UTS Philippines Hosts the CWM Training-in-Mission Program for the Third Time
For the third consecutive year, Union Theological Seminary, Philippines, opens its doors to young church leaders from different parts of the world as the host of the Training-in-Mission (TIM) Program, in partnership with the Council for World Mission (CWM). This collaboration is more than a training program – it is a deliberate and sustained investment in forming the next generation of church workers who understand that mission is never abstract. It is lived out, embodied, and done with the people it seeks to serve.
A Welcome to the TIM Fellows
Welcome to Union Theological Seminary!
You come to us from different regions, different languages, different stories – and yet you arrive carrying the same calling: to learn what it means to participate in God’s mission in the world. We want you to know that this campus is now your home. Not a classroom you pass through, but a community you belong to for as long as you are here.
We do not promise you comfort. We promise you something more lasting – encounter. You will sit with Scripture not as a distant text but as a living Word. You will walk our paths, share our meals, and listen to the stories of people whose lives may look nothing like the ones you left behind. We ask only that you come with open hands and an open heart, ready to see, to listen, and to learn before you teach.
This seminary has welcomed two cohorts of TIM Fellows before you, and each left changed – not because they mastered new theories, but because they let themselves be transformed by the people and the experiences. We hope the same for you. May your time with us deepen your understanding of “Missio Dei” – God’s mission.
A Program Rooted in Theory and Practice
The TIM Program has shaped young missionaries for decades through a model that refuses to separate the classroom from the community. Participants begin their formation through intensive, immersive modules curated and formed for mission studies: the Psychological Module, the Socio-Analytical Module, the Theology Module, the Bible Module,and the Missiology Module. UTS Philippines has hosted this leg of the program three times – a milestone that reflects both the seminary’s enduring partnership with CWM and its prophetic conviction that mission education must be grounded in both theory and practice.
Forming Leaders for God’s Varied Mission Fields
By hosting the academic component of TIM for the third time, UTS Philippines reaffirms its role not just as a teaching institution but as a ground for ministerial formation and discipleship – a place where theology becomes embodied practice. Graduates of the program leave not only with theological literacy but with leadership skills tempered by lived experience with the people, preparing them to serve the church and God’s mission in contexts as diverse as the regions they come from.
As this third cycle unfolds, UTS Philippines and CWM continue to affirm a shared belief: that to do mission faithfully, one must first go and see – for it is in immersion, in proximity to the plight of ordinary people, that the call of Missio Dei becomes most clearly understood and most urgently answered. Mabuhay!(A Filipino welcome greeting that translates to “Live”) at Maligayang Pagdating (A warm welcome), Fellows!
