Mennonite Mission Network and more than a dozen other partners have desired to make Anabaptist theological resources available in the French language for decades. The Justice and Peace Training Center began offering webinars in French in March 2021.
Mennonite Mission Network has worked to make Anabaptist theology available for French speakers for decades. In March 2021, those efforts took the form of monthly online French-language webinars offered by Le Centre de Formation à la Justice et à la Paix (CFJP, Justice and Peace Training Center).
Eight years earlier, in 2014, the Réseau mennonite francophone (RMF, Francophone Mennonite Network), named a committee to begin formulating a proposal to fill this void in the academic world. At a follow-up meeting, in 2017, RMF worked toward creating a consortium of theological schools and partner institutions to develop an online Anabaptist theology training program for French-speakers in Africa, Europe and North America. This program has a strong focus on justice, peace and reconciliation. The consortium is led by Matthew Krabill, of Mission Network, serving in France; John Masebi, who lectures at the Centre Universitaire de Missiologie (University Center of Missiology) in Congo; and Roger N’Dri, professor at Université de l’Alliance Chrétienne d’Abidjan (UACA, University of the Christian Alliance of Abidjan) in Ivory Coast.
The Justice and Peace Training Center is hosted by UACA. As a first step towards curriculum development, and due to limitations related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the center began offering free online monthly conferences in March 2021, with Culture, Ethnicity and Conflict, taught by Rubin Pohor, Ivorian anthropologist and sociologist. Presenters associated with Mission Network were Siaka Traoré, Mennonite Church leader in Burkina Faso, and Neal Blough, former mission worker in France.
