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        <title>Christian Daily International | Education</title>
        <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/education</link>
        <description><![CDATA[Stay informed on Christian education worldwide, from schools and universities to theological training and discipleship. Explore how faith and learning come together to equip believers and shape future church leaders.]]></description>
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            <title>Christian Daily International | Education</title>
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        <copyright>Christian Daily International © 2026</copyright>
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                <title><![CDATA[Dallas seminary partners with India school to launch biblical counseling degree]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/dallas-seminary-partners-with-india-school-to-launch-biblical-counseling-degree</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/dallas-seminary-partners-with-india-school-to-launch-biblical-counseling-degree</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Stephen George, president of Evangelical Theological Seminary in India, and Michael Ortiz, vice president for global ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary, shake hands following the signing of a partnership agreement to launch a new Christian counseli]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Dallas Theological Seminary ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Stephen George, president of Evangelical Theological Seminary in India, and Michael Ortiz, vice president for global ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary, shake hands following the signing of a partnership agreement to launch a new Christian counseling program in India. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:27:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Dallas Theological Seminary has formed an academic partnership with Evangelical Theological Seminary in India to launch a graduate-level Christian counseling program, with a long-term plan for the Indian institution to operate the program on its own.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Dallas Theological Seminary has formed an academic partnership with Evangelical Theological Seminary in India to launch a graduate-level Christian counseling program, with a long-term plan for the Indian institution to operate the program on its own.
Evangelical Theological Seminary (ETS), located in Bagalur near Bangalore and operated as a ministry of Asian Christian Academy, will enroll its first cohort of 11 students in a Master of Arts in Christian Counseling beginning in fall 2026. The program is structured so ETS can eventually sustain and administer it independently of its American partner, according to a joint announcement.
Under the arrangement, students will complete their Bible and theology coursework at ETS while taking selected counseling modules from Dallas Theological Seminary's Master of Arts in Counseling Ministries curriculum. Those enrolled in the counseling portion will register as nondegree students at DTS, with instruction delivered through online courses and in-person teaching by DTS faculty traveling to India.
ETS was founded in 1978 by Isaac John, a Dallas Theological Seminary alumnus who had studied there in 1973 before returning to India to establish theological training suited to the local context. Accredited by the Asia Theological Association, the seminary offers postgraduate and doctoral programs in biblical studies, theology, and ministry, and describes its mission as equipping men and women for Christian leadership across India and Asia.
Stephen George, president of ETS, said church growth in India had created demand for trained counselors that existing programs were not meeting.
"ETS offers degrees for pastors, theologians, and ministry leaders in India, but as the church continues to grow, we identified a need for qualified Christian counselors," George said. "We're honored to cocreate a pathway to raise up a generation of biblically rooted counselors throughout India."
Michael Ortiz, vice president for global ministries at DTS and head of the International Council of Evangelical Theological Education, said the partnership is built around transferring ownership of the program to ETS over time.
"Our long-term plan is to equip qualified counselors and professors in India so that ETS can take over the degree and offer it independently of DTS," Ortiz said. "This is what global multiplication and discipleship look like, where we plan ahead and collaborate for the benefit of the church worldwide."
The two institutions have maintained a relationship for several years. Ongoing conversations between them identified a growing need for biblically grounded counseling training among pastors, ministry leaders, and lay counselors serving churches and communities across the region, they said.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[India’s Cockroach protests: Education minister resigns. The government is still deciding how to lose.]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/indias-cockroach-protests-education-minister-resigns-the-government-is-still-deciding-how-to-lose</link>
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                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Surinder Kaur]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Dharmendra Pradhan, Indias education minister, speaks during an official meeting.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Dharmendra Pradhan, India's education minister, speaks during an official meeting. Pradhan resigned July 25, 2025, amid student protests over leaks in the NEET national medical entrance exam, becoming the central demand of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party movement. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Young protesters create hand-drawn signs at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi during a demonstration organized by the Cockroach Janta Party.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Young protesters create hand-drawn signs at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi during a demonstration organized by the Cockroach Janta Party. Posters spread across the ground call for accountability over leaks in India's NEET medical entrance exam. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned July 25, 2025, meeting a central demand of the 49-day protest movement. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Demonstrators climb atop a Delhi Police barricade to watch proceedings at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi during protests led by the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Demonstrators climb atop a Delhi Police barricade to watch proceedings at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi during protests led by the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party. The movement, which drew students from across India, pressured the government to address corruption in the NEET national medical entrance exam and ultimately forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation July 25, 2025. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:23:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[When Christian Daily International last reported on this movement on July 24, India’s government had met two of three demands set by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but was withholding an answer on the central one.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
When Christian Daily International last reported on this movement on July 24, India’s government had met two of three demands set by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but was withholding an answer on the central one. Forty-nine days after the movement’s first, police-permitted march to Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s designated protest ground, that answer came: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday, July 25.
The reversal
Pradhan submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Modi that morning, in a letter written in formal Hindi and posted to X. He said he was stepping down so “anti-national forces” could not exploit the standoff at Jantar Mantar, and so no student’s future would be entangled in legal trouble. He did not apologize for the leaks in NEET, India’s national medical school entrance exam, that triggered the movement.
President Droupadi Murmu accepted the resignation with immediate effect under Article 75(2) of India’s Constitution, and on the prime minister’s advice gave the education portfolio, as an additional charge, to Minister Pralhad Joshi. Joshi told reporters he accepted the job “with a sense of duty and humility.”
Weeks earlier, Pradhan had dismissed the CJP as the “B-team of terrorists.” As recently as Friday, July 24, a government source told reporters that resignation “equates to running away, and running away is not a solution.” By Saturday afternoon, both lines had been abandoned.
We have done it
At Jantar Mantar, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke fell to his knees when the news broke, then raised a fist. “We have done it, we have done it,” he shouted, before reading aloud the names of students who had died by suicide after the exam cancellations.
The CJP’s account on X read simply: “Cockroaches won… Democracy won!” The national anthem played, sweets were passed through the crowd, and the metro stations shut around the site reopened.
From his hospital bed at Medanta, activist Sonam Wangchuk posted a photograph of himself flashing a victory sign. “It is a victory of democracy, and we should all cherish it,” he said in a video statement.
Later he struck a more cautious note. The agitation had entered a new phase, he said, and now needed reforms to build “a robust system that makes us a great nation.” “Resignation alone does not make a nation,” he added, urging the federal government to also honor its commitments to Ladakh, the Himalayan region whose own statehood movement had led to his six months in detention last year.
Among those who came to Jantar Mantar that evening was Rajesh Thapa. His daughter Riya, a NEET aspirant, had died after the exam chaos.
“Children are fighting for their rights, if my daughter were here, she might have joined them too,” he told the Press Trust of India. He said that since she could not be there, he had come in her place, “so that nothing like this ever happens to anyone else’s child.”

The deal
After the resignation, CJP spokespeople Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka sat with Ministers J.P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh and announced the protest was over.
Das said the government had accepted all their demands and appealed to protesters to go home. Nadda said FIRs, the criminal complaints police had filed against demonstrators, would be withdrawn in Delhi and BJP-run states, and that families of students who died after the leak would receive “honourable compensation” within existing rules.
Both sides agreed to meet again in four weeks on broader exam reforms.
Don’t make me a hero
In his speech announcing victory, Dipke turned unexpectedly cautionary.
“Don’t make me a hero because Dharmendra Pradhan resigned today,” he told the crowd. “The country has been ruined because of making one person a hero.”
He named specific police officers he held responsible for the July 20 crackdown and warned against complacency. “If we can make a minister resign, what are you?” he said. “Remember, do not mess with cockroach.”
What the deal does not cover
The CJP’s three formal demands, Pradhan’s resignation, compensation, and FIR withdrawal, were all addressed at the press conference. A further demand, pressed separately by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and by Dipke himself, was not: accountability for the police response on July 20, when officers used batons and tear gas near Parliament.
Gandhi has since written formally to Home Minister Amit Shah, who oversees Delhi Police, demanding accountability for that day. Opposition leader Mayawati went further, calling for the identification of officers who behaved indecently toward female protesters.
A day before the resignation, Gandhi had brought protester Sheikh Irshad Mansuri, who says he suffered pellet wounds in the crackdown, to a press conference and lifted his shirt to show reporters; police have denied using pellet guns. A separate petition from a group called Save India Foundation, seeking criminal action against protesters who allegedly attacked police that day, was declined by the Delhi High Court on July 24; the court disposed of the case and told the group to take its complaint directly to the police instead.
Wangchuk, too, has had to answer online claims that he struck a “secret deal” with the government when he broke his fast in front of two ministers rather than students. He has called his hospital-stay “North Korea-like,” and said he chose to protect students from prosecution over holding out for the resignation himself.
Same event, different story
The government’s messaging afterward told a different story. Ministers queued up to praise Pradhan rather than concede defeat.
Home Minister Amit Shah, whose ministry runs Delhi Police, said Pradhan’s exit showed that for BJP workers, “students are far more important than any position.” He did not address the force used on July 20.
Rajnath Singh, the Defence Minister, called the resignation proof the government treats students’ futures as paramount. BJP president Nitin Nabin said it reflected “the highest standards of integrity and selfless service in public life.”
Modi’s own first social media post after the resignation did not mention Pradhan, the protests, or the CJP. It welcomed Sarnath’s inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Repackaged as sacrifice
Days before the resignation, Sridhar Vembu, founder of the Indian software company Zoho, called the protests a “malicious agenda” meant to plunge India into chaos. Afterward, he praised Pradhan on X as one of the finest public servants he knew, a man who had “put the nation above self.”
Rev. Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, wrote about that shift on his personal blog, noting the views were his own, not an official EFI position. Pradhan’s letter, he wrote, never quite conceded that citizens had forced accountability; it spoke instead of preventing “anti-national forces” from exploiting the moment.
“Accountability demanded by citizens must not be repackaged as sacrifice offered by power,” Lal wrote. “A resignation can be personally painful without becoming personally heroic.”
Lal drew a line to Dipke’s own warning against hero worship: a movement born to challenge one personality cult, he argued, should be careful not to build another in its place.
Why the ministry mattered
Part of the answer may lie in Pradhan’s own history in the Sangh Parivar, the network of Hindu nationalist groups built around the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, the ideological parent body of Modi’s BJP. Pradhan has belonged to the Sangh Parivar since 1983, entering politics through the BJP’s student wing. A 2019 Caravan magazine profile called him the party’s “money man,” crediting his fundraising for much of the BJP’s ground organization in the eastern state of Odisha.
A News Minute investigation published this month found that ONGC, a state oil company under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, gave more than ₹668 crore (roughly $70 million) through its corporate social responsibility program to twenty RSS-linked organizations between 2013 and 2025, most of it during and after Pradhan’s tenure as petroleum minister. It did not allege he personally directed the donations, and noted similar giving likely would have continued under any minister; it did note he had publicly welcomed ONGC’s funding of a Hindu pilgrimage-site redevelopment in 2021.
The education ministry itself has carried outsized weight for the RSS since the Sangh’s political arm first entered government in 1967, Seema Chishti, a columnist for the Indian news site The Wire, argued this week. Education’s share of the federal budget has fallen by nearly half under Modi, from 4.6 percent in 2013-14 to 2.5 percent in 2025-26, even as the ministry grew more central to the party’s project, a pattern Chishti says helps explain why Pradhan’s record was defended so vigorously.
