Training 10,000 Pastors
Abera Ajula’s Big Responsibility and Glorious Calling in Ethiopia
For most men in Abera’s situation, the scholarship would have been a dream come true. It provided tuition and a visa, paving the way for him to attend a well-known American seminary. Abera’s denomination, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, assumed Abera would say yes. He was a young pastor in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The training would be invaluable not only for him, but also for the denomination, which had more than 13,000 churches and 12 million believers. Also, it was the United States. Most citizens of Ethiopia would have eagerly taken the opportunity to move there. Abera did, in fact, want to move to the United States. But he did not want to attend the seminary where he was receiving a scholarship and visa. If he was going to study in the United States, it was going to be at The Master’s Seminary. If he couldn’t make it there, he wasn’t going to come to the United States at all.
“I first heard about The Master’s Seminary around 1995,” Abera said. “I don’t remember why, but my Bible college professor at the time gave me a copy of John MacArthur’s book ‘The Anatomy of the Church’ (updated title is ‘The Master’s Plan for the Church’). In another class, I had to read ‘Introduction to Biblical Counseling,’ as well as ‘Pastoral Ministry’ and ‘Expository Preaching.’ I loved those books. They shaped my understanding of pastoral ministry. After reading those books, I started to pray about one day attending The Master’s Seminary. It was the only school I wanted to attend.”
Six years after hearing about TMS, Abera is offered the aforementioned scholarship to another seminary in the United States. He says no and continues to pastor in Ethiopia and pray about attending TMS. In the meantime, he gets married and his wife and him begin having children. Yet as his life became more and more grounded in his ministry in Ethiopia, he became more and more convinced that he needed to train at The Master’s Seminary.
“I prayed that the Lord would preserve John MacArthur’s ministry until I could sit under it,” Abera said.
Through a series of remarkable providences, a friend of Abera’s met Dr. Irv Busenitz, the executive vice president of The Master’s Seminary at the time. When this friend mentioned Abera’s ongoing interest in TMS, Dr. Busenitz told him about a few recent scholarships that would likely make it feasible for Abera to attend. When Abera’s friend passed along Dr. Busenitz’s words, Abera immediately sent in an application and applied for financial aid. A few weeks later, he received his acceptance letter and a financial aid package. Sixteen years after first reading a John MacArthur book, and eleven years after turning down an opportunity to study in the United States, Abera was finally going to attend his dream school, The Master’s Seminary.
Abera certainly had high hopes for his upcoming education at The Master’s Seminary and his time sitting under the teaching of John MacArthur at Grace Community Church. Thankfully, his experience exceeded his expectations.
“What I loved most about The Master’s Seminary was that each professor was not only an academic and theologian, he also was a pastor,” Abera said. “Before I came to TMS, I loved to preach, but I wasn’t skilled as an expositor. Now I can not only faithfully explain the text, I have many opportunities to help others become more effective preachers.”
Now that Abera is back in his home country (he returned in 2018), he can confidently say that the education at TMS was worth the wait. In the last few years, he has taken on a key role in his denomination, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He is responsible for pastoral training and education for the more than 10,000 pastors in the denomination. So the training he received is being channeled through him to thousands of men, who in turn minister to millions.
“The feedback we receive from the pastors is wonderful,” Abera said. “There is a massive hunger for pastoral training. Men want to know how to exposit the Bible.”
Because there’s such a high demand for the training Abera provides, he spends most of his days travelling across Ethiopia, meeting with pastors, leading seminars on preaching, helping men understand how to exposit the text. “Preaching is mandatory,” Abera said. “Paul makes that clear in 1 Timothy 4:1 when he charges Timothy to ‘preach the Word.’ In Ethiopia, thousands of pastors in our denomination have been called into the ministry, they have a conviction to preach, but they have no training. No one has shown them how to rightly divide the word of Truth.”
Abera loves his current ministry. He also knows that, alone, he cannot meet the extraordinary need for training. For that reason, he has identified six young men in Ethiopia who have the conviction and competence to start a TMAI (The Master’s Academy International) training center in the country. But they need the same training Abera received. He’s praying that in the coming years, all six will be able to attend The Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles. When those six men have received the same in-person, dynamic education he did, they will be ready to become the first generation of faculty at the training center. For Abera, it’s the most strategic way to raise up the next generation of faithful expositors across Ethiopia. He is thrilled at what’s ahead. He is prayerful. And he is thankful for all he’s received through The Master’s Seminary.
The John MacArthur Trust is poised to play a key role in the growing ministry in Ethiopia. Through the MacArthur Trust scholarship, we can provide full-tuition for men coming from Ethiopia to Southern California to train. We are also partnering with TMAI as it expands, establishing training centers in countries like Ethiopia. Thank you for your partnership. Scholarships, like the one that brought Abera to TMS, are preparing men to advance expository preaching and sound doctrine around the world.
