Faith & Work Bible Association

Training Rural Pastors in Biblical Fundamentals

We have started Faith & Work Bible Association (FAWBA) on August 15, 2003 with the vision of training rural pastors in biblical fundamentals. In India, most pastors do not have formal education and no theological knowledge at all, so God gave me the burden to train them. Primarily, we called some of these pastors from various areas of Andhra Pradesh to train them in Hyderabad. At first only 11 pastors could attended because they could not leave their family and their churches for thirty days, even though we informed them that we will be providing food and travel. We rented a house for the accommodation & training of the pastors in our free bible school in the city of Hyderabad.  We conducted classes from 10:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening, Monday to Friday.  Saturday is a day off and Sunday is corporate worship. We provided travel to & from the city, three meals a day and two tea times each day. After 4 weeks of intensive training in biblical fundamentals, the village pastors are presented with a certificate for their completion of the FAWBA Bible training.

Even so, I wanted to train more pastors so we started praying to God for help and ideas for how we could accomplish it. After six months God helped me with an idea of starting mobile bible schools. We considered the idae prayerfully and depending on Him we started training four pastor in the fundamentals of the bible to be teachers of other pastors in their home towns.  These trained bible teachers were responsible for around 20 rural villages. Their task was to invite local pastors in those villages to the mobile bible school held at a centrally located local church. There the Mobile Bible School would meet for four weeks with free food, tea and bible teaching.  This how our mobile bible schools began.

God In grace helped us to continue to train more pastors, after one year of stating MBS (Mobile Bible Schools) we trained 4 more traveling teachers to make eight MBS programs active in rural villages and urban towns. In His grace we now trained over 19,000 thousand pastors, pastors-wives & evangelists. Commonly we will train twenty to thirty pastors in each school, the trainer will have one week of rest after every four week school. Monday to Friday the teaching pastor will be with the students and on the weekend he will return to his ministry. Every year we conduct around seventy two schools (8 mobile teachers x 9 schools in a year) after completion of a school and receiving their certificate, these pastors (many of whom were already pastors prior to their training) return to their respected ministries with a solid foundation in Biblical fundamentals and truth.

Regarding funds, by god’s grace, one our faithful brothers in Christ from the USA, Bro Jerry Bryant & Sis Carmen, have supported our Mobile Bible School ministry from the beginning.  God provided support through brother Jerry for so many long years, but due to the present recession our support has been severely reduced. Even so, God is good and we are continuing to pray that the ministry will continue in spite of financial financial challenges. We are also thankful for Brother Phil Largent who faithfully manages the funds from our supporters through IMD (Institute for Ministry Development) in Denver, Colorado. Another of our faithful supporters is Dr Calvin Wittman from Applewood Baptist who has stood by me from the day one through the thick and thin of the ministry coming along side of me & indian pastors to teach the word through pastors conferences and strengthening them in their knowledge and faith. Whenever there have been natural disasters or other hardships in the ministry, Dr Calvin Wittman and the Apple Wood Baptist church family have supported the victims and extended love of God through their actions. Our God is God of impossibilities, he has been very faithful in supporting me in HIS ministry, please pray for FAWBA.