The cost of showing up
Not everyone connected to the protests has come out ahead.
In Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, Assistant Professor Mohit Bhardwaj said he was fired from Ganna Utpadak PG College days after he returned from Delhi. He said he was called to the principal’s office and told the college had seen video of him at the July 20 protest, and that his services were terminated. “Just like that,” he told the Indian outlet The Quint. A Haryana teacher was suspended in June for similar reasons, then reinstated.
Anchal Gupta, a researcher with Yuva Halla Bol, a youth advocacy group, said this is precisely the risk that remains once the cameras and the crowds move on. “The larger challenge,” she said, is making sure organizers and ordinary participants are protected from retaliation now that the headline demand has been met.
Where things stand
The government has given itself four weeks before the next round of talks. Whether that window produces the education reforms Wangchuk says the movement now exists to pursue, or only the compensation and paperwork already promised, will decide whether Jantar Mantar’s cockroaches call this the end of their fight, or only its first chapter.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[India's Cockroach protests: They wanted one resignation. They got tear gas, a hunger strike, and half a deal.]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/india-s-cockroach-protests-they-wanted-one-resignation-they-got-tear-gas-a-hunger-strike-and-half-a-deal</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/india-s-cockroach-protests-they-wanted-one-resignation-they-got-tear-gas-a-hunger-strike-and-half-a-deal</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Surinder Kaur]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Supporters of Indias Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) ride a barricade during a protest demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over examination paper leaks, at Jantar Mantar on July 24, 2026 in New Delhi, India]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Elke Scholiers/Getty Images ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ NEW DELHI, INDIA - JULY 24: Supporters of India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) ride a barricade during a protest demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over examination paper leaks, at Jantar Mantar on July 24, 2026 in New Delhi, India. A mix of protesters gathered in New Delhi on Monday as discontent bubbled over myriad issues, and as Sonam Wangchuk, an activist who was fasting in protest, was forcibly taken to hospital on Sunday. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was detained on Tuesday among others, as the movement continues well into the week. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Students protest Indias examination system in Delhi, India on July 23, 2026. One demonstrator holds a sign reading Stayfree is way more secure than the system, at least it doesnt leak — a reference to the menstrual pad brand and a pointed jab at the e]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Students protest India's examination system in Delhi, India on July 23, 2026. One demonstrator holds a sign reading "Stayfree is way more secure than the system, at least it doesn't leak" — a reference to the menstrual pad brand and a pointed jab at the exam paper leaks that have roiled India's national testing bodies. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Protesters climb atop a structure spray-painted with Gen-Z Revolution!!! during demonstrations against Indias examination system in Delhi on July 23, 2026. The student-led protests, which spread across the country, demanded accountability from educatio]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Protesters climb atop a structure spray-painted with "Gen-Z Revolution!!!" during demonstrations against India's examination system in Delhi on July 23, 2026. The student-led protests, which spread across the country, demanded accountability from education officials after paper leaks in competitive national exams. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 21:25:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[India’s government has given itself until Saturday afternoon (July 25) to answer the one demand it has not yet met: whether Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lose his job.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
India’s government has given itself until Saturday afternoon (July 25) to answer the one demand it has not yet met: whether Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lose his job.
For weeks, a youth-led protest movement has demanded his resignation over a leaked medical school entrance exam. This past week alone brought tear gas at the gates of Parliament, a 26-day hunger strike that ended only after midnight negotiations, and the Leader of the Opposition dragged bleeding from a sit-in outside the Prime Minister’s residence.
On Friday, July 24, the government agreed to two of the movement’s three demands. Pradhan’s job was not one of them.
When Christian Daily International last reported on this movement, called the “Cockroach Janta Party,” the mood was closer to a street festival than a standoff. It was June 6, and thousands had just held the movement’s first march, peacefully, with a police permit. Seven weeks later, that peaceful mood is gone.
A fast begins
The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, a satirical, Gen Z-led movement mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had by early June amassed a social media following larger than the BJP’s own, close to 26 million followers on Instagram at last count. That number reflects online supporters, not registered members.
Its grievance never changed: accountability for the leaked National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, known as NEET, and a botched school-grading system, both under Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s watch.

What changed was who joined the fight. On June 28, Sonam Wangchuk, a Ladakhi engineer, education reformer, and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner already treated by CJP supporters as an “honorary cockroach,” began an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s designated protest ground. Six students from the All India Students Association fasted alongside him.
His health declined steadily even as opposition leaders, actors, and public intellectuals urged him to stop. By mid-July he had lost close to 20 pounds.
On July 14, a delegation of Christian leaders came to express solidarity with the movement and to sit with Wangchuk at Jantar Mantar. Among them were veteran human rights activist John Dayal, Father Susai Sebastian, a Catholic priest, Michael Williams, and Minakshi Singh, who helped coordinate the visit. Several came in a personal capacity rather than representing any single church or organization.
They prayed with Wangchuk. Singh later said the visit stayed with her. “Seeing the whole situation there was very painful,” she said, describing a generation that felt scattered and unheard.
By mid-July, thousands of messages arrived daily asking Wangchuk to break his fast. He refused, arguing that ending it without a government response would send the wrong signal.
Instead, he urged supporters to turn out for the CJP’s planned July 20 march to Parliament, dubbed “Chalo Sansad,” and asked schools and colleges to treat the day as a lesson in civic participation. He noted that Indian governments had fallen before under public pressure, once even over onion prices. “Do the people of India love their children’s lives and education more, or onions?” he asked.
Removed by force
Before dawn on July 19, Delhi Police moved into Jantar Mantar and carried Wangchuk out amid what officials called “a slight commotion.” He was taken to Safdarjung Hospital, a government facility, weighing about 125 pounds, some 20 pounds lighter than when he began fasting. Police cited Delhi High Court directions and his deteriorating health. CJP said he had been manhandled and forcefully removed.
Within hours, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, a postgraduate in public relations from Boston University, began his own hunger strike at the same spot. The party sharpened its demand to also call for Modi’s resignation.
Tens of thousands at the gates of Parliament
The confrontation reached its sharpest point on July 20, the opening day of Parliament’s Monsoon Session, when tens of thousands of CJP supporters, by some estimates considerably more, tried to march to Parliament itself, far exceeding what organizers had expected and fueled by anger over Wangchuk’s removal.
Police used batons that morning, then fired tear gas by afternoon to stop protesters nearing Parliament. Several metro stations along the route were shut.

Police said close to 180 people were hurt, 118 of them officers, and detained roughly 70 protesters, some of whom, they said, had thrown stones. Independent reporting by media outlets put the number of injured students alone at more than 100, nearly double the police’s total for all protesters combined. Dipke alleged authorities had planned to let “goons” disrupt the march and blame protesters, a claim police did not directly address. Amnesty International India called it a possible breach of legality and proportionality.
That night, Dipke told the roughly 2,000 protesters who stayed that this was only the movement’s “first call to march.” Earlier that day, two CJP spokespeople had waited four hours to see Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, then gotten just ten minutes with him, “a waste of our time,” spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said. Nadda called the meeting cordial.
Churches respond
Christian bodies were among the first religious institutions in the country to speak out. On July 20, the Church of North India’s Delhi diocese, led by Bishop Paul Swarup, called for a transparent investigation into the exam leaks, citing scripture to affirm that every student deserves a system “founded upon honesty, fairness, transparency, and equal opportunity.”
The next morning, the Evangelical Fellowship of India said the state “carries a greater responsibility because it possesses greater power” than protesters and pressed for an independent inquiry into the crackdown. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India went further, calling the police action “a heartbreaking assault on the very soul of our democracy” and voicing solidarity with Wangchuk during his hospitalization.
Many in Delhi’s Christian community have also been present in person. The historic Free Church on Parliament Street, next to Jantar Mantar, has been serving for the past several days as the site for distributing water, food, ORS, and light snacks to protesters and others gathered there, an effort coordinated by Christians in Delhi together with the Diocese of Delhi, CNI. An appeal circulated within the city’s Christian community, and individuals and organizations have responded with supplies and volunteers.
Sikh institutions moved in a similar way. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib and other gurdwaras across the city opened their doors after the July 20 crackdown, offering food, first aid, and a place to sleep to protesters fleeing tear gas and baton charges, while separate groups of Sikh volunteers set up a langar (free community kitchen) directly at Jantar Mantar, distributing meals, blankets, and mats to those camping at the protest site.
Not all of it has gone smoothly. Recently a team of Christian volunteers headed toward Jantar Mantar was stopped by police in the Nizamuddin area and told to turn back or face arrest. One local pastor involved in the effort, who asked not to be named, called it an instance of random profiling.
A bloodied nose outside the Prime Minister’s house
The day after the march, Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra marched to Modi’s residence, demanding his resignation over the police action. A minister from the Prime Minister’s Office came out to negotiate, but talks collapsed when Congress refused to drop its demands.
Gandhi sat on the road outside the residence through the afternoon. Around 6:40 p.m., police physically removed him along with his sister and other lawmakers. Videos showed him bleeding from the nose as he was dragged away. Before being removed, he said, “An attack on students is an attack on every Indian family.”
Cameras, courts, and claims of intimidation
A Public Interest Litigation before the Delhi High Court, filed by former student union president Aishe Ghosh, alleged Delhi Police had installed a permanent surveillance tower at Jantar Mantar capable of facial recognition, filming protesters continuously, even while eating or resting. The court admitted the matter for hearing.
Plainclothes police were separately reported operating during the crackdowns. Disability rights groups alleged that one protester, identified as Sheikh Irshad Mansuri, 25, suffered pellet wounds to his chest, neck, and face and was being treated at Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Medical College Hospital, and warned that shock batons were also being used. Police denied using pellet guns at all, calling the claim “completely false and misleading.” On Friday, July 24, Rahul Gandhi brought Mansuri to a press conference and lifted his shirt to show reporters the wounds, calling Pradhan a “criminal education minister” and demanding his removal.
Parliament was repeatedly adjourned through 20 – 24 July. Kharge told reporters his microphone was switched off moments after he rose to raise the issue, calling it a mockery of democracy.
The fast ends, in writing
After he was forcibly taken to hospital on July 19, Wangchuk’s condition remained precarious, with doctors reporting low blood sugar, dangerously low potassium, and dehydration. His wife, Gitanjali Angmo, asked the Delhi High Court to let him transfer to a private hospital, arguing his stay at the government facility amounted to confinement without consent. A single judge declined, but a two-judge bench reversed that on appeal on July 21 and ordered his immediate transfer to Medanta Hospital, ruling it necessary to protect his health and rights.
Wangchuk broke his 26-day fast late on July 23, before two federal ministers at Medanta Hospital. His team said the government had given written assurance that accountability in the exam system would be discussed on the floor of Parliament, that families of students who died by suicide would receive compensation, and that no cases would be filed against peaceful protesters. “End of hunger,” his team wrote. “Beginning of accountability.”
Modi responded personally: “I pray to the Almighty that Sonam ji remains healthy.”
The message came from a government that, just over three months earlier, had released Wangchuk after nearly six months in detention under India’s National Security Act, a law that permits imprisonment without trial for up to a year. He had been held since September 2025, after protests demanding statehood for Ladakh turned deadly. Dozens of others arrested in that crackdown remained in custody for months afterward, cases the Bar Association president in Leh, Mohd Shafi Lassu, called a “pressure tactic by the administration.”
