Bible Study & Leadership Development Seminars
One of Life Light’s many aims is to pursue a church in India that is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. Because of this, we place a huge emphasis on training and equipping local pastors and leaders in India.
By developing partnerships with Bible scholars and Inductive Bible Study teachers, we have been able to arrange Bible study seminars every January for the past several years. This is another very important aspect of our ministry where we empower Christian leaders who cannot afford to attend the expensive Bible seminaries, and would not be able to understand the course work due to language barriers. The main hurdle is the English language. Most of the Christian literature has not been translated into native Indian Languages. Our annual Bible study material has been translated into Marathi, and we conduct the seminars with the help of a native translator.
Life Light Ministry is in network with 150 pastors in our state. These pastors and Christian leaders are not part of any denomination. They are working independently in rural parts of our state of Maharashtra. Every year we select different topics. So far, we have studied the reliability of Scripture, the book of Romans, and a condensed course on Genesis to Revelations. Every year we translate notes into our native language, Marathi, with the help of a translator. Our pastors like to ask questions and have lively discussions amongst themselves on how best to apply their studies to their local churches, and to the people in the groups they work with.
In all our efforts, we also emphasize the importance of leadership development. The Indian church is in need of indigenous leaders who will cast the vision for the church in India. We see ourselves as an empowering ministry which will challenge young men and women to discover their spiritual gifts, develop them, and create an avenue to employ these gifts in an Indian cultural context.
We promote leadership development by organizing three-day leadership seminars. The purpose of these seminars is to empower indigenous Christian leaders. These seminars are organized three times a year. They are held during Diwali (Hindu religious festival) or Christmas vacation time. We have found this time to be suitable for most of the laity who can travel along with their preachers. The medium of instruction are Hindi, Marathi, and sometimes English, which are translated into native languages. The seminars use the life stories of Christian leaders like Sadhu Sunder Singh, Pandita Ramabai, and Mother Teresa as sources of inspiration for teaching emerging leaders.