A history of Christianity in Mongolia is a unique experience in the modern Christian movement worldwide. Before Mongolia experienced a peaceful revolution to change the society from a closed-communist to a free-economic democratic country, Mongolia was under a communist regime for 70 years from 1921 to 1989. With a new social change, Mongolia became a democratic country and the freedom of religion was declared in its constitution.
First Christian missionaries arrived as early as the country just opened up. First Christian churches were established as a revival of people movement. The country has experienced the fastest church growth in the modern history. From a handful of Christian in 1991, the church sees over seventy thousand (70.000) Christians today in every corner of the country.
With this massive church growth, the church of Mongolia is experiencing a lack of leadership, especially in countryside of Mongolia. Most theological seminaries are located in the capital city. For a number of reasons, leaders in countryside, however, cannot effort to live and study in major cities. Yet, the statistics show that the church growth is expanding in every place of countryside in Mongolia. It is estimated that there are over 300 local churches in countryside but theologically trained pastors and leaders are always in shortage and some churches are left as a spiritual orphan if a leader migrates to cities.
In order to train more countryside church leaders in Mongolia, “Mobile Training Center” has been established with a vision to train local leaders in their home context in 2002. Instead of taking away leaders from their homes and ministries, “Mobile Training Center” sets up training centers in a province center where leaders from both province center, and surrounding towns could come and participate in the training.
The training is modeled as a intensive leadership training. A curriculum is designed to train leaders both theologically and practically as possible. Four times a year, the training is conducted in a same location with same leaders. A usual length of the training in one place is two years.
“Mobile Training Center” has trained over 180 local pastors and lay leaders since 2002. Out of 21 provinces of Mongolia, MMTC has covered 6 provinces in the last 14 years. In places where our training took place, the Lord has risen up leaders from local churches and once leaders are raised up, we see changes, transformation, and revival in many places. For our renewal of registration with the Mongolian government, we have renamed our ministry to “Servant Leadership Center” as a non-profit organization in 2011.
The First Class, Central Mongolia, 2002
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