Academia Cristo and TELL English: Overcoming Challenges with these Mission Efforts

Abstract

Academia Cristo is the multi-faceted effort of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) Latin America mission team to spread the gospel and plant churches in the Spanish speaking world. TELL English is a Multi-Language Productions (MLP) program – part of the WELS world missions team – to spread the gospel and train leaders to share the gospel in an effective and repeatable way in the English-speaking world. Academia Cristo and TELL English carry out this effort by recruiting and teaching people online with the help of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Zoom and then helping those trained individuals to start churches. Significant challenges have faced WELS World Missions, and new challenges have arisen in these more recent ministry training programs. These challenges include becoming known, financial cost, leader identification, student motivation, the transition from online training to in-person churches, maintaining doctrinal purity, and women’s ministry. This paper aims to demonstrate how Academia Cristo and TELL English have successfully addressed both old and new challenges through organic church planting, technology use, in-person visits, and personal counselors.