Our website aims to be a home for those involved in Theological Education by Extension (TEE). We want to support, promote, bring together, reflect, and contextually develop TEE in partnership with local and regional TEE programmes and bodies, churches, and those interested in theological education, specifically extension programmes. One of the features of the TEE movement has always been collaboration, and TEENet is firmly grounded in that tradition. TEEnet seeks to enhance collaboration both among TEE practitioners and with theological education in general. We seek to do this in several ways:
- We will publish short thematic articles by ourselves and guest contributors to highlight the variety of TEE programmes and best practices through our blog
- We will publish TEE-related books through TEEnet Press. You will find our upcoming publications here on the website as freely downloadable e-books.
- We will provide a place to share TEE courses for free and guidance on contextualizing courses for your programme.
- We will provide research, articles, and practical documents to help TEE programmes run effectively and efficiently through our TEE Training page.
We launched the website today and will, from now on, regularly add content to it. We also have some other exciting ideas on how to engage with each other better. Look out for the launch of a discussion forum. We are also preparing to republish some TEE courses, which will be freely available on our website soon. We are finalising the launch of the first complete collection of the original TEE bulletin and newsletter – the Extension Seminary– published from 1970 to 1985 in Guatemala. Why not sign up for our newsletter and stay informed?
The vision behind TEEnet is to build the kingdom of God and to build up the people of God. Many churches throughout the world are struggling to equip their members for ministry and we believe TEE has an important role to play in accomplishing this task. We believe every in educating the whole church and educating the church for ministry. With this, we mean that the role of theological education is “to encourage, enable, equip and empower the people of God to participate meaningfully and fully in the life and mission of the church.” (Ross Kinsler, “Theological Education Among the People: A Personal Pilgrimage” in Extension Seminary 1985:2, page 1). TEE includes the whole range of theological education from grassroots to ministerial to higher education. It includes access and participation from the old and the young, men and women, clergy and the laity/grassroots and those preparing for ordination, those with good schooling and those without and in many places those who only speak their mother tongue. . TEEnet’s vision is a broad and inclusive vision of theological education, so broad that it will not be limited to classical theological subjects but will be driven by the contextual needs of local Christians and the church. We hope TEEnet will be able to help you and your specific needs as you seek to equip the church for ministry in your area.
TEENet is a decentralised, voluntary network of TEE practitioners who offer their time and expertise to TEEnet to build up the capacity of those in TEE programmes that are fully dedicated to TEE or to theological training institutions that run some of their programmes by extension. We are looking forward to this joint journey.