After a half-century of impacting leaders and winning converts to Christ across Africa, Michael Cassidy is focusing his energies on the establishment of a top-flight urban ministry training institution called the African Enterprise Learning Center (AELC). Michael was challenged to take on such an endeavor as a seminary student many years ago by Charles Fuller, who established Fuller Theological Seminary in California. And the Lord has been leading Michael in recent years to take on this challenge.

The need is obvious. People in Africa are crying out desperately for godly and effective leaders. Nearly a third of the world’s most corrupt nations are in Africa and in some of these countries the leaders steal the equivalent of the country’s national debt. Of the world’s 50 least-developed countries, 33 are in Africa. “We suffer acutely because we have bad leadership in so many places … we desperately need godly leadership,” said AE’s International Team Leader Stephen Lungu recently.

At the same time, the Gospel is taking hold in Africa at a rate not seen in 21 centuries of Christendom. In 1900, there were eight million Christians in Africa, making up ten percent of the continent’s population; today, 360 million Christians comprise 48 percent of Africa’s people. “We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide …. Already today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America…” said Penn State professor Philip Jenkins.

Some fortunate African Christians are able to study in the leading seminaries of the West or at one of the few quality theological institutions that do exist in Africa. But the fact remains that there are many more potential quality African Christian leaders than there are educational and training opportunities to help them realize their capabilities.

Michael’s dream is to enable African Christians from all economic and social backgrounds, whether pastors or laypeople, to receive the best theological and practical urban ministry gleaned from AE’s 45 years of mission in the cities of Africa and its highly experienced indigenous leadership teams in ten countries continent-wide.

The AELC will rest upon the pillars of:

• Servant leadership
• Urban mission & transformation
• Biblical stewardship
• Culture, development and ethics

Its hallmarks will include:

• Careful recruiting and follow-up utilizing AE’s extensive networksand relationships throughout Africa
• Modular, integrated courses
• Pan-African workshops and conferences
• World-class programming

Because of its location in South Africa, the AELC will benefit from Africa’s most developed infrastructure, its most acclaimed and stable democracy and its best educational system.

Most importantly, though, as recently noted by the leaders of the global Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, “We see Africa, along with East Asia, emerging as the key fulcrum for world missions in the 21st Century.”

The African Enterprise Learning Center is set to make a major contribution to this emergence in the coming century.