts Bible Institutes for groups of 25-30 pastors and lay leaders who are selected through a rigorous approval process. We send our World Reach missionaries and volunteer adjunct teachers to teach modular courses for 1 to 2 weeks every few months for a 3 to 4-year period. Teachers are generally seminary or Bible college graduates and are in faith-supported ministry.
The first class of students at the BI Honduras began in 1992 and graduated in 1994 with 27 students, 24 of whom were pastors and 3 of whom were church leaders. Graduation was held on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua in a town of only 600 people. Some 1,800 people attended the graduation of these 27 proud students in a primitive, rural area.
Since its inception, World Reach has provided Bible Institutes throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Kenya. We partnered in 2018 with a ministry in India to help the indigenous ministry develop a similar Bible Institute program to further the Kingdom in that part of the world.
