05/02/25 This Week in GBTF

By Bruce Snavely | June 20, 2025

This week, Fidele Shinga wrapped up classes in Central African Republic. This class had 77 who completed the course requirements. Many of these were women because GBTF currently has no women’s ministry in this area. Many national pastors also added classes to their transcript toward graduation. Fidele says this class was very exciting, and the students were eager to learn the theology of Christology and Anthropology (mornings) and Pastoral Administration and Leadership (afternoons).

Of course, the building had no air conditioning, and in the extreme heat, the classes moved outside. This isn’t unusual for Africa! Fidele says this country had no electricity for 9-10 hours each day!

The other big ever that happened last week into this week was African IT Training! We are very excited about this portion of Global Baptist Training Foundation. Pastor Ntare Rodgers, GBTF church planter and Ugandan trainer, is also the GBTF African IT Director. Ntare is very knowledgeable about technology. In fact, he has created a GBTF Africa website AND an application for GBTF church planters, trainers, and officers to use to communicate and collect data.

Ntare and Pastor Naboth Atusasire set off on a long trek in Eastern Africa to deliver cell phones, particularly to remote pastors and trainers, and to train them how to use the app. We have included pictures of church planters and some do their meeting places. Buildings are an ever-present need! Here are pictures of that training and this description from Pastor Naboth:

“It’s so sad, we crossed to Congo to visit church planters, pr Gilbert joined us, we cleared with Uganda Immigration reaching on the other side of Congo after crossing the bridge, Congolese Immigration officer after seeing in my passport with many stamps of Rwanda he posed and looked at me and changed his mind and denied me entry. When I asked him why, he told me that am international traveler who needs to pay $50 for the visa and yet am not supposed to pay for visa since Congo is in East African community. But the reason behind he could have thought that am connected with Rwandan security who is in congo for spy. But thank God we telephoned our church planters they crossed to Uganda and we are with them taking lessons on how to use the GBTF App. These men have became much happy to have phones for their first time in life and they are committed to be giving reports.”