The 90th Anniversary of Nazarene Missions International (NMI) was celebrated in 2005. This fund-raising arm of the Church of the Nazarene has endeavored through its history to touch the hearts of Nazarenes with the world mission story and Nazarenes have responded generously through various projects like Alabaster, LINKS, and World Evangelism Fund offerings. For their 90th Anniversary, the NMI council accepted the challenge to raise US$3.5 million through the Books for Pastors—Tools for Ministry offerings.

Nazarene churches around the world responded by giving money to help provide educational and resource materials to prepare ministers for ordination. From the beginning, planners for Books for Pastors recognized that ministerial education was taking place in many different languages and within many different cultures. The planners also recognized that education was occurring in various ways from individualized instruction to classrooms and high-tech online systems. Materials were needed in the languages of the students preparing for ministry and those materials needed to address needs within the ministry context of students. Globally, the Church of the Nazarene worships in over 90 different languages. Textbooks and data CDROMs simply do not exist in many of these languages. God is calling women and men to ministry in every language and the Church of the Nazarene must prepare the called to serve in local ministry. Books for Pastors was originally designed to help about 7,000 ministers in World Mission regions. Because of rapid evangelistic growth in those WM regions, the number of students preparing for Nazarene ministry exceeded 14,800 in 2006.

So, the goal of the Books for Pastors project is to create and distribute contextually appropriate educational materials to ministry students in their own language. Grant proposals include purchasing some books that have already been translated, translating existing books into more languages, and writing original works in the languages of the Church.

The NMI council wanted to be sure that needy students studying for ministry within the USA and Canada would also benefit from the Books for Pastors project. There are approximately 6,500 local and district-licensed ministers in the USA and Canada. By definition, most of these licensed ministers are enrolled in the ministerial course of study. A 2005 survey of half the USA/Canada districts reported that 21% of students enrolled in the course of study did not speak English as their first-language. District-directed ministerial education is being conducted in nearly 15 different languages within the USA and Canada.

A grant from Books for Pastors—Tools for Ministry is helping to translate and edit the teacher and student guides in the elder track of the Modular Course of Study into Spanish. The grant is also paying to translate three core modules into three additional languages. When the grant project is completed the Church of the Nazarene will have complete elder tracks in English and Spanish. Also, Exploring Nazarene History and Polity, Exploring John Wesley’s Theology, and Becoming a Holy People are being translated into French, Portuguese and Korean.

All English guides and over half the Spanish guides are available today. The latest additions to guides are the French faculty, and French and Portuguese student guides for Exploring Nazarene History and Polity. Watch the Clergy Education website for new guides as they become available. The worldwide web address for Clergy Education is http://www.nazarenepastor.org/clergyeducation/.

by Michael W. Vail
coordinator, Clergy Education