A late-night video and a fast-track court
Close to midnight on July 23, Modi released his own video message, his first direct comment on the crisis after two months of silence. He said those responsible for the leak had been caught and jailed, that 2.2 million students had been given a retest, and that a bill to punish future leaks would go before Parliament. He said nothing about Pradhan. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh noted the government had until recently told a parliamentary committee no leak had occurred at all.
The timing carried its own irony. Hours earlier, the Central Bureau of Investigation had given a “clean chit” to Sanjeev Mukhiya, the alleged kingpin behind a separate, earlier NEET paper leak scandal from 2024, distinct from the 2026 leak driving the current protests.
The same day, the Delhi High Court appointed a judge to head a fast-track court dedicated to exam-fraud cases, a first concrete step on one of Modi’s promised reforms.
Universities, a chief justice, and a battle over the narrative
Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University both issued advisories telling students to stay away from Jantar Mantar, citing Supreme Court directions and warning of disciplinary action. Kharge accused the government of turning universities into “propaganda outlets.” Gandhi was blunter: “How dare you threaten students for exercising their democratic rights?”
Chief Justice Surya Kant, whose “cockroaches” remark started the movement, rejected reports that he had refused to hear a challenge to the crackdown, saying no formal petition existed, only a lawyer’s letter, and called the reporting “irresponsible and reckless.”
Solidarity protests took place this week in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Patna, and Guwahati among other places. Huge crowds were reported in Mumbai and Patna.
Talks at the Constitution Club
On Friday, July 24, CJP spokespeople Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka met ministers Nadda and Jitendra Singh for nearly two hours at the Constitution Club of India, a historic meeting place for lawmakers. It was the second round after an earlier meeting on July 20 ended without agreement.
As per statements by the CJP leaders after the meeting, the government agreed in principle to two of CJP’s three demands: withdrawing cases against protesters and paying roughly ₹1 crore (roughly $104,000) in compensation to each family that lost a child to suicide linked to the leak.
On the central demand, Pradhan’s resignation, the government asked for more time. “The government has sought time till tomorrow afternoon to respond,” Ranka said, adding CJP would not soften its position. “Nothing short of Pradhan’s resignation or his removal would be acceptable,” he said.
Das raised a separate complaint: that Delhi Police had been detaining young people at random since the previous night, including some simply heading home or delivering food, and had manhandled lawyers trying to help them. He said the government first denied it, then assured CJP the incidents would stop.
What longtime activists see in this
Shabnam Hashmi has spent more than four decades working to bridge India’s religious and communal divides, since her brother, the street theater artist Safdar Hashmi, was murdered while performing in 1989. She founded ANHAD, a group working on secularism and communal harmony, in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
What stands out to her about Jantar Mantar is who has shown up. “Students, workers, job seekers, activists, intellectuals, filmmakers and ordinary citizens from different regions, communities, and faiths are standing together,” she told CDI. In her assessment, it may be the first protest in years to openly challenge India’s Hindu-Muslim political narrative.
She also sees a generational shift in how the movement organizes itself. Young Indians, she said, are building “decentralized networks that are fast, creative, and driven by collective action” rather than waiting on traditional political leadership.
John Dayal, the human rights activist who visited Wangchuk at Jantar Mantar earlier in July, offered his own assessment of the week’s events.
“Six weeks ago, I wrote that the cockroaches had made this government look small and a little naked,” he said. “It has taken tear gas, a 26-day fast, and the Leader of the Opposition dragged away bleeding to make it look, for a moment, almost reasonable, paying the families it should have paid weeks ago, promising not to prosecute the young people it beat in the street. What it still will not do is answer for the one man responsible. A government that will compensate the dead but will not name the living men responsible for those deaths, is not being reasonable, it is doing arithmetic on how much accountability it can afford.”
Where things stand
That is where matters stood as the week closed. The government has moved on compensation and legal protection, concessions previously unthinkable from an administration that stayed silent for two months. What it has not done is answer the question that started all of this: whether Pradhan would keep his job, a decision it has promised within a day.
The sit-in at Jantar Mantar continues, six weeks after it began as a peaceful, permitted march — the kind of origin story that has preceded Gen Z uprisings across South Asia. Whether this one joins that list may depend on what the government ultimately decides.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Pastoral burnout, AI, and micro-credentials among top agenda for ICETE's Mombasa gathering in 2027]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/pastoral-burnout-ai-and-micro-credentials-among-top-agenda-for-icete-s-mombasa-gathering-in-2027</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/pastoral-burnout-ai-and-micro-credentials-among-top-agenda-for-icete-s-mombasa-gathering-in-2027</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[At a house church in Durán, Ecuador, house church leaders study a theological education curriculum — an example of the grassroots, non-formal training ICETE aims to represent at its C27 global consultation in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2027.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ At a house church in Durán, Ecuador, house church leaders study a theological education curriculum — an example of the grassroots, non-formal training ICETE aims to represent at its C27 global consultation in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2027. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:37:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Pastoral burnout, artificial intelligence, micro-credentials and the recognition of prior learning are set to dominate the agenda when the world's leading evangelical theological education body convenes in Mombasa, Kenya, in April 2027 — signaling a field grappling with pressures that traditional seminary models were never designed to address.]]></description>
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Pastoral burnout, artificial intelligence, micro-credentials and the recognition of prior learning are set to dominate the agenda when the world's leading evangelical theological education body convenes in Mombasa, Kenya, in April 2027 — signaling a field grappling with pressures that traditional seminary models were never designed to address.
The International Council for Evangelical Theological Education announced the gathering, dubbed C27, during a June preparatory call, setting an April 5–9, 2027 date at the Kenyan coastal city.
For the first time in the organization's 46-year history, prospective attendees must be nominated rather than simply registered. Executive Director Dr. Michael A. Ortiz said the event will be capped at 600 delegates, with nominations already exceeding available places.
Julie Shoemaker, ICETE's Director of Communications and Connections, said the change reflects a deliberate effort to shape the room rather than simply fill it. The goal, she said, is to ensure adequate representation from the majority world, women, next-generation leaders, students and all sectors of theological education — formal, non-formal and informal — alongside voices from the church.
There will be no public registration link on the ICETE website. All prospective attendees must submit a nomination form, and invitations to register will be sent by approximately August.
The theme for C27 — "Understanding the times and knowing what to do" — comes directly from 1 Chronicles 12:32, a passage describing the sons of Issachar, who are commended for grasping the moment and acting accordingly. Dr. Marvin Oxenham, ICETE's Quality Assurance Director and Director of the ICETE Academy, said the verse captures what the organization wants the gathering to accomplish.
"There's the understanding of times component, and then there's the knowing what to do component," he said.
Oxenham said the understanding-the-times dimension of the consultation is intended to be driven by hard data and research rather than anecdote. Presentations will be expected to bring evidence that helps participants "become reflective practitioners," with that understanding then feeding into the second dimension: discernment and action.
Collaboration, he added, is a consistent goal of ICETE gatherings, and C27 will be no different.
Among the substantive topics already on the agenda is pastoral training, which Ortiz described as a pressing need — particularly in majority world contexts. Oxenham added another dimension to that concern, citing a recent Lausanne movement article reporting that more than half of pastors have at some point considered leaving ministry due to burnout. He said the data raises direct questions for theological educators: "Are we addressing the issues that lead to burnout, that lead to wanting to leave the pastoral ministry, and how are we addressing those in our training?"
Artificial intelligence will also feature prominently. Oxenham said it would be impossible to hold a consultation under the theme of understanding the times without a serious engagement with AI — a topic that has already generated significant debate across evangelical institutions. Christian Daily International has previously reported on warnings from theological educators that seminaries must balance AI's potential against the risk of bypassing genuine spiritual formation.
Additional topics will include quality standards across all three sectors, mega-trends in higher education — including the growing significance of mental health — micro-credentials, and, for the first time at an ICETE global gathering, the formal recognition of prior learning. Oxenham described recognition of prior learning as a key mechanism bridging formal and non-formal training, and said a separate consultation on the topic may follow C27.
On micro-credentials, Oxenham said a first cohort of providers — mostly from the non-formal sector — will have completed the certification process by the time the Mombasa gathering convenes and will be able to report on whether it is working for them.
ICETE has previously expanded its micro-credentialing offering to include a vocational track aimed at non-formal training providers, a development Christian Daily International has previously reported on as potentially reshaping the field.
Two major research initiatives will feed into C27's agenda. The first is a global student survey of approximately 60 questions, to be launched within weeks of the pre-call and distributed across formal and non-formal programs in multiple languages. The aim is to gather data from thousands of theology students across all regions.
The second is what ICETE is calling the Landscape Project — a mapping exercise covering the organization's roughly 70 member bodies, which together serve an estimated 500,000 people preparing for ministry globally.
Shoemaker described three components: mapping where members are working and whom they are serving, mining that data to identify duplications and gaps, and then convening members to act on what is found.
C27 is the third in a sequence that began with the C22 consultation in Izmir, Turkey, which focused on integrating formal and non-formal theological education, and continued with C25 in Albania, where the organization gathered data and published a document charting directions for the field. Ortiz described the series as a continuous body of work rather than a set of independent events, with impact teams, micro-credentialing and the landscape project all forming part of the same trajectory.
ICETE Virtual gatherings in July, August and September will address related topics before a second C27-focused preparatory session in October. Those interested in attending C27 or submitting relevant research data for consideration may contact ICETE at info@icete.info.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Asian seminary journal calls for 'integrative approach' to forming whole-person Christian leaders]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/asian-seminary-journal-calls-for-integrative-approach-to-forming-whole-person-christian-leaders</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/asian-seminary-journal-calls-for-integrative-approach-to-forming-whole-person-christian-leaders</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[ATA Journal]]></media:title>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:14:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[A peer-reviewed journal published by the Asia Theological Association has released a volume focused entirely on how theological institutions across Asia are working to form students not just academically but spiritually, relationally, and personally — a challenge that leaders in the region say is growing more urgent.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
A peer-reviewed journal published by the Asia Theological Association has released a volume focused entirely on how theological institutions across Asia are working to form students not just academically but spiritually, relationally, and personally — a challenge that leaders in the region say is growing more urgent.
The Journal of Asian Theological Education and Spiritual Formation (JATES), published by the ATA and now indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, dedicated its 2026 volume to what the editors call "institutional approaches to holistic formation." The issue features six research contributions from seminaries in Taiwan, India, South Korea, and the Philippines, drawing on case studies, student surveys, and qualitative research.
The volume's editorial introduction, written by editors Dr. Justin Peter and Dr. Sooi-Ling Tan, identifies a central gap in how the region's seminaries operate: institutions widely desire to form whole persons but lack clarity about how to do it.
Drawing on an ATA-wide study led by researcher Allan Harkness, Peter and Tan write that the findings reveal both "a strong desire among member institutions to foster holistic formation and a corresponding lack of clarity in implementation." Harkness surveyed 47 ATA institutions across 14 countries and conducted focus groups with participants from 45 additional schools across 11 countries.
The editors describe holistic formation as the integration of three dimensions: cognitive or intellectual growth, ministry skills, and what they term "spiritual, relational, and personal formation." The last category — the least systematically addressed, according to their findings — encompasses a student's inner life, character, sense of calling, and capacity for healthy relationships.
