RTS Charlotte has entered into a partnership with Mission to the World, the mission’s agency of the Presbyterian Church in America, for expanded church-planting and theological education in Monterrey, Mexico. Numerous churches join the partnership.
The Reverend Andres Garza, an RTS/Charlotte graduate, will represent Mission to the World, recommending indigenous pastoral candidates to RTS for training. RTS will provide tuition scholarships for these Mexican national pastors and theologians-in-training for Master of Divinity and Doctor of Divinity degrees resulting in these pastors returning to Monterrey to become church planters and to lead a seminary planting movement in Northern Mexico.
Mexican candidates and their families will receive housing from Bethel Presbyterian Church in Clover, SC, and will receive their theological and church planting education through RTS/Charlotte. Some U.S. churches working together in the Monterrey Partnership are First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Pinewoods Presbyterian Church near Jacksonville, Florida, and Bethel of Clover, SC. It is expected that RTS/ Charlotte will become the primary theological training and church planting center for all of Northern Mexico for the PCA.
Dr. Michael Milton, President of RTS Charlotte, says of this partnership:
“I am thankful to the Lord of the Harvest about this strategic Gospel partnership between RTS/Charlotte and MTW Monterrey, Mexico. This links RTS/Charlotte with other churches and agencies to effect pastoral training and church planting movements in the strategic, fast-growing areas of Northern Mexico. It also raises the temperature for world missions and church planting with our students. This partnership helps our campus become directly involved in that Christ-ordained process.
I thank God for the teaching ministry of Dr. Richard Belcher, RTS professor of Old Testament, who has already gone to Monterrey to teach pastors and seminarians, as well as for others here in Charlotte who have been praying for seminary level training to go forward. I believe that God is raising up pastors and missionaries in this global environment to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I pray that many of our students will support church-planting and mercy ministries there as well as around the world, and that our campus community will be enriched with the presence of these God-ordained visionary men who will return to their homeland with a solid Biblical foundation to affect generations with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”