Our new academic year has begun at ITA. As we look back on ministry during the month of September, ITA is once again mindful of the Lord’s good grace towards it.
Two courses running contemporaneously are part of the current training curriculum. Both include a combined format of online and on-campus (local church) gathering. Most of the teaching is online. Two of our meetings are on-campus in one of our four local church sites: Messina, Rome, Perugia, Mantova.
We currently have 34 students registered; 23 are studying in our Bible Survey track while the remaining 11 (our second year students who have completed Bible Survey last year) are studying in our Foundations track.
This second track, Foundations, consists of exposing the students to a biblical philosophy of ministry. Here, we draw biblical principles for church life and ministry in the local church. This is also where the biblical theology learned in the first year survey through the Bible comes to life practically.
After our Foundations track, the expectation is that believers, men and women (our current student body), approach the local church and their life in the body with much more discernment concerning God’s plan for the Church in the New Covenant.
Our training interestingly enough, after almost twenty years in Italy, keeps going back to the drawing board. This is not said in a negative light. Rather, the reflection attests to the experience gained from years of serving (training) the local church in-country. ITA has, you could say, matured in its understanding of what the local church in Italy needs.
Perhaps, in hindsight, this is one of the first lessons learned when attempting to bring theological education to existing churches on the mission field… learn to know the existing churches you will be serving.
More practically this entails relating to them first and foremost along the lines of relationship. We want to hear them to a certain degree. We strive to strengthen them beyond the classroom.
Please continue to pray for ministry to existing churches in Rome particularly.