Welcome Our Mission Our Convictions Leadership Profile Bible Conferences International Ministry APOYO: Our Latin American Ministry Books and Conference CD Sets Opportunities to Partner Current Schedule How to Contact Us 12575 Ridgeland Ave. Palos Heights, IL 60463-1867 800-980-2226 E-Mail International Ministry Overview Leadership Resources International (LRI) is a Palos Heights, Illinois, based evangelical mission agency committed to "equipping and encouraging church leaders" in Latin America, Russia, Asia and Africa. We train pastors around the world who have had little or no formal Bible training. Why this focus? The Church is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. That's the good news! The bad news is this: of the estimated two million pastors in the world, 90% or more have little or no formal Bible training. These two million pastors are crying out for resources, for training, for any kind of help. Most will never have a chance to go to Bible school. Never! So we bring the Bible school to them--not buildings and chairs, but teaching and resources. Our equipping is not academically oriented, but practical and thoroughly biblical. We seek to stimulate pastoral growth in five significant areas of life and ministry: 1) biblical knowledge 2) ministry skills 3) character growth 4) relationships 5) multiplication All of our teaching is grounded in the Scriptures. Core subjects include Bible study methods, teaching and preaching--in other words, hermeneutics and homiletics. Other teaching focuses on subjects of greatest importance to the pastors, i.e. leadership, counseling and other areas that the pastors themselves identify. Our training is highly relational and learner-centered, focusing on high levels of learner engagement, participation and dialogue, small-group work, feedback, and accountability. Learners actually do what they are learning! We provide Leadership Resources International's books as well as Bible reference books to the pastors so that the impact of the training might continue on long afterwards. Books such as these are typically included: • study Bible • Bible dictionary • Bible atlas • Bible handbook • concordance • commentaries Our Core Values (See LRI's "Ten Landmarks") form the foundation for our ministry. We are outcome-oriented and evaluate ministry effectiveness on three levels: understanding (timeframe--immediate) change (timeframe--weeks/months) impact (timeframe--months/years/generations)   Two Ministry Models 1. Our Pastors' Training Workshops are typically held at a Bible camp in a rural area over several intensive days, with training focused on inductive Bible study method, sermon preparation, expository preaching, and the use of Bible reference books, such as dictionaries, concordances and commentaries. We provide 25-30 pastors with a small pastor's library consisting of 7-10 volumes. Most of these pastors have few, if any, Bible study resources. We try to bring the benefits of a Bible institute to these pastors through these regional workshops. We often schedule a follow-up workshop (approximately six months later) as we continue to counsel, train and encourage these pastors. 2. We must accelerate pastoral training if large numbers of pastors are going to be equipped. Our TNT (Training National Trainers) ministry is a multiplication model in which we invest our lives in a small group of godly, gifted pastor-trainers and then resource them to invest their lives in many other pastors. We make a 3-4 year commitment to a given group of TNTers. Then, every 3-6 months, our team spends a full week with these TNTers for in-depth training, extensive debriefing, feedback, and assessment. After each training session, the TNTers train new groups of pastors and follow up with previously trained groups of pastors. These TNTers are fording rivers, scrambling up mountain passes and taking 42-hour bus rides in order to equip and encourage their fellow national pastors. We launched TNT ministries in Cuba, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Central America, Africa, and in restricted-access countries in Asia. Partnerships We partner with a number of mission organizations around the world. We formed a strategic partnership for Latin America (known as APOYO) with HCJB World Radio. In Russia, we work closely with the Slavic Gospel Association. We also partner with Pioneers-Africa in West Africa We also partner with many U.S. pastors and churches. U.S. pastors have helped teach Pastors' Training Workshops throughout Latin America. A select group of U.S. pastors are also working as volunteer TNT trainers in Latin America, Russia and Asia. If you are a pastor, we encourage you to join with our staff and actually participate in our training ministries. Where necessary, we will provide interpreters so that you might share in the teaching ministry. North American pastors who have participated in the past have returned different men. We can almost guarantee a life-changing, vision-impacting experience. Many home churches benefited greatly because of the expanded perspective that their pastor gained on the mission field. We invite churches to sponsor a Pastors' Training Workshop. Almost every month, we have workshops scheduled in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, as well as other countries. The cost of a typical Pastors' Training Workshop, including 25-30 Bible-study resource library sets, is $4,800. Round-trip air travel and in-country expenses for pastors and/or others from the church would likely be about $1,200 per person (for Latin America, higher elsewhere.) Another option--sponsoring one of our TNTers for one year of training and ministry at a cost of $2,400. Descriptive brochures and eight-nine minute videos are available to help share the vision with others. Click here to learn about ways to partner