Growing a Seminary in Ethiopia:
A Triumph of Faith in an Uneasy Odyssey, 1994-2024
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Sometimes when I felt exhausted, I questioned my motivation, “Why do I keep driving myself to campaign for this college, raising funds for building the campus and for scholarship support?” The answer became clear. My motivation was my deep admiration of the quality and potential of the students. These were very highly motivated, gifted, committed, and thus deserving young people. These were God’s “storm troopers,” invading enemy territory. Most of them had been working in the countryside, preaching the gospel where it had never been heard, and planting churches where there had never been any. They had been working for many years with little or no support, maybe ten to thirty dollars per month. Their main means of transportation was on foot. Many of them worked in areas where there were no roads, or they couldn’t afford public transportation. Many of them owned no other book than one Bible. A scholarship was a well-deserved, precious gift. With it, they were enabled to take a much-needed break. It provided them with the opportunity to learn, to access books, and to find answers to some of the many questions that troubled them or their people. Many of them were married and had families back home. It was painful for them to be away from them, but they were very happy and appreciative of this opportunity. They had the most amazing stories. One of them planted a church that took over a mosque because all the Muslims became Christians. That is rather unusual. Another worked among an ethnic group on the western fringe of the country who did not wear clothing at all. Try to imagine a church full of naked people! He had to get used to it. Of course, the new believers (there were about 2,000 of them, when he told me this) soon learned to put on clothes. They also started schools, so their children could learn to read and write. The gospel was changing their lifestyle. It was a most amazing privilege to teach these young leaders. Most of them were under thirty-five years of age. When they started their ministries, they were mere adolescents. When they came to college, many of them were still quite ignorant, unpolished, and sometimes foolish. Yet, they had already planted and nurtured growing congregations and ministered to the deep needs of their people. When I learned about what they had already done, I marveled and remembered St. Paul’s advice to Timothy: “Let no one despise your youth!” The task of elders is to recognize and unleash the gifts, enthusiasm, and energy of their young people. If leaders encourage them and give them freedom and power to do the work of God in the church and community, they will find that they have pastors to export. This was my motivating drive. The least I could do, besides share a fraction of the knowledge God had allowed me to accumulate, was to find scholarships for them, and support for building a campus. My unique position as an expat, a foreigner, was to be a bridge person, connecting my brothers and sisters in the resource rich west with the need of these faithful evangelists.
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About the Book
At the invitation of the Meserete Kristos Church, the author and his companion leave comfortable positions in Nairobi, Kenya, to assist in establishing a “Christian liberal arts college” in Ethiopia. They find a nation in abject poverty, slowly recovering from seventeen years of war and Marxist revolutionary misrule. They find a nascent church, growing at 17% per annum among a deeply depressed and disillusioned population. Stripped of all her institutions and physical assets by the former Dergue regime, the liberated church was starting over. Opening a small Bible institute in 1994, the church envisioned it becoming a tertiary-level college. This autobiographical memoir is a missionary story of expatriate participants attempting to relate to an established church in a culture vastly different than their own. They find that assisting local leadership to achieve their goals can be challenging, especially when visions change, and disagreements arise. It is a human story of cultural clashes, personality conflicts, misunderstandings, changing visions, adapting to changing external developments over a thirty-year period. It is a Christian story of “going the second mile,” of repentance, of forgiveness, of reconciliation. It is a faith story, of relying upon God, of God’s timing, of God’s faithfulness in protection and provision. This is a success story; the small Bible institute becomes a seminary with thousands of graduates leading and blessing a vibrant growing church that is blessing the nation. The events of this story took place in the environs of Addis Ababa and Bishoftu, Ethiopia, over a thirty-year period, between 1994 and 2023.
About the Author
Carl Edward Hansen was born and raised in rural Alberta and Ontario, Canada. He holds a BA degree (1965) from Eastern Mennonite College and graduate degrees from Goshen Biblical Seminary (M. Div., 1971) and Fuller Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1985). He was united in marriage with Vera Dorothy King in 1964. Together they raised a family of four daughters while serving as missionaries in Eastern Africa for more than thirty-two years. Carl served, first as a high school teacher at the Nazareth Bible Academy from 1967 to 1970, and then as director of a development project in Ethiopia from 1972 to 1975. Between 1975 and 1984, he served as a pastor in Tofield, Alberta. Carl and Vera returned to Africa in 1985, giving direction to a rural community development project in western Kenya, then teaching at the Daystar University in Nairobi until 1995. In January 1996, Carl and Vera returned to Ethiopia to assist the Meserete Kristos Church in establishing its Meserete Kristos College, now Seminary. They retired to Harrisonburg, Virginia in 2011. In retirement, Carl and Vera continue raising support for the seminary in Ethiopia while enjoying their grandchildren and great grandchildren.