Ben Cornish (PhD, Southern Seminary) serves as president of Teaching Truth International (TTI)—a Christian missions organization dedicated to providing free, in-person theological training to under-resourced pastors and church leaders in the developing world. Driven by the conviction that the Great Commission requires not just evangelism but ongoing teaching, TTI exists to equip these “forgotten pastors” to preach the gospel faithfully, confront false doctrine, and disciple their own communities for generations to come. The following interview explores the need for access to reliable ministry training and Cornish’s heart for serving the “hidden corners of the world.”

When did you notice a ministry like Teaching Truth International was necessary?

In 1995, shortly after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, my dad, Rick Cornish—who was pastoring in Kansas at the time—received an invitation to teach New Testament at a newly established Christian college in Ukraine. My family and I joined him on his second trip. I was just ten years old.

There, I saw the desperate hunger to study God’s Word among pastors and future missionaries who had traveled to Ukraine from across the former USSR. Many were the sons of fathers who had led underground churches, including fathers who were killed or exiled for their faith. Rather than thwarting the gospel, this persecution seemed to have put steel in their bones. They would stop at nothing to study the Scriptures.

Like my dad, I returned from that trip convinced that the future of missions must prioritize theological education, especially for the under-resourced pastors throughout the world. It has been the joy of a lifetime to work alongside him doing this very thing for the past 14 years.

Your ministry’s mission statement is “Teaching the forgotten pastors who serve in the hidden corners of the world.” Who are the forgotten pastors?

This term was coined in 2013 by our Tanzanian partner, David Akondowe, when he described the work we were doing among rural African pastors: “These pastors have no Bible school. They have no theological books. They do not know any missionaries. But they serve as pastors. They are unseen by the world and unseen even by the church. They are the forgotten pastors.”

In our organization, we define these men as pastors, aspiring pastors, church leaders, and indigenous missionaries who are serving in ministry but who have never received biblical training. In many cases, if it were not for our conferences, they would have no access to such training. As one Tanzanian pastor told us years ago, “I have been a pastor for forty years, and today is my first day of Bible training.”

When a pastor joins one of our trainings for the first time, I often ask him to share with me the basic gospel message, and far too many have struggled to do so.

Some of the more remote people groups we serve are considered reached (more than 2 percent evangelical), but on the ground, some of these groups appear to be unreached again. They have pastors and pulpits but no gospel of grace. One of the largest “evangelical” denominations in Southeast Africa is led by a false prophet who is spreading the man-centered message of miracles and money. His pulpit is devoid of Christ. Yet the pastors across his nation who listen to him on the radio believe he is a “man of God,” and so they propagate his ideas deep into the African bush.

Surely this is why Jesus, in Matthew 28:19–20, included two activities in the Great Commission to make disciples—baptizing and teaching. If we do the first and neglect the second, within one generation, those people groups may face the real danger of becoming unreached again.

Teaching Truth International, therefore, exists to teach God’s Word to under-resourced pastors and church leaders so they can teach others also. By training them to articulate the gospel clearly and to exposit the Scriptures rightly, the gospel will go forth with power among their own people and into neighboring communities.

How do you provide theological education?

We provide free in-person training for pastors and church leaders. Typically, we send a team of two Bible teachers to a city in an underserved country in partnership with a local church, pastors’ association, or missions organization. Our indigenous partners organize, promote, and host the training at a church, where we teach for 6 to 7 hours a day.

God has raised up faithful translators who work with us months in advance to translate our teaching manuscripts. These manuscripts are then printed, bound, and given to every pastor at the conference. For many participants, this curriculum becomes the only biblical resource available in their own language. The translators then serve alongside during the lectures and Q&A sessions at the conference.

Our teaching focuses on hermeneutics, systematic theology, local apologetics, and especially expository teaching through books of the Bible. In addition to lectures, pastors participate in small-group discussions, hermeneutics exercises, and Q&A sessions. In some locations, we also administer exams, conduct evangelism training and neighborhood outreach, and preach the gospel on local radio.

What specific areas of training do the pastors you work with need in order to reach their communities?

The most significant gap we observe in pastoral ability is in hermeneutics. Many pastors do not know how to read the Bible in context. As a result, the authority and sufficiency of Scripture are readily affirmed in theory but then in practice: pastors preach from their dreams, pull verses out of context, quote famous false teachers, and promote the false message of health and wealth.

We have repeatedly observed that churches promoting prosperity theology often incorporate syncretistic practices influenced by local animism.

Our ministry is committed to confronting false teaching. By God’s grace, we have seen hundreds of pastors repent of false doctrine. One Zambian pastor who scored the highest grade on our five-year comprehensive exam told me that during his first Teaching Truth pastors’ conference, he realized that he had been promoting a false gospel. Cut to the heart, he returned home, publicly repented before his church, and committed to faithfully expositing God’s Word. He even urged his denominational leaders to repent as well—though sadly, they did not respond with the same humility.

What have been the biggest challenges the ministry has faced?

By God’s grace, one of our biggest strengths is our teaching team, which is full of graduates from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They are more than competent for the task at hand.

Even so, challenges persist. Because we focus on pastors who have little or no access to theological resources in their first language—or relationships with faithful missionaries—many lack the educational skills that we learned in elementary school.

For example, on a recent trip to West Africa, our VP of Education, Dr. Jamin Eben, gave a short lesson on simple learning methods, including the use of flashcards to aid memorization. The pastors had never heard of flashcards before.

Many of the pastors we serve work full-time jobs, have limited reading comprehension, and little time to prepare for ministry. Some also hold worldview assumptions shaped by local religious traditions. One of our students shared a story of having to rebuke another pastor who was sacrificing animals for the sins of his church. We often say at TTI, “If they are willing to learn, heretics are welcome in class.” Yet even true shepherds have to unlearn old habits as much as they learn new ones.

What is your hope for the future of Teaching Truth International?

Our ministry is a global effort, providing pastoral training in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, but the demand for Bible teaching far outpaces our ability to meet the need—the demand actually outpaces the ability of all Bible schools and seminaries on earth to meet it. This reality is apparent to us at Teaching Truth International as we receive far more invitations to train pastors around the world than we could ever accept.

We are praying that the Lord would raise up additional missionary teachers to join our team—especially non-Americans who hold a master’s degree or higher. This would help us move toward our larger vision to make Bible training more easily accessible as we seek to establish a Teaching Truth training center within 1,000 miles of every forgotten pastor on earth. Achieving that vision, however, will require a Christian network far larger than our team of missionary teachers—namely, partnerships with supporting churches.

Local churches in the West are vital to the mission of teaching the forgotten pastors. We are deeply grateful for the churches that have supported this work for years or even decades. Yet with our current and projected growth, Teaching Truth needs more like-minded churches and believers who will partner with us.

You can begin by signing up for our newsletters and committing to pray for us. Sponsor a pastors’ conference or contribute toward our annual global fund. Invite us to your church to share this mission with your congregation. Partnering churches may also send their pastors to serve alongside our staff as associate teachers.

The global church needs leaders who are faithful to the gospel and who preach the Scriptures with an unwavering commitment to biblical fidelity. With your help, we can make this training accessible to more pastors around the world.

Learn more at TeachingTruthInternational.org