Those who have been in contact with us for a while will know that at Asia Harvest we conduct numerous different ministry activities, but they all fall under one of just six main core projects, such as our Asia Bible Fund; the Asian Workers’ Fund; Living Martyrs’ Fund; Children’s Fund, and Persecution & Relief Fund.

Within each project are various sub-projects. For example, we support over 300 Christian lepers in India (highlighted in our October 2022 newsletter).

That support comes under the Relief Fund. We support hundreds of widows, which is part of the Living Martyrs’ Fund, in addition to a host of other activities that serve to advance the Gospel.

It is rare for us to announce a new core project, but this month we would like to introduce the Ministry Training Fund (MTF), which we hope will remain a foundational part of what we do in Asia for many years to come.

As the Lord Jesus commanded in the passage at the top of this page, He did not tell us only to share the Gospel or to get people to make professions of faith.

That is only the start. Missions history shows that works focused only on evangelism usually didn’t have lasting fruit, for Jesus told us to “make disciples of all nations...teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” 

The Ministry Training Fund is therefore about helping the Asian Church disciple believers and to equip them to disciple others, especially among unreached people groups.

Three Requests From Asian Church Leaders

Over the years, as we have traveled throughout Asia, and developed strong relationships with many church and mission leaders, the three main answers they give when asked what their greatest needs are have consistently been:

1. Please pray for us;
2. We need Bibles; and
3. We need help training leaders.

In many parts of Asia, the number of Christians has increased rapidly and churches are overflowing, but the leaders know that if they don’t have effective discipleship programs, the harvest might rot, and new believers will be easy prey to cults and false teaching.

Instead of focusing solely on soul-winning, the most effective ministries we partner with have grasped the need to establish biblical leadership as laid out by the Apostle Paul:

“He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; ” (Ephesians 4:11-13)

Even though this is the first time we have officially announced the Ministry Training Fund in a newsletter, we have been helping our Asian co-workers with this need for decades. Just in the last few years we have used donations designated “Where Needed Most” to train 9,515 believers throughout Asia, so this number is our starting statistic for the project. We expect the number of those trained and equipped will rise sharply in the coming years.

In the remainder of this newsletter, we will share a few pictures from training courses we have been honored to support, along with some comments about the importance of the project by various Asian ministry leaders.

As you will see, this project does not at all mean that we are helping establish Western style seminaries or Bible schools. Instead, the Ministry Training Fund exists to train and equip soldiers for spiritual battle, able to win and disciple unreached people groups.

Training is often held in places and in a manner you may not be used to, in what could be described as biblical settings, like outside under a tree, or with believers sitting in a circle on a dirt floor, facing and interacting with one another. 

Apart from new believers being discipled in God’s Word, more specialized training is also provided to equip workers in areas like children’s ministry, frontline churchplanting among unreached people groups; how to conduct literacy classes; and how to effectively disciple Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists for Christ.

The support we provide includes costs like travel for the participants to attend the training; and food, books, and other resources when the meeting is underway.

Without this help, most would not be able to attend.

On average it costs $50 to help train a worker.