Global Leadership Development Initiative
GTM’s flagship initiative, training the leaders who are training the church across the Global South.
Why This Work Matters
During the last century, the center of world Christianity shifted dramatically. A hundred years ago, 95% of Christians lived in the Western world; today, roughly 70% live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The church is growing fastest exactly where access to theological training is thinnest.
“Today, an estimated 2 million pastors in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have either very limited or no access whatsoever to any form of theological training. More than 1,000 new pastors are needed per day to serve the 50,000 new believers that are baptized every day around the world.”
— Dr. Ramesh Richard, Professor & Researcher, Dallas Theological Seminary
The challenge isn’t Gospel receptivity, it’s leadership capacity.
Mission as Theological Education
Over the last two decades, the global church has increasingly come to understand its mission in terms of theological education itself — training leaders is how the Gospel keeps moving. GLDI exists inside that shift, partnering with indigenous leadership around the world rather than exporting outside leadership to run things.
How GLDI Works
GLDI carries out its mission through four strategic pillars. Every partner institution retains full ownership of its own ministry. GLDI’s role is to strengthen and resource, never to run things from the outside.
Faculty Development
Doctoral mentoring and training for the professors who train tomorrow’s pastors, closing the gap between a seminary’s ambitions and the qualified faculty it has to teach toward them.
Institutional Strengthening
Institutional assessments, strategic planning, and sustainable leadership models that help a seminary stand on its own for the long term.
Consortium Collaboration
Regional networks of seminaries and Champion Partners working together rather than alone, sharing resources, faculty, and strategy across a region.
Digital Theological Education
Digital libraries and technology that extend the reach of sound teaching to students and campuses a single seminary could never reach alone.
Where We Work
GLDI works through six regional consortiums spanning Latin America, Asia, the Portuguese-speaking world, Eastern Europe, North Africa & the Middle East, and the Caribbean Basin uniting indigenous leaders, seminaries, and Champion Partners in each region.
Global Ministry, By the Numbers
140+
Seminaries partnered with
15
New seminaries launched
160+
Campuses and extension sites
80+
Nations across 5 continents
6
Regional consortiums
Join the Work
This work isn’t ours alone. Champion Partners — individuals, churches, and ministry agencies — walk alongside international seminaries to meet their most strategic needs.