Relational and spatial formation
Across the six institutions represented in the journal, several common patterns emerged. Each school had embedded formation within structured curriculum rather than treating it as an add-on to academic work. China Evangelical Seminary used family systems theory and counseling-based coursework to help students develop self-awareness and relational maturity. South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies used practicum placements paired with mentoring and reflective journaling. Torch Trinity Graduate University in South Korea built mentoring into its Master of Divinity program as a sustained relational context for personal and spiritual growth.
The editors also draw attention to what they call the "hidden curriculum" of space and environment — the formative role of shared meals, hospitality, prayer rooms, and retreats. These physical and communal contexts, they argue, shape students in ways that formal coursework alone cannot.
"Holistic formation is woven through curriculum, relationships, spaces, and practices," Peter and Tan write in the journal's editorial introduction.
The JATES findings align with broader concerns Dr. Theresa Lua, general secretary of the ATA, has raised in other settings about the direction of theological education in Asia. Speaking to Christian Daily International in March 2025, Lua said that while Asian institutions have increasingly taken ownership of training their own leaders, online learning has made it harder to provide the kind of in-person formation that discipleship requires. She argued that seminaries need intentional partnership with local churches to fill that gap. "When there is an intentionality in terms of the partnership and the mentoring, then churches are very much involved in that formation aspect," she said.
The 'academization' concern
At the Asia Conference on Church and Mission held in Manila earlier this month, Lua pressed the issue further. She warned that seminaries across the region have drifted toward what she called the "academization" of theological education — prioritizing intellectual credentialing in ways that widen the distance between institutions and ordinary congregations.
"There has been a call for decades to provide theological education for all those people in order to empower them to serve in a wide spectrum of ministries in the church and beyond," Lua told the Manila gathering, referring to lay believers. She argued the church's mission requires equipping the full people of God — lawyers, doctors, artists, and business professionals — to live as disciples in every domain of life, not only those who enter professional ministry.
The JATES special issue is partly a response to that gap. The project originated through a partnership between the ATA and the Global Spiritual Formation Project, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust. Thirty-three research abstracts were submitted by ATA member institutions; fourteen were selected for development; eleven completed the full process of peer review, external review, and professional editing. The first batch of papers appears in this volume, with a second installment to follow.
Lifelong discipleship as the frame
Harkness, summarizing the ATA study in the journal's lead article, draws four implications for institutions seeking to improve their formation programs. Formation should be oriented toward lifelong discipleship and service, not just preparation for first ministry roles. It needs to account for both globalization and contextualization — recognizing that Asian students live in complex, rapidly shifting environments. The impact of formation extends beyond individual students to their families, congregations, and communities. And effective formation, he argues, depends on community support and partnerships, both within institutions and with outside stakeholders.
Those conclusions echo what Lua told Christian Daily International last year, when she described her concern that seminaries can easily lose touch with what is actually happening in local churches. "We remind schools that their mission is not just for the seminary itself, but for the church and God's broader mission," she said.
The volume is available online as free download.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Kenya's President directs Islamic Madrasa and Duksi learners to be integrated in the formal education system]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/kenya-s-president-directs-islamic-madrasa-and-duksi-learners-to-be-integrated-in-the-formal-education-system</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/kenya-s-president-directs-islamic-madrasa-and-duksi-learners-to-be-integrated-in-the-formal-education-system</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jim Olang]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Ruto in Wajir - Madrasa]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ William Ruto Facebook ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Speaking during the country’s independence day celebration in Wajir County on June 1, President Ruto said the move targets thousands of children in northern Kenya and other underserved predominantly muslim communities. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:14:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[President William Ruto instructed Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba to begin formal consultations on integrating madrasa, duksi and pastoral instruction programs into Kenya's Basic Education framework.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
President William Ruto instructed Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba to begin formal consultations on integrating madrasa, duksi and pastoral instruction programs into Kenya's Basic Education framework. 
The directive, reported by local media, does not alter existing curriculum subjects. Christian Religious Education (CRE), Islamic Religious Education (IRE) and Hindu Religious Education (HRE) remain optional, examinable subjects under the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC). The directive is a mandate to begin consultation, not a law.
Speaking during the country’s independence day celebration in Wajir County on June 1, President Ruto said the move targets thousands of children in northern Kenya and other underserved predominantly muslim communities who remain outside the formal education system.
"Some children in northern Kenya and other marginalized regions remain outside the formal education system because certain alternative learning pathways have not been adequately recognized or accommodated within our education framework," Ruto said.
"Today I direct the Cabinet Secretary for Education to engage all relevant stakeholders and take the necessary measures under the Basic Education Act, to consult widely and recommend appropriate measures for the formal integration of the same. Every child deserves a door into learning. It is our duty to open every door," he added.
A Duksi is a foundational Quranic school for young children, particularly in Somali-dominated communities, where learners are taught to recite the Quran, often in Arabic, before entering formal schooling. 
A madrasa is a more structured Islamic educational institution that provides religious instruction alongside some academic content. Both have operated entirely outside Kenya's formal education framework, meaning graduates have had no recognized pathway into the national examinations system. The Program for Pastoral Instruction similarly serves nomadic children in communities that follow livestock migrations and cannot attend fixed-location schools.
Muslim clerics and scholars in Mombasa welcomed the Government’s intention to integrate Duksi and Madrasa which will allow students under these two pathways from pre-primary to grade 12 to be recognized by the educational system.
“We call upon the ministry of education to ensure the full implementation of this directive. Its successful implementation will guarantee that all children irrespective of their background or location have equal, quality and recognised education,” said Sheikh Izzudin Alwy, an Islamic scholar.
Church response
Major church associations such as the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) are yet to respond to the pronouncement by the President. However, Evangelical Association of Kenya Chairman, Bishop Calisto Odede responding to a question during a radio show said the content of Madrasas is religious and not formal education similar to Sunday School. 
"It is important that matters like these be subjected to public participation so that the people understand the direction they are being led...the concern is whether this move grants special privileges to one religion," said the Bishop of Christ is the Answer Ministries.
Bishop Odede reminded the listeners that President Ruto once opposed the inclusion of Kadhi courts in the constitution. "Many are asking; 'what has changed now?'" posed Bishop Odede.
 Another leader in the evangelical movement, who asked to comment anonymously said the directive was “ill advised” and that it “will open a Pandora’s box.”
Members of the public and some clergy however raised questions about how the policy will be implemented with many comparing Madrassa and Duksi classes to Sunday School or Catechism classes. “We already have CRE (Christian Religious Education) and IRE (Islamic Religious Education) integrated in the formal education (system),” noted Muchoki Kennedy, in a post on social media, reflecting the debate that spilled over online.
Religious education teachers had already signaled concern before this directive. In November 2025, educators sent a formal letter to the KICD warning that Kenya's ongoing shift to a Competency-Based Education (CBE) framework was squeezing CRE, IRE and HRE out of student subject choices, particularly on the STEM pathway, as reported by Eastleigh Voice.
"Such a scenario would compromise schools' long-standing mission to offer both intellectual and moral guidance, undermining the holistic development of learners," the teachers wrote.
What the Constitution says
Kenya's 2010 Constitution addresses both sides of this debate. Article 8 establishes that Kenya has no state religion and requires the government to remain neutral in matters of belief. Article 32 guarantees every person the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion, and prohibits discrimination on grounds of belief.
The question of whether integrating faith-based learning institutions into a state-funded education framework creates tension with those provisions has not been tested in court in relation to this directive. 
Notably, the government's own framing positions the madrasa integration as an access and transition measure rather than an ideological or theological one: the intent, as stated by Ruto, is to provide a bridge for children already in these institutions into the national examinations system, not to introduce Islamic instruction as a compulsory subject.
However, the constitutional questions around the state's relationship with religion in education remain unresolved in Kenya. A 2019 Supreme Court ruling in a case brought by the Methodist Church of Kenya, which challenged a directive allowing Muslim girls to wear the hijab at its sponsored school, St. Paul's Kiwanjani Day Mixed Secondary School in Isiolo, set aside a lower court ruling on a procedural technicality rather than addressing the underlying constitutional questions. 
The court ordered the Ministry of Education to produce guidelines reconciling school dress codes with constitutional rights to freedom of religion. Those guidelines were never issued, as reported by Ghanamma.
That unresolved gap resurfaced as recently as February 2026, when a Grade 10 student, Samira Ramadhan, was sent home from St. Mary's Lwak Girls High School in Siaya County for wearing a hijab, triggering a High Court petition, a parliamentary committee intervention and a Ministry of Education order for her immediate reinstatement, according to Citizen Digital and The Star. 
The pattern is consistent: government directives on religious accommodation in education keep colliding with the autonomy of church-sponsored schools, and the constitutional framework for resolving those collisions remains incomplete.
A pattern across Africa
Kenya is not the first majority-Christian African country to face this question. In Uganda, where Christians make up approximately 85 percent of the population, a two-and-a-half-year project concluded in 2023 by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) and other organisations produced a detailed roadmap for integrating madrasa learning into formal national standards, per ICRD project documentation. The published roadmap proposed a unified dual curriculum allowing students to combine religious studies with mathematics, science and digital literacy within a single, state-recognised pathway.
In Nigeria, where madrasa education predates British colonial rule in the predominantly Muslim north, federal integration attempts have been politically contested and uneven, varying significantly by state. In Senegal, government efforts to integrate Quranic schools known as daaras into the formal system have been described as "difficult and not always conclusive," according to a 2018 peer-reviewed comparative study published in the International Journal of Educational Development.
Across the region, where Muslim minority communities coexist within majority-Christian states, governments are under increasing pressure to formally recognize Islamic learning institutions that have long operated outside official frameworks.
Kenya’s education ministry  has been tasked with engaging all relevant stakeholders, including churches and educational institutions, and present recommendations under the Basic Education Act. The government says it will consult widely. No timeline has been announced.
Church-sponsored schools, run by evangelical, Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian bodies, account for a substantial share of Kenya's school infrastructure. The government has named them among the stakeholders it intends to consult. Whether they will engage that process or challenge it, and what legal ground they stand on when they do, will shape the outcome of one of the most consequential education policy debates the country has seen in years. ]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[At ACCM2026, panel warns Asia's churches risk raising consumers, not disciples]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/at-accm2026-panel-warns-asia-s-churches-risk-raising-consumers-not-disciples</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/at-accm2026-panel-warns-asia-s-churches-risk-raising-consumers-not-disciples</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[The panels central argument, shared across all three speakers despite their different institutional vantage points, was that the Asian church has drifted into measuring success by the wrong indicators — attendance, budgets, events, academic credentials, ]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ The panel's central argument, shared across all three panelists with their different institutional vantage points, was that the Asian church has drifted into measuring success by the wrong indicators — attendance, budgets, events, academic credentials, institutional reach — while the one thing Jesus actually commanded, making disciples, has quietly been sidelined. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Dr. Theresa Lua, General Secretary of the Asia Theological Association, called on seminaries to move beyond training professional clergy, arguing that theological education must equip the whole people of God — lawyers, doctors, artists and business people]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Dr. Theresa Lua, General Secretary of the Asia Theological Association, called on seminaries to move beyond training professional clergy, arguing that theological education must equip the whole people of God — lawyers, doctors, artists and business people — to live as disciples in every sector of society. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Dr. Gustavo Crocker, General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene, warned that success in one generation can produce spiritual amnesia in the next when intentional discipleship is neglected — a pattern he called the Joshua syndrome.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Dr. Gustavo Crocker, General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene, warned that success in one generation can produce spiritual amnesia in the next when intentional discipleship is neglected — a pattern he called the "Joshua syndrome." ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Sharon Croos, Vice President of Asia Region of Compassion International, told conference delegates that externally thriving ministries can mask a deeper failure when leaders prioritize platform over spiritual formation.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Sharon Croos, Vice President of Asia Region of Compassion International, told conference delegates that externally thriving ministries can mask a deeper failure when leaders prioritize platform over spiritual formation. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:01:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Theological institutions are producing graduates ill-equipped for real-world ministry, denominational structures risk fossilizing into gatekeeping institutions, and Christian leaders across Asia are growing more exhausted than fruitful — these were among the pointed assessments delivered during the second-day morning panel of the Asia Conference on Church and Mission (ACCM), held in Manila.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Theological institutions are producing graduates ill-equipped for real-world ministry, denominational structures risk fossilizing into gatekeeping institutions, and Christian leaders across Asia are growing more exhausted than fruitful — these were among the pointed assessments delivered during the second-day morning panel of the Asia Conference on Church and Mission (ACCM), held in Manila.
