EAST IMPACT Program

 

A New Way of Getting a Theological Education

July was a month bustling with excitement at EAST. Not only did we begin a new school year with new students in our resident school, we also welcomed our inaugural cohort of 16 students to our EAST IMPACT program.

What is IMPACT? It is a new model of accredited theological training that is self-paced, adaptive to the learner’s ministry context and competency-based. It is catered to practitioners in ministry who would like to be equipped theologically while still serving in their respective mission fields. For the learning to be effective, every IMPACT program student would have a mentor team of three, comprising of a Faculty mentor, a Vocational mentor and a Life mentor. This mentor team will help the student grasp the “Content, Craft and Character” that he is learning. As the curriculum is self-paced, the student can take as short as a few months to as long as he needs to earn his degree.

Our inaugural cohort of 16 students are all staff members of Cru Singapore, Malaysia CCC and Philippines CCC. The top reason why these senior staff chose the IMPACT program is its flexibility. As experienced staff of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), these IMPACT students come with rich ministry experience and are busy ministry leaders. In a traditional model of theological training, these leaders would have to put ministry on-hold if they wish to start a fulltime program in a seminary. In IMPACT, the staff can get trained while engaged in ministry as learning takes place in the unique context of the individual staff’s ministry. Other students, like Rome Chew from Singapore Cru, said that the self-paced and customisable content was what drew him to consider enrolling in IMPACT. Rome professed he is not “the study type” and much prefer hands-on learning than reading books and writing assignments.

Eight of the new IMPACT students attended our program Orientation from 12-14 July 2023, which was held at the EAST Mission Hub. There will be an online Orientation on 7-9 August 2023 for the remaining eight students from the Philippines and Malaysia.

During the Orientation, the students learned about the unique approach of theological equipping in the IMPACT program. They were also introduced to the vast treasury of resources on Pathright, the learning management tool that they will be using for their program. Over three days, the students interacted with the IMPACT team, and met the faculty, the staff and students of EAST during the Chapel hour. On the last day of the orientation, there was an outing for the students with their respective Academic mentors.

As EAST hopes to make the IMPACT program affordable to many fulltime workers in different parts of the world, every student enrolled in IMPACT receives a subsidy. You can make a difference by sponsoring our inaugural and/or future cohorts of IMPACT students from Singapore/Malaysia/Philippines and other developing countries. Your generous giving will help them fulfill their desire for theological equipping without needing to take time away from ministry.