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EL PASO—Nine students comprised the first graduating class of the El Paso International School of Faith, a new effort to strengthen biblical literacy among pastors and lay leaders in the region.
The school, which started two years ago, partners with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and held its first commencement Aug. 22.
“Living here in El Paso for 30 years, I’ve seen a decline in doctrinal, sound preaching,” Mark Rawlins, associate pastor of McCombs Baptist Church in El Paso, told the TEXAN.
With a conviction that he needed to help address the problem, Rawlins began to design a curriculum for men called to church leadership who could not travel to seminary. Then he met a couple of SBTC staff members who already had assembled a training curriculum for such needs.
“Here I had been trying to put the curriculum together old school,” Rawlins said. “They had the full package, so we incorporated it. That was a Godsend.”
Jim Richards, executive director of the SBTC, has been supportive of the El Paso International School of Faith and has helped personally with scholarship fundraisers, Rawlins said.
“It’s amazing how it all came together,” Rawlins said.
Pastors with seminary degrees and at least 10 years of experience teach the classes, Rawlins said, and about 30 men are enrolled now at four locations. The school does not have a central location but meets in churches that want to host classes.
Credits that students earn at the school can be transferred to Criswell College, Jacksonville College and even Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Rawlins said.
“The curriculum we’re using is not just a hodge-podge of books. It was looked at by the seminaries and by four-year colleges,” he said.
Upon graduation, students receive a diploma, an official transcript and a letter of acknowledgement from the SBTC.
The graduation ceremony in August was a standard commencement, Rawlins said, with a procession, a keynote address and the presence of special guests. Rawlins delivered the address, and David Alexander, a church planting lead associate with the SBTC, was there to commend the graduates.
Before the school launched, Rawlins surveyed a portion of El Paso and discovered that 90 percent of respondents saw a need for an adult Christian learning center. As time goes by, more churches are taking an interest in the school, he said.
“We are reaching out to various ethnic backgrounds,” Rawlins said, noting students are working with Koreans, Germans, Hispanics and Chinese, among others.
Students who sense a call to plant a church are able to work closely with Chuy Avila, an SBTC church planting missionary in El Paso.
“We know the best way to transform El Paso with the power of the Gospel is through church planting,” Avila told the TEXAN. “We are partnering with the El Paso International School of Faith in order to equip church planters to begin healthy churches. Our partnership is a great asset to recruit new church planters.”
Three of the nine graduates are pastoring new churches in El Paso, Avila said.
Feedback from students, Avila said, has been positive, as they are happy to receive quality training from the school of faith, and the SBTC benefits by having a process to support new churches in El Paso.
“The best way to see your community transformed is through planting healthy churches,” Avila said, “so we need partnership churches. We really need churches that want to partner with us to launch churches here in El Paso—any church. It doesn’t matter how big or how small a church, they are welcome to partner with us in El Paso.”