The panel, moderated as an interactive session rather than a traditional forum, brought together three voices from distinct streams of Christian life and work: Dr. Theresa Lua, General Secretary of the Asia Theological Association; Dr. Gustavo Crocker, General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene; and Sharon Croos, Vice President of Asia Region for Compassion International. Each panelist addressed the conference theme of leadership as discipleship, and after each presentation, delegates broke into table discussions to process and respond to what they had heard.
Seminaries serving academics rather than mission
Lua opened with a challenge directed at theological institutions, including the one she leads. The core problem, she said, is that seminaries have narrowed their focus to training professional clergy — pastors, missionaries, and church workers — while largely neglecting the broader people of God.
"There has been a call for decades to provide theological education for all those people in order to empower them to serve in a wide spectrum of ministries in the church and beyond," Lua said. She described this narrowing as the "academization" of theological education — a drift toward intellectual credentialing that widens the gap between academic institutions and grassroots Christian communities.

Lua argued that the strongest seminaries worldwide are those closely connected to local congregations, designing curriculum around the actual questions and pressures people in those churches face. She cited what she called "whole life discipleship" as the necessary corrective: equipping believers to follow Christ not only in church activities but in every area of their working and public lives — as lawyers, doctors, government servants, artists and business people.
"The call is to see the whole of the people of God live out the whole of their lives under the lordship of Christ for the sake of the wholeness of God's mission for the whole world," Lua said. She added that theological education must become missiological in its orientation, with curriculum shaped by the real challenges churches face in their specific cultural contexts rather than inherited Western frameworks.
Following her presentation, delegates discussed at their tables what practical changes their seminaries or church contexts could implement within the week.
The Joshua syndrome and generational succession
Crocker, speaking from his experience leading what he described as the world's largest Wesleyan denomination, present in 166 nations, reached back to the book of Judges to diagnose what he called the "Joshua syndrome."
He drew from Judges 2:10, where a generation arose that neither knew the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Joshua and the elders had witnessed God's acts firsthand, Crocker said, but they failed to ensure the next generation knew the Lord personally. The result was idolatry, compromise, and cycles of oppression.

"Success in one generation can lead to spiritual amnesia in the next if we neglect intentional discipleship," Crocker said. He argued this pattern threatens every denomination, movement, and local church today — and is not a relic of ancient history.
He contrasted the Joshua model with Paul's approach in 2 Timothy 2:2, where the apostle charged Timothy to entrust what he had received to reliable people who would in turn teach others. Crocker called this a "seven-generation chain" — from Jesus through the apostles to Paul, Timothy, faithful men, and beyond — and described it as the antidote to the syndrome. He pointed to the ruins of the seven early churches in Turkey as a cautionary illustration: physical structures did not survive, but the principle of generational transmission meant the church of Jesus Christ continued to flourish.
Crocker pressed the assembled leaders on their own accountability, noting that many in the room had been in leadership for more than 30 years. He estimated that the average age of Jesus' disciples was 26 — the same demographic as participants in the Arab Spring and various revolutionary movements — yet many current leaders withhold trust from younger generations until they are middle-aged.
"We went from being groundskeepers to gatekeepers," Crocker said. He drew a distinction between the two: a groundskeeper understands that Jesus builds the church and that the leader's role is to care for it, while a gatekeeper acts as though the church belongs to them. "If I am building the church, it's my church," he warned, "and hell is going to break loose."
Following his remarks, delegates returned to their tables to discuss what would need to change — within their denomination, local church, or sphere of influence — to move from the current state toward genuine generational discipleship.
Activity without intimacy
Croos, the final panelist, challenged leaders to examine not the metrics of their ministries but the spiritual condition of the people those ministries produce. Drawing on his years working across Asia with Compassion International, he identified a pattern he described as movements that remain externally successful while quietly losing their soul.
"The moment can become successful while slowly losing its soul," Croos said. "Performers may attract crowds, but only disciples can transform communities or nations."

He described a scenario familiar to many in the room: growing churches, rising budgets, packed events and strong social media engagement — alongside leaders who are physically active but spiritually depleted. The problem, he argued, is that modern leadership training has taught people how to build platforms without attending to their inner life in Christ.
Croos outlined five dimensions he considers essential to leadership understood as discipleship. The first is abiding — remaining in Christ as the foundation of everything else. "If leaders are not abiding in Christ, leadership eventually becomes performance," he said. The second is character, which he placed above competency as the primary leadership challenge. "The world celebrates gifting, but God develops character," he said, noting that many ministry collapses occur not because of lacking skill but because character failed to grow alongside influence.
The remaining three dimensions he named were multiplication — producing disciple-makers rather than followers; vulnerability — leading from honesty about weakness rather than protecting an image; and sacrifice — choosing others above self as the servant ethic of kingdom leadership. He acknowledged the particular pressure Asian cultural norms place on leaders to project strength and hide struggle, including a conversation he had heard about a senior denominational leader who felt unable to be transparent even with his wife.
Croos closed with a direct question to the room: "Who are people becoming because of your leadership? More dependent on Christ or more dependent on you? More like Jesus or more like the culture around them?"
After his presentation, delegates engaged in a final round of table discussion, identifying one concrete change they would carry back to their national, denominational, or church context.
The Asia Conference on Church & Mission 2026 runs June 9–12 at GCF South Metro in Alabang, Metro Manila, organized by the Asia Evangelical Alliance in partnership with the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches. The conference carries the theme "Disciple or Die 3.0" and is oriented toward a concrete goal: that by 2033, 20 percent of evangelical churches represented by AEA member alliances across Asia will become disciple-making churches.
Click here for the complete reporting on ACCM 2026.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[At ACCM2026, Asia Evangelical Alliance leader warns: Two centuries of evangelism without discipleship have 'cost us a lot']]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/at-accm2026-asia-evangelical-alliance-leader-warns-two-centuries-of-evangelism-without-discipleship-have-cost-us-a-lot</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/at-accm2026-asia-evangelical-alliance-leader-warns-two-centuries-of-evangelism-without-discipleship-have-cost-us-a-lot</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Dr. Bambang Budijanto, General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance, addresses delegates from 25 nations at ACCM 2026 in Manila, arguing that two centuries of evangelism without discipleship have left the Asian church in crisis, June 10, 2026.]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Dr. Bambang Budijanto, General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance, addresses delegates from 25 nations at ACCM 2026 in Manila, arguing that two centuries of evangelism without discipleship have left the Asian church in crisis, June 10, 2026. ]]>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Godfrey Yogarajah (right), Chair of the Asia Evangelical Alliance and the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. Botrus Mansour (left), Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, pray for Bishop Joel Montes as he recei]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Christian Daily International ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Godfrey Yogarajah (right), Chair of the Asia Evangelical Alliance and the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. Botrus Mansour (left), Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, pray for Bishop Joel Montes as he receives the first DCAR certificate on behalf of his late father's denomination at ACCM 2026 in Alabang, Metro Manila, June 10, 2026. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:21:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[The General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance pressed evangelical leaders Tuesday to confront what he called three deep internal fractures keeping the church trapped in an event-driven model, and introduced a continent-wide tracking system to hold congregations accountable for the shift toward intentional disciple-making.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
The General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance pressed evangelical leaders Tuesday to confront what he called three deep internal fractures keeping the church trapped in an event-driven model, and introduced a continent-wide tracking system to hold congregations accountable for the shift toward intentional disciple-making.
Dr. Bambang Budijanto opened the second day of the Asia Conference on Church and Mission (ACCM) 2026 at GCF South Metro in Alabang, Metro Manila, with a keynote that moved from diagnosis to action. He unveiled a set of cascading numerical targets, from the continental level down to the individual congregation, and launched a new digital registration and certification platform, which he called DCAR (Disciple-making Church Advancement Record), to track progress against those goals.
The conference, organized by the AEA in partnership with the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, has gathered 210 delegates from 25 nations under the banner "Disciple or Die 3.0." Building on two prior gatherings — in Mongolia in 2024 and South Korea in 2025 — organizers have framed Manila as the moment for measurable commitment, not just further discussion.
The three fractures
Budijanto told delegates that despite growing consensus on the importance of discipleship, three internal problems have kept most churches from making the transition.
The first, he said, is a long-standing confusion between urgency and emergency — and he argued it is the most consequential misreading of the Great Commission in the history of the modern Church.
Budijanto's starting point was not a critique of zeal, but a distinction within it. Every genuine revival, every season of spiritual awakening, he observed, carries with it an acute sense of urgency. People encounter Christ and feel, rightly, that there is no time to waste. The problem, he argued, is what churches have done with that urgency over the past two centuries: they have converted it into emergency thinking, and emergency thinking produces a fundamentally different — and far more limited — response.
He illustrated the difference with a medical analogy. When a patient arrives at an emergency room with multiple problems, doctors do not treat everything at once. They perform triage — identifying the single most pressing threat to survival and addressing that, setting everything else aside for later. The goal in an emergency is not restoration; it is stabilization. Keep the patient alive today, and deal with the rest when there is more time.
That logic, Budijanto argued, is exactly what has shaped the dominant model of mission across Asia and much of the world. Faced with billions of people outside the faith, the church looked at the scale of the task, felt the weight of eternity, and made a triage decision: get people to heaven first. Move them from lostness to salvation. Evangelism above all else. Discipleship can come later.
The consequence, he said, has been an approach that stops at the threshold rather than walking people through the door. Converts are made but not formed. Decisions are recorded but not nurtured into durable, reproducing faith. The church fills its pews with people who have prayed a prayer but were never apprenticed to a way of life.
True urgency, Budijanto told the room, does not cut corners — it insists on doing the whole thing now. The Great Commission, he said, is not a triage protocol. It is a comprehensive mandate: go, make disciples, baptize, teach obedience. None of those elements is optional. None is deferred to a second stage. The urgency of the commission should accelerate discipleship, not replace it with something shallower.
"Evangelism without discipleship has cost us a lot," he said.
He was careful not to dismiss evangelism itself — the problem is not sharing the gospel but treating that moment as the finish line. A church consumed by getting people in the door, he suggested, while investing almost nothing in what happens to them afterward, has mistaken the beginning of the journey for its end. After two centuries of emergency-mode mission, the visible result is churches across Asia filled with nominal Christians who have never discipled anyone and are not expected to.
