International Training Institute (ITI)
The aim of the International Training Institutes (ITIs) was to enable participants to be effective forces of renewal in their own local churches. This required a program of formal education, practical training, and spiritual motivation. The formal education had to do with understanding the real world participants were living in and how the Word in Jesus Christ could be effectively articulated in it. Practical training meant enabling each person to become a skilled teacher to begin the reeducation process of the local church, which is the first requisite for church renewal. Secondly, it meant providing methods and tools for social change relative to the reformulation of local churches and their communities. Thirdly, spiritual motivation was perhaps both the most important and the most difficult. It required inspiring the participants to initiate action and giving them resources to maintain themselves in the almost impossible tasks which initiating action would eventually lay upon them.
Related Documents:
- This chart shows statistical data about the ITIs held from 1969-1972; this brochure shows where 23 ITIs were held globally from 1969-1976.
- At the ITI in Frankfurt, Germany (January 1975), E. A. Wickham, Bishop of Middleton gave the opening address, “Living in the Secular World” and two days later spoke about the “Mission to Modern Secular Man.”
- Action of Transparent Doing, Joseph Slicker, October 1970 – reflection on seven months setting up ITIs in Asia and India
- The 1970 ITIs in Hong Kong and India.
- There are many memories of the first ITI in Singapore August 3 – September 14, 1969. Isobel Bishop and Vinasithamby Dharmalingam tell some of their stories and Zoe and Ken Barley share memories of this first ITI. This report for the world churchmen in Asia describes the structure and learning from the program.