AG Trust Initiatives
Training Young Leaders
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Let’s keep our brightest and our best.
To do this, the Assemblies of God Trust is proposing the creation of two new means of funding for our students: The Riggs Scholarships and the Next Generation Fund.
The Riggs Scholarships
According to research done by UCLA, as many as 67 percent of incoming freshmen who attend a secular college or university and identify themselves as born-again Christians when they enter school will no longer identify themselves as born again four years later.
That’s 67 percent lost!
Those same studies reveal that only 7 percent of incoming freshmen who attend a Christian college or university and identify themselves as born again will fall away four years later.
Each year nearly 60,000 AG young people graduate from high school and enroll in higher education institutions. Only 5 percent of them attend Assemblies of God schools. While the UCLA study percentage of 67 percent is not specifically about AG students, we could be losing nearly 40,000 of our brightest and best EACH and every year.
Bottom line? The data shows that if we can get our AG students to attend one of our AG schools, they have a much better chance of spiritual survival.
One of the most common reasons students give for not attending one of our AG schools is the high cost involved. Our schools offer a quality education and spiritual mentoring, but private education is expensive. Most secular schools are state funded so tuition is less expensive.
Recently, we compared one of our AG schools with a school of another denomination in the same city. Our school was able to give $600,000 per year in scholarships to its students while the other denomination’s school gave $5,000,000!
To help our students attend our quality schools, the AG Trust is launching The Riggs Scholarships named after former General Superintendent Ralph Riggs, an early advocate for higher education in our Fellowship. When funded, The Riggs Scholarships will be a major source of funds for Assemblies of God students to attend Assemblies of God schools.
Next Generation Fund
Steve Campbell and Rachel King met at Central Bible College, fell in love, got married and decided to pursue the call of God on their lives to be missionaries with the Assemblies of God.
But there was a problem. When they got married in August, they combined their college debt. It was $55,000, much higher than Assemblies of God World Missions would allow for new missionaries.
So they devised a 5-year plan to work hard, save and pay down the debt so they could serve God in the Middle East or China.
But their story is not unique. It is common. Too many of our AG graduates forego ministry assignments because their monthly payments on student loans force them to take secular jobs.
The Next Generation Fund, when funded, will help young ministers with their college debt by making a portion of their monthly payments as long as they are involved full time in one of our churches or ministries.
As the first recipients of help from the Next Generation Fund, Steve and Rachel can apply to the Assemblies of God World Missions, knowing that their student loans will not be a roadblock to ministry.