The second fracture is what he called the domestication of discipleship. Based on his own survey, Budijanto said more than 90 percent of discipleship activity takes place inside church buildings and is directed at existing Christians. That, he argued, directly contradicts the scope of the Great Commission. "If discipleship was just for Christians in the church building, the Great Commission should say, 'go to all churches,'" he told the room. "My Bible says go to all people, go to all nations."
The third fracture is the displacement of disciple-making from the church to parachurch organizations. While expressing appreciation for such organizations, Budijanto was clear that the mandate belongs to the local church. "Great Commission is for the church," he said. "Bring it back to the church and strengthen the church."
He drew on the Greek structure of Matthew 28 to reinforce the point, noting that "make disciples" is the sole imperative in the passage — "go," "baptize," and "teach" are all participles subordinate to it. He estimated that fewer than 5 percent of Christians globally are actively discipling others, which means the vast majority are disobeying what he described as the last command Jesus issued before his ascension.
From movement to metrics
Budijanto then introduced a tiered definition of what a disciple-making church, and alliance, would actually look like in practice, offering concrete thresholds at every level of the evangelical ecosystem.
At the congregational level, he proposed that a local church qualifies as a disciple-making church when at least 20 percent of its members are personally discipling others. The figure, he explained, draws on the Pareto principle: 20 percent of a group typically drives 80 percent of its outcomes, meaning that if one in five members is actively discipling, the effect ripples through the rest of the congregation.
He was specific, however, that small group participation does not meet the bar. Citing research from the United States, he noted that 90 percent of small groups produced no disciples at all.
Moving up the structure: a denomination becomes a disciple-making denomination when 30 percent of its local churches meet that 20 percent threshold. A national evangelical alliance becomes a disciple-making alliance when 40 percent of its member denominations achieve that status. And by 2033, the AEA's continental goal is for 50 percent of its national alliance members to qualify as disciple-making alliances.
For the Philippines specifically, Budijanto pointed to the PCEC's 92 member denominations as a baseline for what achieving those thresholds would require. For Indonesia, the figure is 103 denominations.
He also reframed the purpose of the church in terms that pushed back against institutional measures of success. "I'm grateful if your national alliance has a big building," he said. "How many staff, how many members — but the question is how many of them are obeying Christ and discipling others? How many churches in your alliance are discipling others?"
A platform for accountability
To support the movement toward those targets, Budijanto introduced the DCAR platform, an AI-assisted digital registration system available in multiple languages. Pastors attending the conference were encouraged to scan a QR code on cards distributed at the tables, register their congregation, and — if their church already meets the 20 percent threshold — submit a declaration for certification.
Declarations require endorsement from a recognized authority: a national alliance leader or a denominational head who can verify the claim. Once endorsed and approved by AEA, a signed certificate, bearing the signatures of both Budijanto and Rev. Botrus Mansour, Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, is issued to the church.
Budijanto said the first certificate, numbered 0001, would be awarded at the conference. He expressed hope that by the next edition of the gathering, certificate number 5,000 would be awarded, and by 2030 or 2033, the number would reach 100,000.
The platform is also designed to give national alliances a geographic view of where disciple-making churches are concentrated and where gaps remain, allowing organizations with discipleship resources to identify areas of greatest need.
A testimony of transition
Budijanto closed his keynote by describing the story of a Filipino church leader — the late Bishop Herley Montes — whose church had stalled at around 200 to 300 members across multiple church plants. When a mentor asked him how many disciples he had, Montes initially answered with his attendance figure. The mentor pressed him: not attenders — disciples.
"He could not answer," Budijanto said.
After being mentored in disciple-making principles and implementing the transition from an event-based to a disciple-making model, Montes's mother church grew to approximately 4,000 members, with around 500 daughter churches. The first six months of that transition, according to Budijanto's account, saw roughly half the congregation leave — members who wanted to attend services but were unwilling to disciple others. Montes, however, remained committed and ultimately saw abundant fruit as a result.
Montes died in early May 2026, weeks before the conference. His son, Bishop Joel Montes, attended the Manila gathering in his place and received the first DCAR certificate on behalf of the denomination — an organization of 520 local churches, most of which Budijanto described as disciple-making congregations.

The ACCM 2026 conference continues through Thursday, concluding on Friday with a joint session expected to bring together the visiting international delegates and an estimated 1,000 Filipino pastors for a day of intensive engagement on disciple-making practice.
Click here for the complete reporting on ACCM 2026.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Most pastors, practicing Christians worry about AI replacing God but use it anyway: Barna]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/most-pastors-practicing-christians-worry-about-ai-replacing-god-but-use-it-anyway-barna</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/most-pastors-practicing-christians-worry-about-ai-replacing-god-but-use-it-anyway-barna</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[The Christian Post]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Most pastors, practicing Christians worry about AI replacing God but use it anyway: Barna]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Unsplash/Solen Feyissa ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:32:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Most pastors and practicing Christians are worried about artificial intelligence replacing God, yet they continue to use the technology anyway, according to new data released by Barna Group.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Most pastors and practicing Christians are worried about artificial intelligence replacing God, yet they continue to use the technology anyway, according to new data released by Barna Group.
The data released last month by the Christian research firm was based on two surveys conducted in partnership with Gloo, as part of the State of the Church initiative. One survey conducted in November 2025 collected responses from 1,514 U.S. adults. Another study conducted in December 2025 collected responses from 442 Protestant pastors in the U.S.
Researchers found that Christians expressed strong openness to using AI across multiple domains of life, with 48% saying they trust the technology to help them grow spiritually.
Almost three in five respondents (61%) said they would also completely or somewhat trust AI to help them achieve financial stability, while 56% said they trust AI to help with their mental and physical well-being.
More than half also said they would trust the technology to help them feel happy and content with life, understand and express their true selves, find a sense of meaning or purpose, and build meaningful relationships with others. Practicing Christians also expressed higher trust in AI than their pastors and non-practicing Christians, the research found.
“What we’re seeing is that Christians are genuinely open to AI as a support for the domains that matter most to them — wellbeing, purpose, even spiritual growth,” Daniel Copeland, Barna’s vice president of research, said in a statement. “That level of openness is higher than we might have expected, and it holds across multiple areas of flourishing.”
Still, Christians and their pastors are concerned about AI’s growing influence in areas of faith and spirituality, particularly regarding “Scripture, divine authority, and the integrity of faith itself.”
Some 83% of practicing Christians and 94% of pastors worry about AI misinterpreting Scripture. About three-fourths of U.S. adults (74%) share that concern.
Nearly two-thirds of pastors (63%) expressed concern about AI replacing them, compared with 72% of practicing Christians. Nearly three-quarters of practicing Christians (73%) are also worried that AI might make people lose their faith.
“This is where the data gets genuinely confounding,” Copeland stated. “Christians say they trust AI with spiritual growth, and a meaningful share say its spiritual guidance is as trustworthy as a pastor’s — yet large majorities are simultaneously concerned about AI misinterpreting scripture, replacing God, or undermining the role of spiritual leaders. The use case and the underlying fear are both present, and they’re pointing in different directions.”
While recent studies show that most pastors use AI, there has been a persistent concern that use of the technology could displace their spiritual guidance.
In "Technology for Missional Impact: State of Church Tech 2026," produced by Barna in partnership with Pushpay, around 60% of church leaders report using AI for personal use at least a few times a month, while only 24% say they never use the technology.
Researchers also highlighted in "The 2025 State of AI in the Church Survey Report" last December that a majority of pastors use AI to prepare their sermons, with ChatGPT and Grammarly as the top two AI tools.
While only a few pastors expressed concern that AI would replace them outright, about two-thirds (65%) worry that AI could displace their spiritual guidance. About 70% worried that the technology could diminish congregants’ trust in them.
“Clear guidance could help address these tensions. Most church leaders believe it is important for churches to establish policies governing AI use (24% extremely, 40% somewhat),” the researchers for the 2025 report noted.
“Yet few churches have taken this step. Only 5% of church leaders say their church currently has an established AI policy — revealing a significant gap between leaders’ sense of responsibility and their organizational readiness.”
Originally published by The Christian Post.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Seminaries must balance AI's potential with the risk of bypassing genuine formation, theological educators warn]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/seminaries-must-balance-ai-s-potential-with-the-risk-of-bypassing-genuine-formation-theological-educators-warn</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/seminaries-must-balance-ai-s-potential-with-the-risk-of-bypassing-genuine-formation-theological-educators-warn</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
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                            <media:title><![CDATA[Swiss Evangelical Alliances publishes working paper on the benefits and challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for churches and Christian organizations, warning that ‘Pandora’s Box’ cannot be closed]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ SEA ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Unlike human learners, AI has no relationship with God, no capacity for faith or repentance, and no lived experience of the faith it can fluently describe — a distinction that lies at the heart of debates over its role in theological education. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 07:50:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Two leading voices at the intersection of evangelical theological education and technology are calling on seminary faculty globally to grapple seriously with artificial intelligence as a force already reshaping how students learn, write and reason — while insisting that the spiritual formation at the heart of theological education is something no machine can replicate. At an international webinar titled "AI Disruption and the Future of Theological Education,” they examined both the practical and]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Two leading voices at the intersection of evangelical theological education and technology are calling on seminary faculty globally to grapple seriously with artificial intelligence as a force already reshaping how students learn, write and reason — while insisting that the spiritual formation at the heart of theological education is something no machine can replicate.
At an international webinar titled "AI Disruption and the Future of Theological Education,” they examined both the practical and theological dimensions of AI in seminary training.
The International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE) hosted the online session through its Technology and Innovation in Learning Impact Team, gathering more than 70 educators from different regions to hear from Dr. Walker Tzeng, executive director of the World Evangelical Theological Institute Association (WETIA) and vice president of Olivet University, and Dr. John Dyer, professor and dean of educational technology at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS).
Tzeng offered a technical overview of how generative AI actually functions, while Dyer worked from biblical narrative outward, tracing a theological framework for evaluating the technology. A structured conversation followed, covering five themes: practical teaching advice, student AI literacy, ethical concerns, beneficial and harmful uses, and implications for curriculum.
What AI is — and what it cannot be
Tzeng, who has worked in the field of theology and technology for nearly two decades and previously discussed AI's educational implications in an interview with Christian Daily International, opened by demystifying how large language models operate. Rather than thinking or reasoning in any human sense, he explained, these systems work by statistically predicting which word is most likely to follow the last — an iterative process that produces coherent-sounding text without genuine understanding behind it.
"It's taking relative mathematics and saying, this word is close to this word, and so I'm going to produce that word," Tzeng said. He illustrated the point with a simple example: if a model encounters the word "king," it calculates that "queen" is a statistically proximate token. "They're different but closer to one another," he said. "This is how AI really understands the nuances of your prompt."
That mechanical process, he argued, has a ceiling that has significant implications for theological educators. AI can synthesize large volumes of existing material rapidly and produce fluent, well-structured prose. It can also process ideas and correlate them across sources at speed. But it cannot originate thought, draw on lived faith, or produce the kind of writing that emerges from a person's relationship with God, their church community, and Scripture.
"When we do write something, we draw from Scripture, or personal experience, we have our spiritual life or church community or peer review," Tzeng said. "We are also people that repent. We have faith and we have love and we draw from that as we do our theology." AI, operating as a statistical engine, has no access to any of that.
