Timothy Leadership Training Strengthens Ties with CRC

The Christian Reformed Church and the Timothy Leadership Training Institute (TLTI) are strengthening their relationship in order to work together more effectively.

While TLTI was already an affiliate agency of the CRC in North America, the Board of TLTI and the CRC's Board of Trustees have brought this partnership closer by adopting common governance to ensure continued interdependence and facilitate future growth.

The TLTI board vote, which occurred on Monday, follows a vote in early May by the CRC’s Board of Trustees to have TLTI become a division of the CRC, pending approval by the Timothy board.

The consolidation is to take place on July 1. TLTI’s current arrangements with corporate and ministry partners will be unchanged by the new governance arrangement.

“We’re excited about the prospect of what this means,” said Colin Watson, director of ministries and administration for the CRC.

“Under the new arrangement, TLTI will be able to expand its resources and its valuable work of training ministry leaders in countries around the world.”

TLTI, which has more than 2,000 trainers working in more than 30 languages and 50 countries, focuses its efforts on local pastors and lay leaders. Often these are leaders living in remote locations who have no access to other types of ministry training.

Steve Tuuk, executive director of TLTI, said, “TLTI is pleased to be able to partner with the CRCNA in this new way. The continuity and stability that it brings will enable us to complete many more trainings globally in our core leadership program and to move forward into new ways of non-formal adult education.”

In its core leadership program, TLTI uses various modules that train and work with local church leaders in such areas as pastoral care, stewardship of resources, and spiritual growth. The program also provides for trainees to devise action plans wherein the content that was learned is reinforced through implementation.

The TLTI website notes that, “In 1997 a team of Christian educators from Africa, Europe and North America was formed to meet two challenges. The first was to respond to an urgent call for basic pastoral training coming from thousands of protestant evangelists and lay pastors throughout Africa. The second was to promote economic sustainability within the churches and communities they serve.

“The resulting training program called TLT (Timothy Leadership Training) focused on stewardship and community development. These continuing education seminars were attended by pastors from the four presbyteries of the Reformed Church of East Africa and from sixteen dioceses of the Anglican Church of Kenya.

“Several years later these Kenyan seminars became re-organized as ‘Project Africa,’ a program of lay leadership training. The focus shifted from continuing education to the development of a curriculum for the training of evangelists and lay leaders who were leading congregations of their own.

“It then became a collaborative ministry of Calvin Theological Seminary, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, and Christian Reformed World Missions and was renamed Timothy Institute.”

So, “in some ways this new arrangement isn’t new,” Watson commented. 

Tuuk added  “The training program was started through the efforts of a number of CRC leaders and educators.  They saw the need for a training program that was rooted in our rich intellectual traditions but could also be used to train adults globally who had a wide range of education levels and in many different types of field environments.”

The new arrangement will help to bring financial stability to TLTI, as well as connecting CRC ministries and programs more closely into the work of training pastors and ministry leaders worldwide.

“We are pleased to be able to join in this arrangement because TLTI needed a strategic partner in order to fulfill their desire to grow their ministry,” said Watson.

He noted that Christian Reformed World Missions, World Renew and Back to God Ministries International make extensive use of TLTI trainers and training modules.

“Even though TLTI is becoming part of the CRCNA, we will continue to partner with the more than 150 denominations — many of them smaller denominations — that Timothy is already working with around the world,” Watson added.

The TLTI board will continue to help govern the ministry as the new arrangement goes forward.