NEWS RELEASE
October 25, 2018
For more information, contact Shannon Cowett at [email protected].
BAPTIST WORLD ALLIANCE LAUNCHES EXPANDED HORIZONS PROGRAM – proven online training for children and youth church workers
Falls Church, VA – The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) is expanding the HORIZONS Youth and Children’s Worker Program to its worldwide network. HORIZONS is a program with a decade of proven success, with more than 500 people already having completed the course. Now, the BWA will bring it to all the world’s Baptists.
HORIZONS is a free online training program that guides students through 24 modules in a self-paced program covering youth and children leadership topics. Each module takes about an hour to complete.
It was created out of a need felt by European Baptist Federation (EBF) leadership to discover the needs of youth workers. Throughout the years, with the support of Canadian Baptist Ministries, HORIZONS has strengthened the ministry of EBF across Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
“We are very excited to help this program expand its already impressive reach,” said BWA General Secretary Elijah M. Brown. “With more than 50% of the world’s Christians under age 30, this is one of our most important efforts, ever.”
Youth ministry leaders can take this program in 12 languages – English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Norwegian, German, Serbian, Hungarian, and Portuguese. Online mentors who help interact and guide registered students are already available in 45 countries. To date, more than 12,000 modules have been completed.
Jeff Carter, who designed and implemented this program following his 2003 commission by EBF to conduct an intensive research study of the 54 nations within EBF, now comes to lead its expansion through the BWA. “The success of HORIZONS is really the impact of advocacy and encouragement of our locally trained mentors,” Carter said. “These are experienced youth workers who provide the local context for material covered in the course.”
Carter will serve at BWA as Director of HORIZONS and Congress Mobilization in partnership with Canadian Baptist Ministries, where he previously ministered as Youth Ministry Training Coordinator and Advisor for the EBF. He will also be working with the BWA to encourage widespread participation in the upcoming BWA Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 22-26, 2020.
Originally from Nova Scotia, Carter held a post as a faculty lecturer at the International Baptist Theological Seminary where he developed youth leadership courses for the master’s and certificate programs.
Though this program is being offered for free, each module costs approximately US$20 with 250 students already enrolled. Churches and individuals can sponsor student participation for
US$480 for the entire course. To help support this important initiative, visit
www.bwanet.org/online-giving.
“We want every youth and children’s worker to have access to this training,” said General Secretary Brown, “and in places where seminary education is not available, this is going to make a critical difference for reaching the next generations.”
To listen to Jeff Carter discuss HORIZONS in a podcast hosted by BWA’s Division on Mission, Evangelism, and Justice, visit www.bwanet.org/programs/mej.
To learn more or to enroll in HORIZONS, please visit www.bwahorizons.org.
About Baptist World Alliance:
“Networking the Baptist family to impact the world for Christ.”
239 Member Organizations in 125 countries and territories with 169,000 churches and 49 million baptized believers
Media Contacts:
Shannon Cowett
Baptist World Alliance
+1 (703) 790-8980
Shannon[@]bwanet.org
About HORIZONS:
Jeff Carter
BWAHorizons
Jeff[@]bwanet.org