Rev. Paul Nitz, principal at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Malawi, Africa, calls a conference held at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary last week "inspiring and practical." He says, "I'm getting ideas and techniques from my fellow missionaries in other worker training systems, and I'm very much encouraged."

Nitz joined more than 50 others involved in the training of pastors, evangelists, and lay leaders in world missions and sister churches around the world at the World Seminary Conference Aug. 9–13, a conference held only once every four years.

Rev. Dan Koelpin says that those educating the future pastors and leaders of a national church have special challenges that make meeting together like this important. "It's absolutely essential for seminary professors to compare notes on their unique work and learn of educational tools and advances that have been developed that would better enable them to accomplish their important work of communicating God's saving truth," he says.

According to Rev. Ken Cherney, WLS world mission professor and conference coordinator, the 2010 conference highlighted two competing trends in world mission seminary education—the value of greater cooperation in worker training and the understanding of the uniqueness of each mission field. Workshops explored curriculum development and evaluation, distance learning techniques, and using English as a medium for instruction.

"I hope one benefit [missionaries walk away with] is here are ways we can profitably work together and share people and materials and approaches," says Cherney. "But I hope they also say here's what's unique about our setting and problems that we have to work out on our own in cooperation with the national church we are trying to serve."