There has been a major uptick in the growth of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the last 100 years. In Africa alone, statistics suggest that in about a hundred years, Christianity has grown from 7.5 million Christians to 504 million. That means there are 10,000 converts a day. And so the need for new pastors is massive!
Many churches in the Majority world are busy developing indigenous leaders, but their pastors, whose financial resources and theological education are limited, need materials to study the Word of God and labour in their ministries.
Located near Pretoria, South
Africa, the Reformational Study Centre (RSC) has existed since 2008. Within a
modest set of offices, equipped with shelves of biblical reference books, Bible
commentaries, theological books, and periodicals, a team of staff and
volunteers is busy with the gathering and distributing of theological resources
via the internet to English-speaking pastors all over Asia and Africa. In
addition to this on-site team, there are other staff and volunteers helping out
from all parts of the world, and that includes here in Dunnville as well.
Our missionary, Rev. Ryan Kampen,lives in Dunnville but carries on with this full-time work remotely for the
RSC.
What follows are the main projects of
the RSC, and a description of Rev. Kampen’s tasks
When it comes to the task of Rev. Kampen, the designation “theological gatekeeper” has been used as a job description. It denotes the responsibility of ensuring that the various materials submitted for publication on the Christian Library, Lamad, and Vox Viva are Reformed. Further, our missionary is also involved in the contributing of study material to Vox Viva.
These projects and our missionary’s role just about capture the work the RSC is busy with. Yet in another respect this is not even the half of it. The RSC has a staff of about 20 people, and more than 100 volunteers from all parts of the world. And at the moment it is working with 15,200 ministers in more than 90 developing countries. Both the work and the reach of the RSC, however, are completely in vain without the guidance and blessing of the Lord. So we ask also you to prayerfully support this work. If it is our heavenly Father who opens doors for the spread of the gospel and fills people with the desire to grow in the riches of Christ, then we must be on our knees. There are still many more pastors across the world who really want to study the Word. Since our Lord sees and guides everything, please wrestle in prayer with us. Pray that the Lord would guide the workers to provide the right material and find more of his servants in the young churches. Pray that the ministers would benefit from our labours and grow in faith and the ability to preach the pure gospel.
May the Lord of the church preserve and increase the spiritual wealth of his gospel, according to his exquisite grace and kindness in Christ Jesus!
