Dr. Rey Taniajura, chairman of NPMP, attended the Encarnacao Alliance conference in Chennai, India on November 27 to December 1. The alliance aims to raise 50,000 workers in slums of the least evangelized cities in the world, particularly India, South America and Asia.
The conference was initiated by Dr. Viv Grigg of the Urban Leadership Foundation of New Zealand. Dr. Grigg has been involved in pioneering church planting teams and missions in slums of Manila, Kolkata (India), Sao Paolo (Brazil) and around the world since the 1970s. He has authored at least two books, Companion to the Poor, 2004, and Cry of the Urban Poor, 2005.
Dr. Taniajura participated as observer in the workshops of the committee whose task is to develop a Master of Arts program in Transformational Urban Leadership (MATUL) under the alliance.
The MATUL program will be piloted in 2007 in three schools, namely, Asian Theological Seminary (ATS) in Manila, Hindustan Bible Institute and College in India, and Azusa Pacific University in the United States. Dr. Corrie De Boer represented ATS in the committee. Dr. Bobby Gupta represented Hindustan Bible College and Dr. Richard Slimbach, Azusa Pacific University.
Dr. Slimbach is chairman of Azusa’s Global Studies and Sociology department. The MATUL program will provide scholarship to church workers who are either working now or interested to work in the slums. If you have an interest to work in the slums or are presently working in one of the slum areas in your city, you may want to consider enrolling in the MATUL program. Possible scholarship slots are being considered. For inquiries, email us.
