EduTecnologia in Latin America ... ?

From now on, you are going to see the word "EduTecnologia" in our ministry news updates, and in the activities we will be having in Latin America.

After living and serving for more than one year and a half in Costa Rica, it is time for evaluation, and time for decisions and planning towards the future in regards of our ministry.

After experiencing and being trained for the last years, we can see some common characteristics in most of the individuals, churches and organizations who are involved in the labor of training Christian men and women for the ministry in Latin America.

When the Bible talks about "equipping the saints for the ministry", the word saints does not mean "pastors and missionaries", but the word means all of those who have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. That means, all of us Christians who have believed in Christ for Salvation. Saints in the Bible means those who have been separated by God and for Him.

The main needs among those who are involved in training and equipping the saints in the Christian environment, could be framed in any of all of these areas:

* Education
* Technology
* Digital Resources

The answer to the question "what is the biggest need in your church group?", is almost always the same, no matter if you ask this question to a pastor or leader in a church located in a big city, a rural town or a remote area: "our church´s main need is training".

It is interesting that some church groups have receiving some training and others just little. But, in most of those churches (still those who have received some training) there is a deep sense and evidences of lack of training. The spiritual transformation is not broadly seen these days. I am not saying that there is not spiritual transformation at all, but I am saying that it is poor in many cases.

We have identified, that if we work not only thinking what we are going to teach, but how we are going to teach too, we can see positive changes in the Christian communities.

In this 21st century, we have to work hard studying our audience, the tools and vehicles that we use for teaching, the content, the formats and a series of factors that we have possible forgotten, or that we have been applying in a not very coordinated way. At the same time, we have to find out if some of the technological tools could help us in the broad challenge we face to equip and train the Christianity in Latin America.

Our ministry (MAF-Learning Technologies www.maflt.org), has been planning and developing strategies framed in the areas already mentioned: Education, Technology and Digital Resources. This has brought us, to establish some strategic alliances to conquer barriers to meet specif needs in the Region. We are mainly participating in meeting those equipping-training needs through:

* Consulting
* Training
* Projects

One of the strategic alliances we have developed in the last years has been with ProMETA. ProMETA (www.pro-meta.org), has been designing and developing a Masters in Theology 100% on distance in Spanish, using some of the technological support and tools that our mission has produced.