On June 24th, 2013 Asbury Theological Seminary and the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS) entered a multi-faceted cooperative affiliation, providing a structure for bilateral faculty and student exchange, team-teaching, joint research and publication projects, cooperative mission ventures, and digital resource sharing.

This is the seventh such international partnership Asbury has formed in the last two years, and the second in India.

The roots of the Asbury linkage with SAIACS are deep, extending to Methodist missionaries of previous generations such as J.T. Seamands for whom one of their buildings is named.  Since its founding thirty-one years ago several Asbury faculty have taught at SAIACS, including veteran professors John Oswalt and Robert Coleman.

Last year Art McPhee and fourteen Asbury students joined ten SAIACS students for a powerful course in Urban Church Planting, team-taught with Dr. Atul Aghamkar and recent E. Stanley Jones School graduate Dr. Prabhu Singh.  We anticipate more joint learning ventures like this as well as hosting members of SAIACS’ seasoned faculty at Asbury.

SAIACS was founded with a vision very compatible with the Asbury’s 2023 Strategic Plan.  The following affirmation by Ravi Zacharias captures well the reason for our enthusiasm as we look forward to working together:  “I believe SAIACS’ strategic value is its global reach, its devotional strength, and academic depth in preparing students to face a changing world.”

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