Accrediation at EBS

Thank you for your beautiful, faithful prayers for our CETA Accreditation Site-Visit this past week! After an exhausting few days full of tons of questions, meetings, setting up interviews, airport runs, committee meals, and an extraordinary amount of time and notes and thoughts and counsel...Friday our administration sat down with the CETA committee. This committee is an incredibly experienced group, all working and leading seminaries and accreditation processes for years throughout the Caribbean, and they were SO full and free with an incredible amount of good advice and counsel. They had ideas our staff had never even THOUGHT of, concerns we never realized, encouragements we never would have thought to try, wisdom from lessons we haven't had to learn the hard way.  Emmaus is SO thankful we have been pursing this accreditation, no matter how difficult and time-consuming and LONG it has been. Not only has the process made us a far healthier institution, but we were able to get WELL-evaulated last week by a large organization who has skin in the game and who is able to help us understand and achieve GLOBAL standards of theological education...for Emmaus, for HAITI. The committee gave EBS 11 Commendations or things that really impressed them or that they believe we are doing really well, 11 Suggestions--things they encourage Emmaus to do--and 12 Recommendations, things CETA would require be done for accreditation.   They will now submit these items to the CETA Association at large, who has been reading through our massive Self-Study book and will go through their recommendations and notes, and then make the decision whether EBS  1) is not currently able to be accredited, 2) could be accredited after attending to the recommendations, or 3) can be accredited now and continue to work on the recommendations.    So we wait, with your prayers! But today was enough. The recommendations and suggestions pertained to EBS getting more things more formal...CETA encouraged more review policies, an IT director, a qualified professional counselor on staff for staff and students, a qualified librarian and to arrange the library in a more user-friendly way, that we develop a formal process for board orientation and evaluation, find a degreed finance person, get together a Quality Manual, develop a curriculum review committee, develop measurable instruments for staff and student satisfaction, prepare the campus for hearing impaired or visually impaired students, and exit signs for the doors. But can I share with you the commendations?  Because there is SO MUCH glory to God in it that we want to pause again and celebrate that with you...with you who have prayed and come and built and taught and helped and supported and loved and emailed and followed and sent and sponsored and BEEN a part of Emmaus, TODAY.  They noted that our student-friendly tuition is really impressive and making it possible for men and women in Haiti to follow God's calling on their lives despite social standing, despite the poverty Haiti is known for, and noted that they have NEVER seen nor heard of a work-study program that allows students to work 10 hours a week for all they are receiving.   THANK YOU for the students you are and have supported, making this possible! They complimented our "excellent facilities" and called Emmaus an "oasis in the dessert." THANK YOU to the MANY of you who have built, paved, painted, designed, and supported Emmaus. They complimented our huge emphasis on the students educational and spiritual development and were amazed at how EBS is working sacrificially to greatly improve the education of our faculty and staff.  THANK YOU to those who have been a part of this continued education through teaching, or through the supporting of our staff members! They noted that EBS's mission to develop Christ-like leaders for Haiti and the World "comes alive through the all the day-to-day activities and interaction on campus." Finally, they talked of their experiences and ministries in the United States, in Jamaica, in Turks and Caicos, the Dominican, in Haiti, in Cuba, in Trinidad, and noted that the committee was deeply impressed humbled that "Emmaus Biblical Seminary is truly a labor of much love and a Light to the Nations." "If God uses ONE man from Emmaus," Dr. Stroude said passionately, "if He uses even just ONE woman to change the world for His glory, as we clearly see Him doing, then all of this, all of it, it has not been in vain." Emmaus is  ok with the library needing work, good with job searching some more talented people for our staff, and ready to develop more documentation.   But our great prayer has been that Emmaus might be HIS Light to the nations...that the mission of Emmaus--to develop Christ-like leaders for His transformation of Haiti and the world--might be OUR mission, might be real and true and deep, might BE REALIZED. EBS has been poked and prodded, our pockets turned inside out, our weakest links all tested.  What more could we possibly have hoped for than to have the CETA committee's unanimous observations be THOSE commendations? That is an answer to prayers of the decades.   Praise the Lord. Thank you for being a praying part of people here at Emmaus...for the transformation of Haiti, and the world. Stacey Ayars, for the EBS Haiti family Join us as developing Christ-like leaders for Haiti and the world continues TODAY at Emmaus. Emmaus Biblical Seminary | Haiti | info@ebshaiti.org | ebshaiti.org