United Methodist pastor leads university in Congo Dec. 16, 2004  | A UMNS photo by the Rev. Jon M. Taylor Children pose with Bishop Nkulu Ntanda Ntambo (in suit) near the University of North Katanga. |
A UMNS Report
By Kathy L. Gilbert* The
Rev. Jon Mac Taylor is a man of two worlds – a United Methodist pastor
in Arkansas, he also serves as president of a university in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. “I
am the bridge between churches in the United States and the Congo,”
says Taylor, president of the University of North Katanga in Kamina. Students
from the Arkansas Tech Wesley Foundation have raised $15,000 to build a
Wesley Foundation on the campus of the African school. Taylor will
return to Kamina in January and has promised to bring back photos of the
Bobby Jackson Memorial Wesley Foundation as it is being built. Taylor,
who has been a pastor for 23 years, recently moved to Little Rock, Ark.
He has been taking groups — mostly medical teams — on mission trips to
the Congo. “When I am not taking mission teams to Congo, I am visiting
churches in Arkansas to educate them about the needs in Congo,” he says.
“There are now students coming from the Congo to the United States for
pre-med training.” The
university has evolved from Kamina College, built in 1985 by the United
Methodist Church to train teachers for the church’s secondary schools. A
new building of “real bricks and walls,” being erected on a new site,
will be a liberal arts college for the area, he says.  | A UMNS photo by the Rev. Jon M. Taylor First-year nursing students learn how to clamp scissors onto their clothing at the university. |
Taylor
says the college’s main claim to fame has been its nursing school. “The
civil war ended in 2001 and took out a large portion of the
population,” he explains. “The leadership base is very young, from 14 to
19 years old.”The
university will offer French and history, and will be “what we think of
as a liberal arts college here in United States,” he says. It will also
offer business and technical training in areas such as carpentry. “The college is an integral part of the community — they work hand in glove,” Taylor says. The college has about 600 students. “The purpose of the university is to train leaders for the future,” he says. “Education is the key to life and survival.” For more information about the university, contact Taylor at
JonMT453@aol.com. Contributions
to the University of North Katanga may be sent through a local United
Methodist church, annual conference or by mailing a check to: Advance
GCFA, P.O. Box 9068, GPO, New York, NY 10087-9068. Write the check out
to “Advance GCFA” and include North Katanga University, Advance #14413N,
on the memo line. Call (888) 252-6174 to give by credit card. More
details are available at gbgm-umc.org/advance. *Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer in Nashville, Tenn. News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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