Partnership Will Train Pastors in Angola and Mozambique

An agreement for a partnership to develop curriculum and theological education for training Portuguese-speaking pastors in Angola and Mozambique was signed in June in Brazil.

The partnership includes the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the faculty of theology of the Methodist University of São Paulo, the Angola and Mozambique Annual Conferences, and the Methodist Church in Brazil.

“The Board is moving with all deliberate speed to create relationships with higher educational institutions and theological seminaries to meet the educational needs of world Methodism, especially Latin America,” said Jerome King Del Pino, general secretary of GBHEM.

“This is being done even without financial support of the Global Education Fund that was proposed to, but not approved by, the General Conference in 2004,” Del Pino said. The General Conference delegates did approve a $4 million World Service Special Gifts Fund for the Global Education Fund, which will allow GBHEM to ask for donations for the Fund.

The Board’s Division of Higher Education will be working with staff at the Methodist University of São Paulo to deliver that curriculum to theology schools in the two African countries.

The partnership will help meet the educational needs of world Methodism, Del Pino said.

“This and other similar initiatives by GBHEM in Asia, Africa, and Europe constitute a defining moment for a connectional church that needs a global infrastructure for leadership development in order to claim truthfully that it is a global church," Del Pino said.

In addition to the agreement to develop curriculum and theological education for pastors in Angola and Mozambique, the Division of Higher Education will be working with staff at the Methodist University of São Paulo to deliver that curriculum to theology schools in the two African countries.

Magali do Nascimento Cunha, a member of the faculty at the Methodist School of Theology at the Methodist University of São Paulo, says the agreement will give more strength to the partnership between the three Portuguese speaking countries.

“Since the 1980s, the Faculty of Theology of the Methodist Church in Brazil has worked in partnership with the Methodist Church in Angola and Mozambique, receiving students to be trained for the pastoral ministry, including three of the current bishops of those countries,” Cunha said. The church in Brazil has also sent faculty members to teach courses, as well as printed materials published in Brazil.

“This Methodist connection is part of the Wesleyan inheritance that sees the main task for the church ministry in global perspective – the world is our parish,” Cunha said, adding that the connection leads to solidarity in action and sharing of resources.

A research team made up of representatives of the Faculty of Theology and the Methodist Church in Brazil will spend several weeks in Angola and Mozambique in September and October to assess the needs and determine an appropriate curriculum, said Robert Kohler, an assistant general secretary in the Division of Ordained Ministry at GBHEM.

Developing the curriculum will be done mostly by the staff of the Faculty of Theology at Methodist University of São Paulo and representatives of the church in Brazil. Once the research is compiled, the planning committee will meet in February to work on the curriculum, Kohler said.

In addition to the work in theological education, GBHEM is working with Methodist University of São Paulo, Africa University in Zimbabwe, and the church in Mozambique to develop an eight-week distance education program that will use printed materials, possibly a DVD, and at least one visit from a teacher to Maputo to train a group of tutors in Mozambique.

According to Ken Bedell, associate general secretary of GBHEM’s Division of Higher Education, this will make it possible to use the excellent technical capabilities of the Brazilian university to deliver needed training in agriculture, health, and environmental studies, as well as theological studies, to Mozambique.

“This is an exciting example of what can happen when Methodist schools cooperate across continents,” Bedell said.