Because AI cannot have a relationship with Jesus Christ, the content it generates will always be an imitation of human theological writing rather than an expression of it. "AI knowledge is always going to be a reconstruction, an imitation," he said. "When students create writing, they're not just reconstituting other people's work — they're also living out the embodied human life in their faith, and AI can't do that."
That, Tzeng argued, is not a reason to dismiss the technology but to understand it accurately. He described AI as a capable research assistant for someone who already knows their subject — useful for processing and synthesizing existing material, less useful for generating genuine insight. "It's great as a research assistant," he said. "If I really know my area and I'm putting something in and processing it, giving it instructions to process it, it really helps put all of that language together for us."
Interpreting the use of AI through the lens of the biblical narrative
Dyer approached the same questions from the opposite direction, starting with Scripture and tracing its implications toward the technological present.
He walked through five “chapters” in the overarching biblical story — creation, the image of God, the fall, the life of Jesus, and the new creation — drawing out what each contributes to a Christian account of technology and its risks.
In Genesis, Dyer pointed to the dual mandate God gives humanity: to fill the earth and to cultivate and tend it. He described these as two poles — innovation and preservation — that together define what responsible making looks like. Tool use and creativity are not responses to the fall, he argued; they are part of the original vocation. "When my kids were little, I would give them a box of Legos and ask them to make things, and I delight in the things that they make," Dyer said. "I think God in some ways delights in the things that we make as well."
On the image of God, Dyer outlined three categories that theologians have used: the substantive (the capacity to reason), the functional (the call to exercise dominion over creation), and the relational (the unique bond between humanity, one another, and God). AI, he noted, can appear to encroach on the first two — it can process information faster than humans and, in some cases, manage tasks more efficiently. That can feel threatening. But the third category, he said, remains untouched. "Our unique relationship with God is unique — AIs don't have that," he said. "As good as they are at mimicking a lot of what humans do, they aren't really a 'they' in that sense."
Dyer named a related pastoral concern: the risk of people forming what feels like a deep relationship with an AI system while their relationships with other people and with God quietly fall away. "We want to be able to work on that with folks and help them to move toward relationships with humans and with God," he said.
The fall introduces a recurring temptation: to use the things we make as substitutes for God rather than as expressions of faithful service. Dyer connected this directly to AI. "The temptation we face in some sense with AI right now is to have powers beyond our own ability — to be something more than human, and not to be God's image bearers, but to go beyond that." The same serpent who promised in Genesis that humans would become like God, he suggested, speaks in the aspirations of those who see AI as a route to transcending human limitation.
He also drew on Deuteronomy 22's instruction that builders place a parapet, a low guardrail, along the edge of flat-roofed houses, where people slept. The provision addressed potential accidental harm: those who build are responsible for thinking through how what they build might hurt someone. "In the age of AI, we want to be building guardrails as well," Dyer said.
He then pointed to Luke 2, where a young Jesus grows in wisdom through questioning and being questioned. Even the eternal Son of God, by taking on humanity, submitted to the ordinary process of human development. "What the temptation for us is in the age of AI is that some of the usage of technology can skip that growth and we get right to results, we get right to answers, but we don't become wise in that," Dyer said. "All we have is information."
He also noted that the Greek word for carpenter — tektōn, used of Jesus' earthly trade — is the root of the English word "technology." The maker of all things was, in his earthly life, also a craftsman: someone who learned from his heavenly Father and his earthly father, and who made things by hand.
Looking ahead to the final chapter of the biblical story, Dyer pointed to the new creation as further evidence that human making matters to God. The vision in Revelation of a holy city with its roads, gates, and the accumulated work of human hands suggests that what people create is not simply discarded at the end of history but redeemed and reformed within it.
"Human making is still a big part of us in the garden, in the era of sin, through redemption, and even in the future," Dyer said. "The things that we make and create are important to God so much that he wants to save our souls, resurrect our bodies, but also redeem and reform the things that we make." For theological educators, he argued, that vision gives human creativity, including the responsible use of technology, a weight and dignity that extends all the way to eternity.
Practical advice for classrooms and institutions
On the question of practical teaching, Dyer argued that the most important intervention theological educators can make is to keep the purpose of seminary formation consistently in front of students, before any conversation about AI policy begins.
He described a practice at DTS of telling prospective students that if they are coming primarily to acquire information, they can likely find it elsewhere for free. The real reason to come to seminary, he said, is to be transformed. "The goal is not to make the best chart of Leviticus possible," he said, describing a typical assignment. "The goal is to become the kind of person who's made a chart of Leviticus — who's really had that become part of who they are. So in that moment when you are with somebody who is hurting, you sort of just bleed out Bible and bleed out theology."
Dyer recommended that educators also distinguish between different types of AI use rather than addressing the technology in broad strokes. Generating ideas, producing an outline, drafting text, and editing text are meaningfully different activities. He suggested faculty specify which of these are permitted in their classrooms and why, and communicate the consequences clearly. At DTS, he said, the faculty has worked to give professors email templates they can use to open a dialogue with students whose work seems inconsistent — asking questions before making accusations.
Tzeng added a structural suggestion: reduce assignment word counts. Because AI excels at generating long, fluent essays, he argued, shorter prompts — 150 or 500 words rather than several thousand — force students to develop and compress their own thinking rather than delegating volume to a machine. "If you shorten it up, it actually forces the student to really dig in deep and form what they thought," he said. He also recommended that educators raise their grading standards on the assumption that students have AI available. If AI can produce text that reads at a doctoral level, grading students at their previous standard may no longer reflect what genuine mastery looks like.
He further suggested helping students understand how AI works at a basic level, arguing that students who grasp the statistical nature of these systems are less likely to over-trust them. Related to this, he called for practical training in recognizing AI-generated errors, or "hallucinations": "I think we probably need training sessions, a class or a seminar, in this area of just ways to pump out false information on it and then show the students, and then get them trained in a way that helps them recognize when it comes out false or not."
The ethics of presenting oneself as able
On ethical questions, Dyer reframed the issue beyond the historic issue of plagiarism, which he described as primarily a concern about theft of another's ideas, toward a different kind of dishonesty: misrepresenting one's own capabilities.
"In the age of AI, probably what we're talking about more is presenting yourself as able to do something that you really can't do," he said. "If you're saying, 'I'm able to synthesize this idea' or 'I'm able to write this paper' when you really can't, that's where I think we're crossing an ethical boundary."
He applied the same logic to the professors. Using AI to grade student work without disclosing it means educators are presenting themselves as doing something they are not.
DTS has also been working through a case that illustrates the complexity: the seminary offers courses in English, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. For some language communities it uses subtitles on English-language recordings. When Dyer's team began experimenting with AI voice generation as a substitute for subtitles, it created a situation where a professor appeared to be speaking fluently in a language they do not know.
"If we're asking our students not to present themselves as able to do something they can't, but then we're having a professor being translated into another voice and literally presenting themselves as doing something they cannot do, that has some real conflict there," Dyer said. He added a further concern: relying on AI-translated English-language professors could slow the development of theologians who are native speakers of those languages — a cost the wider church would eventually bear.
Tzeng named AI-generated citations as the most widespread integrity problem he has observed. Because of how large language models work, he explained, they cannot reliably produce accurate references. When asked to generate a literature survey with citations, an AI will often fabricate sources, misattribute quotations, or cite real works incorrectly. "It'll even take a quotation and make it so that it's not exactly what the author said," he said. "And so in that sense, you're not properly quoting that."
Where AI helps, and where it distorts
Both speakers identified areas of genuine benefit. Dyer described the shift from search-engine-based research to conversational AI as a significant change in how students and scholars access information — one that can be productive, provided the tools being used link to verifiable sources. He described practical automation uses at DTS: extracting data from PDFs into usable formats, and drafting initial replies to high volumes of student emails during registration periods. In the second case, a human reviews the AI-drafted response before it is sent, reducing administrative load while preserving human judgment at the point of contact with students.
"We're able to serve our students better," he said. "Paying a little bit of money for an AI subscription versus an entire person in those really high moments — we're actually reducing the cost of education as a whole."
Tzeng noted that AI has been particularly useful for international students writing in English as a second language, helping them produce cleaner prose than they might otherwise manage. He was quick, however, to identify a corresponding harm: many of those same students now spend more time, not less, working on their writing as they end up focusing on refining AI-generated text rather than developing their own voice. The result can become visible when those students preach. "If you are giving a sermon, you should really have your own voice in it," he said. "But someone's delivering a sermon and it just sounds like AI as they're delivering it — it's not very good."
Dyer framed the beneficial and harmful uses of AI in terms of a spectrum running from full automation on one end to full preservation on the other. Tasks that are purely administrative or mechanical can appropriately be automated; tasks that form the person doing them should be protected.
He argued that theological education, as a discipline, belongs largely on the preservation side of that spectrum, particularly while students are still developing foundational skills. "When we move over into automation, that's where we start to lose a skill because we're giving that over to a machine to do," he said. The hard work of theological formation, in his view, is exactly the kind of labor that should not be made easier.
Curriculum and the decade ahead
On longer-term curriculum implications, Dyer maintained that the core disciplines of theological training, such as biblical literacy, synthesis, discernment, pastoral judgment, are the ones that matter most and are least amenable to automation.
"When you're facing someone in a hospital and they're asking you a difficult question, you can't turn to GPT in that moment," he said. "The goal of our instruction is love," he added, citing Paul's statement in 1 Timothy. "It is not papers."
The challenge is keeping the main purpose of formation in front of students even while acknowledging that once they are in ministry, AI tools may genuinely help them work more efficiently. The distinction he drew is between the developmental period, where the discipline of doing hard things matters, and vocational practice, where appropriate automation of secondary tasks frees time for direct ministry.
Tzeng suggested that emerging "agentic AI" (systems capable of completing multi-step tasks autonomously) could eventually assist with the burden of grading, which he described as one of the most time-consuming aspects of faculty work. An agentic system could potentially evaluate a student paper multiple times using different parameters and average the results, giving faculty a richer picture of the work.
He also offered a measure of reassurance for theological educators who may feel overwhelmed by the pace of change: his research suggests that theology, along with philosophy, is among the disciplines much less exposed to AI disruption compared to fields like mathematics or computer programming. The reason, he argued, connects to the nature of theological knowledge itself. "We gain our knowledge from God," he said. "We don't gain knowledge just from reiterating what everyone else is doing."
A tool, not a replacement
The webinar is part of the ongoing work of the Technology and Innovation in Learning Impact Team within ICETE. Tzeng, who serves on the group's steering committee alongside David Turnbull, who moderated the session, and others, described its aim in his earlier interview with Christian Daily International as equipping theological educators for a post-digital world. They seek to do that by providing practical tools as well as fostering the theological reflection needed to use those tools wisely.
Following the presentations, participants moved into smaller breakout groups to discuss how the issues raised applied in their own institutional contexts. The session's recording will been made available for educators who were unable to attend.
For Tzeng, the essential starting point has not changed from what he said in the previous interview with Christian Daily International: clarity about what AI actually is must come before any decision about how to use it.
