Maranatha Life's

Ministerial Intitute
of the Holy Spirit

Television Bible School

Dear Fellow Believers;

Can you imagine trying to pastor a church with only a sixth grade education? How about living on $50.00 per week while you are doing it? What if you had to build the church, pay the electricity bill, and pay for whatever bible school you were going to out of that $50.00 a week as well?

Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Yet, this is the type of situation that the average Latin American pastor finds himself in. It's no wonder that much of the church in Mexico, Central and South America is struggling with tradition, poverty, and lack of deep understanding of the Word of God.

Here, in the United States, we have a wealth of spiritual teaching available in books, cassettes, television, radio, and videotapes. Unfortunately, those things only exist here. Even if these resources did exist in Spanish, there literally isn't the money available in Latin America to take advantage of them. Any American minister who tried to minister in this situation would find himself floundering for lack of feeding his own spirit.

On top of all these disadvantages, the Latino pastors don't have the training that their American counterparts do. Along the Mexican/American border, only about a third of the pastors have had any sort of Bible school. And they are the fortunate ones. Farther down in Mexico, the statistics are much worse. What education they do have has not prepared them to minister, or even to receive revelation from the Word of God.

Our educational system here in the United States teaches students to reason and analyze. The Mexican education system, like most second and third world countries teaches to memorize and recite. So, when you and I study the Bible, we're trying to understand what it means, when a Latino is studying it, he's trying to memorize it, without necessarily understanding what he's memorizing.

There's an old saying that goes, "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." There are many missionaries working here along the border to give the Mexicans a fish (or a loaf of bread). But, there aren't many who are teaching them to fish.

God has given us the vision to teach the Mexicans (and other Latin Americans) how to fish. Not how to fish physically, but how to fish spiritually.

What do I mean by that? I mean to teach them the principles of God's Word so that they can break out of the poverty mentality, and start receiving the blessings of God. Teaching them how to apply the Word of God to their lives. Teaching them how to be "more than conquerors through Him that loves them."

Please take a moment to review the enclosed material. In it, we've explained more fully the vision that the Lord has given us, and how you can become a partner in completing this work for the Lord.

In Jesus' Precious Name,

Rev. Rich Murphy