Earlier this spring, Southeastern hosted its first Asian Strategic Partnership Summit to discuss mission partnerships and opportunities for theological education among Asian communities in the U.S. and in East and Southeast Asian countries. During the event, Southeastern shared its vision for global theological education and invited dialogue on how best to equip and partner with East and Southeast Asian churches.
Joined by representatives from various Asian church fellowships, councils, networks, and seminaries, Southeastern welcomed these Asian leaders on campus for two days of fellowship, learning, and collaboration. During the summit, attendees learned about Southeastern’s Global Theological Initiatives (GTI) and shared recommendations on how best to partner with and resource East and Southeast Asian churches around the world.
“This summit is an expression of Southeastern’s desire to welcome and train Asian leaders and to learn from them about how best to equip their people groups here in the U.S. and in other countries around the world,” commented Minwoo Jang, director of Southeastern’s East Asian Leadership Initiative.
“As an open discussion, this event served as a hopeful first step toward ongoing Great Commission partnerships with the goal of better equipping East and Southeast Asian churches to fulfill the Great Commission in their contexts,” added Jang.
As the fastest growing ethnic minority in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Asian ethnic churches represent more than 200 churches in the SBC. Southeastern is eager to partner with these like-minded churches to better equip them and their sister churches for Great Commission ministry.
During the summit, President Danny Akin joined attendees for a time of discussion and Q&A. Akin expressed his heart to provide in-context training to Asian brothers and sisters and to invite them to study on Southeastern’s campus. Dr. Akin also shared how Southeastern’s Great Commission heartbeat drives the institution to celebrate global partnerships and seek out ways to equip ethnic minority church leaders as faithful disciple makers.
Sharing more about this heartbeat and vision, Anna Daub, director of special projects and partnerships for Southeastern’s GTI, and John Ewart, associate vice president of GTI, narrated ways that Southeastern is currently training positioned leaders around the world in some of the most persecuted and hardest-to-reach countries. Ewart also invited input on how GTI can better train and partner with the churches represented at the summit.
“One of our goals at GTI is to expand the reach of Southeastern’s theological education far beyond this campus and to partner with global church leaders to bring more international students to campus where they can learn and grow and then be sent back out to raise up other leaders,” Ewart told attendees. “We recognize that Southeastern cannot and should not do global theological education by ourselves. That is why we want to partner with you and learn how best to partner with your churches and connections in other countries so that together we can train the global church to serve the kingdom.”
As a Great Commission seminary, Southeastern Seminary believes theological education is best done in partnership with local churches. For Southeastern, these partnerships extend to local churches around the world because the task of equipping the global church requires ongoing dialogue and cooperation with national partners and positioned leaders worldwide.
Through GTI, Southeastern is developing relationships with national partners worldwide and equipping these positioned church leaders for ministry through global theological education. To learn more about the expansive work of GTI, visit sebts.edu/gti.
