The Alex Steddom International Student Fund supports the instruction of students, not just in Minneapolis, but on the ground, where they live, activating immediate gospel ministry where it’s needed, without gifts being diluted by the substantial expenses of international travel and U.S. costs-of-living.
Dear partners for the gospel,
Starting an extension site in another country is not as simple as copy-pasting our program from the United States. Each region, and each country, has its own challenges. In Cameroon, one challenge is the low number of college graduates across the nation, which considerably narrows our pool of M.Div. candidates (however elder-qualified they may be). This, in turn, might limit our potential for sending out God-glorifying, Christ-centered, and Bible-saturated preachers across Cameroon and Africa.
Our experience on the ground certainly confirms this hypothesis. Over the last seven years of our extension’s existence, we have had to turn down many candidates because they did not hold a bachelor’s degree. Two such candidates were members of our own TCT churches in Cameroon: both were elders-in-training aspiring to pastor or plant churches but were unable to apply for our program. One of their alternatives was to attend a different Bible college that offers a bachelor’s degree, but that often meant a less-than-ideal education or, worse, a compromised gospel. These two men, however, were so committed to our theology and philosophy, and so eager to learn, that they audited most of our classes—without obtaining any credit.
To address this issue, our Cameroon faculty began to work on a solution to bridge the educational gap. The solution had to be feasible for our small team and in compliance with the standards set by our accreditation board.
The fruit of God’s guidance and the team’s labors is the introduction of a new Bachelor of Arts in Pastoral Studies. This 120-credit pastoral-training program, unique to the Cameroon extension site, offers the same courses as our M.Div. program—but at a bachelor level—and supplements it with some of the fundamentals in our existing college programs (such as our philosophy classes and our Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric). Thus, in Cameroon, B.A. and M.Div. students will form a mixed cohort, with slightly different requirements for each but the same rigor that we expect in the U.S.
This fall, we will pioneer the program with a new cohort (three B.A. candidates have been interviewed so far, in addition to two M.Div. candidates). Many of them will need to join our work-study program—funded by the Alex Steddom International Student Fund—in order to afford their education. This work-study program, also unique to Cameroon, allows them to be paid for their apprenticeship in the church or school, providing them with funds to cover their tuition and living expenses. We therefore ask you to prayerfully consider donating to the Alex Steddom scholarship. Since a typical full-time salary is $200–300 USD a month in Cameroon, even a small monthly contribution greatly increases the chance that our students can complete their program without financial anxiety.
With this new program, our aim remains the same: to give students an intense immersion in a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated local church that combines rigorous study with church-based application, all to the end that they might joyfully magnify the infinite worth of Jesus Christ, and live for the praise of God’s glory in reflection, thought, word, and deed. May the Lord use it mightily to this end.
In Christ,
Hernan Wu, M.Div. ’23
Instructor of Theology and Academic Coordinator in Cameroon