"A lot of people interact with AI as if it's a human," he said at that time. "But it's not — it's a tool. And we, as people made in God's image, have the responsibility to use it well."]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[OCMS taps first director for Regnum Books to widen Global South scholarship]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/ocms-taps-first-director-for-regnum-books-to-widen-global-south-scholarship</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/ocms-taps-first-director-for-regnum-books-to-widen-global-south-scholarship</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/47/4717.png">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Angus Crichton, newly appointed director of Regnum Books, the publishing arm of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ OCMS ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Angus Crichton, newly appointed director of Regnum Books, the publishing arm of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:39:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Regnum Books, the publishing arm of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, has appointed Angus Crichton as its first dedicated director, a move the organization says marks a new stage in its development as a platform for theological scholarship from the Global South.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Regnum Books, the publishing arm of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, has appointed Angus Crichton as its first dedicated director, a move the organization says marks a new stage in its development as a platform for theological scholarship from the Global South.
The appointment ends an arrangement in which OCMS Executive Director Paul Bendor-Samuel oversaw Regnum alongside his broader responsibilities at the center. Bendor-Samuel will remain in his OCMS role while Crichton takes on day-to-day leadership of the publishing operation on a part-time basis, according to an announcement from the organization.
Crichton brings more than two decades of experience in Christian publishing, with a particular focus on Christianity in Africa. Most recently, he served as Global Advocacy Manager at SPCK and has been involved in publishing projects in Uganda and across Anglophone Africa. He also held a research associate post at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, where he studied the early history of Christianity in Uganda and worked to make archival materials more accessible to researchers in the country.
His background spans research, teaching, and publishing partnerships with theological colleges and scholars across the African continent.
Bendor-Samuel said Crichton's appointment comes at a significant point for the imprint. "He brings extensive publishing expertise, deep relationships across the global Church, and a shared commitment to ensuring that voices from the Majority World are heard, valued, and strengthened," Bendor-Samuel said in the OCMS announcement.
Founded as an academic imprint connected to OCMS, Regnum publishes monographs, edited volumes, and shorter works aimed at making contextually grounded theological research available to a wider readership. The press has sought to give a platform to writers from regions where Christianity is expanding rapidly but where access to mainstream academic publishing remains limited.
Crichton said he sees the role as an opportunity to extend that work. "I look forward to building on that foundation through partnership, widening access, and helping bring important voices and research to readers across cultures and contexts," he said, according to the announcement.
The OCMS, based in Oxford, describes its mission as equipping individuals and institutions for theological research while fostering dialogue between academics and practitioners in the global church.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Survey puts family at top of Jamaican values; clergy point to church influence]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/survey-puts-family-at-top-of-jamaican-values-clergy-point-to-church-influence</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/survey-puts-family-at-top-of-jamaican-values-clergy-point-to-church-influence</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/46/4655.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Church volunteer ministers to children in Jamaicas Blue Mountains, reflecting the Christian communitys enduring role in shaping family and education values across the island.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ IMB ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Church volunteer ministers to children in Jamaica's Blue Mountains, reflecting the Christian community's enduring role in shaping family and education values across the island. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 02:03:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Family ranked as the most important value among Jamaicans in a new nationwide survey, and two prominent clergymen say the Christian church deserves much of the credit for that result — even though religion and spirituality came in fourth on the same list.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Family ranked as the most important value among Jamaicans in a new nationwide survey, and two prominent clergymen say the Christian church deserves much of the credit for that result — even though religion and spirituality came in fourth on the same list.
The findings come from Market Research Services Ltd.'s Heart of Jamaicans Survey, reported by the Jamaica Gleaner. The survey sampled 1,100 Jamaicans aged 18 and older between Nov. 17 and Dec. 10, 2024. Respondents ranked family, children's education, personal independence, religion and spirituality, and personal education as their five most important values. The survey carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
The Rev. Devon Dick, pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church in St. Andrew, told the Gleaner he was initially surprised that religion ranked fourth rather than higher. But he argued the placement of family at the top reflects church influence more than secular priorities.
"In Jamaica, part of the reason why family is so important is because of the Church and the rites of the Church, starting from dedication of infants to baptising persons, to marriage, to death," Dick said. "All of these things happen within the Church."
He also linked the survey's strong showing for education to the church's historical role. Before and after emancipation, he said, it was the church — not the state — that pushed to educate the general population, and that legacy continues to shape what Jamaicans prioritize.
Bishop Alvin Bailey, president of the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, echoed that view in comments to the Gleaner. Despite what he described as inadequacies in Jamaica's public education system, he noted that some of the country's best-performing schools are church-owned.
"Education is high, the Church is playing a significant role in that; family is high, the Church is playing a significant role in that," Bailey said. "The home and the Church are still one of the most positive institutions of socialisation in this country."
The survey revealed generational differences in how Jamaicans rank their values. Younger respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 were less likely to name religion, spirituality or children's education among their top concerns — a pattern the survey attributed in part to their stage of life, as most have not yet taken on parental responsibilities or made deep spiritual commitments.
Older Jamaicans, those 65 and above, showed less interest in personal education but placed greater weight on respect, kindness and spiritual life. The survey also found that men, particularly the youngest and oldest age groups, were less inclined toward religion and traditional social norms than women.
Among higher-income respondents, children's education and adherence to rules ranked lower, while kindness and respect were more frequently cited as priorities.
At the other end of the scale, the Gleaner reported that community status, access to local information and a day-by-day approach to life were the three things Jamaicans valued least.
Bailey said the overall results confirm that Jamaica's social values remain deeply connected to its Christian heritage.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[ACTEA restructures into three language-based councils to strengthen theological training across Africa]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/actea-restructures-into-three-language-based-councils-to-strengthen-theological-training-across-africa</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/actea-restructures-into-three-language-based-councils-to-strengthen-theological-training-across-africa</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[CDI Staff]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/42/4284.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[David Tarus, executive director of the Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa, addresses participants during the ACTEA General Assembly marking the organization’s 50th anniversary.]]></media:title>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Courtesy of ACTEA ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ BISHOFTU, Ethiopia — David Tarus, executive director of the Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa, addresses participants during the ACTEA General Assembly marking the organization’s 50th anniversary. The gathering brought together theological educators from across Africa to discuss expanding leadership training as rapid church growth continues to outpace theological education capacity on the continent. ]]>
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                                                                            <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 12:50:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Africa's main evangelical theological accreditation body has voted to reorganize itself into three distinct language-based councils, a change its leaders say is designed to close a long-standing gap in service to French- and Portuguese-speaking institutions across the continent.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Africa's main evangelical theological accreditation body has voted to reorganize itself into three distinct language-based councils, a change its leaders say is designed to close a long-standing gap in service to French- and Portuguese-speaking institutions across the continent.
The Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA) announced the restructuring following its General Assembly and 50th Anniversary gathering in Addis Ababa, held March 4-12. Delegates voted to divide the organization into three arms: the Council for Anglophone Theological Institutions (CATI), the Conseil des Institutions Théologiques de l'Afrique Francophone (CITAF) and the Conselho das Instituições Teológicas Lusófonas (CITEL). Each council will operate under a shared continental secretariat, a single board and one General Assembly, all within the broader structure of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa (AEA).
The decision marks a significant shift for an organization that, despite a founding vision of trilingual, continental reach, had come to be seen primarily as an Anglophone body. ACTEA Executive Director Dr. David Tarus acknowledged in an announcement to the ACTEA community that Francophone and Lusophone institutions had not received consistent support over the decades.
"Despite this trilingual heritage and genuine efforts, ACTEA did not serve its Francophone and Lusophone constituencies as fully and consistently as it should have," Tarus wrote.
The restructuring carries particular weight given the scale of the training gap facing African churches. Church growth across Africa has far outpaced the capacity of theological institutions to train pastors and ministry leaders — a crisis that affects congregations in both urban and rural areas. Tarus had previously told CDI that many African churches are led by pastors with little or no formal theological training, and that seminaries and Bible colleges have struggled to expand fast enough to meet demand.
The new structure gives formal standing to CITAF, the Francophone council, which has operated for more than two decades and supports over 200 theological institutions and Christian universities in Francophone Africa. Tarus said CITAF's experience, networks and relationships will now be integrated directly into ACTEA's continental work. The Anglophone and Lusophone councils are still to be constituted.
Founded in March 1976 as a project of the AEA's theological education commission, ACTEA was established to provide accreditation and quality assurance for evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges at a time when formal accreditation systems were limited across much of Africa. As Christian Daily International reported, the organization's 50th anniversary assembly in Ethiopia drew representatives from theological institutions in 31 countries and included discussion of how to expand training without weakening academic or biblical standards.
Tarus framed the restructuring in ecclesiological terms, citing Ephesians 4:5-6 and invoking the unity Christ prayed for as the foundation for the new structure.
The Anglophone and Lusophone councils have yet to be formally established, leaving the full implementation of the new structure as a task for the coming period.]]></content:encoded>
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                <title><![CDATA[Filipino Deaf Community reviews New Testament translation into Filipino Sign Language]]></title>
                <link>https://www.christiandaily.com/news/filipino-deaf-community-reviews-new-testament-translation-into-filipino-sign-language</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.christiandaily.com/news/filipino-deaf-community-reviews-new-testament-translation-into-filipino-sign-language</guid>
                                                            <dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellen Gabisay]]></dc:creator>
                                                                                                                            <media:content  url="https://www.christiandaily.com/media/original/img/0/45/4535.jpg">
                            <media:title><![CDATA[Filipino Deaf Community reviews FSL New Testament translation]]></media:title>
                                                            <media:credit role="author" scheme="urn:ebu">
                                    <![CDATA[ Philippine Bible Society Facebook page ]]>
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                                    <![CDATA[ Members of the Filipino Deaf Community gathered at the Philippine Bible Society (PBS) Ministry Center to take part in a Community Check for the New Testament in Filipino Sign Language (FSL). ]]>
                                </media:description>
                                                    </media:content>
                                                                            <pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 04:02:00 -0400</pubDate>
                <description><![CDATA[Members of the Filipino Deaf Community participated in a review of the Filipino Sign Language (FSL) New Testament translation on April 28–29 at the Philippine Bible Society (PBS) Ministry Center in Manila.]]></description>
                <content:encoded><![CDATA[
Members of the Filipino Deaf Community participated in a review of the Filipino Sign Language (FSL) New Testament translation on April 28–29 at the Philippine Bible Society (PBS) Ministry Center in Manila.
Eight deaf participants examined selected passages from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, providing feedback to improve clarity, accuracy, and natural expression in Filipino Sign Language. The review sessions were conducted by the FSL Bible Translation Team in coordination with PBS Translation Officer Ptr. Alvin Bailon and FSL Ministry Coordinator Ptr. Jojo Mahinan.
Participants assessed how biblical concepts were rendered in sign language and suggested revisions where meaning, flow, or cultural expression needed improvement. Their input forms part of the formal “community check” stage of the translation process, which allows native FSL users to evaluate whether the text communicates Scripture accurately and naturally.
The Filipino Sign Language New Testament translation is part of an ongoing initiative led by the Philippine Bible Society to make Scripture accessible to deaf Filipinos in their primary language. The project involves linguists, deaf consultants, and translation specialists working together to ensure accuracy in both meaning and expression.
PBS said community review sessions are a critical step in the translation workflow, helping confirm that the text reflects both biblical meaning and  FSL usage among deaf communities in the Philippines.
Filipino Sign Language was declared the national sign language under Republic Act 11106, which mandates its use in education, government transactions, and official communication access for deaf Filipinos. The law also supports the development of FSL-based educational and communication resources, including Bible translation efforts, to strengthen accessibility for deaf individuals nationwide.
The PBS FSL Bible project continues alongside other deaf ministry initiatives, with additional review sessions planned as translation work progresses toward completion of the New Testament.]]></content:encoded>
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