Purpose

To reach the world for Christ by preparing Christian leaders for ministry. MINTS is a mission organization that uses higher education as its primary tool toward fulfilling the vision of the Great Commission.

To train and equip national believers to develop one another in a duplicable format, with little or no cost, high educational quality, and give a recognizable degree.

 

Method

The heart of our ministry is to establish financially self-sufficient, indigenously owned and operated training centers/seminaries in the language and culture of the local people. We work with national believers to develop a regionally sensitive curriculum in their language, develop future professors from among them, and then work to share the educational results internationally throughout our interconnected global system. Key to the MINTS missionary aspect is the requirement of the centers to multiply in their region, language, and sphere of influence.

 

Need

One of the biggest needs in the Christian faith is the need for trained, motivated, and educated leaders. For example in 2000 there were 2,000,000 third world pastors with less than 5% (100,000) with any Bible training at all. From 1960 to 1980 the church grew from 25 million to 425 million, a 17-fold increase. (From the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.) For years the answer has been to bring leaders to the USA for trainin, but 60% remain here and all are trained in a language and culture that does not easily transfer to their homeland. There is a need for quality, degree level, and biblically based ministry training in the language, culture, and homeland of the indigenous believer. We equip them to lead churches, plant churches, do mercy ministry and to duplicate the training with other believers in a way that can be recognized by denominations and governments.

 

Who

We work with indigenous leaders who are already motivated to develop their own people and are seeking both a short term and long-term structure for accomplishing it. Our desire is to work with people group movements and assist the mass training of leaders for ministry in areas where the faith is growing over 100% per year. We have recently developed formats for doing this but have not implemented them yet.

 

MINTS Solution

Since our inception and offering our first class to 30 Miami students in 2001, MINTS has grown to 4000 students in 54 countries with 200 study centers in 11 languages. MINTS has produced 565 graduates for ministry, has produced 140 courses, and currently has 35 doctoral level students each of whom will write 5 courses in their language.

 

We do this by

  • Starting with existing national resources, both human and material
  • Providing curriculum, and by using nationals to write curriculum with our professors
  • Teaching their teachers and involving future professors from the beginning giving them ownership and leadership responsibilities.
  • Teaching a different philosophy of education, i.e., a view to take the education out to the people, to make new schools, and to raise up new instructors rather than having the school be the central hub where people gather to listen to visiting scholars. We make the student not the institution the focus. We encourage them to not own buildings but to go out to the field, and use churches and other available spaces for training the people.
  • The nationals can charge a small tuition but all the funds stay in the country under their jurisdiction and none come to the USA or MINTS. Half is to be used locally to develop their study center and the other half to start new centers when they are ready.
  • We provide degree programs at the Certificate, AA, BA, MA, MDiv, DMin, and PhD levels, all in Theological Studies. Degrees with academic standards from a US based institution are of great value in the church in emerging nations by giving quality training and credibility.

Does MINTS work?

Cuba started with 2 centers and now has 71 centers with 800 students. Colombia started with 1 center and now has 37 with 600 students. When we receive requests for new centers in South America the Colombians are now able to go to set them up. One middle eastern country started with 1 center and now has 4 schools as well as extensions in other regional countries. Now MINTS graduates are beginning to move into other countries to establish new centers. We have many more examples.

 

Miami and the USA

The original MINTS program started with discussions in Miami in 1999 with the first classes held in 2001 with 30 students. The values that were initially designed into MINTS education were: an emphasis on applied scholarship, that is, time spent on making sure the theology was put to work in the world, an emphasis on mentorship, and an emphasis on adult learning models as seen in class participation, discussions, and interaction. Our philosophy is to admit almost everyone to the educational program and help them move to a higher level in their understanding and effectiveness. These values continue to shape the entire MINTS program today.

 

Using our philosophy of taking education to the people, MINTS seeks to launch multiple study centers around South Florida so that travel times are short and so that the education can be offered in the local cultural contexts of the various neighborhoods of the area: Anglo, Haitian, African-American, Hispanic, etc. Accordingly, courses are held in a variety of locations: coffee shops, homes, churches, bookstores and other venues. With these came the desire to make the program affordable so that anyone could study God's Word