Gerakan Gereja Belajar: Churches’ Real Contribution to The Nation’s Advancement

Realizing that churches and educational institutions can work together in an enlightening service mission for a brighter Indonesia, Harapan Bangsa Institute of Technology (ITHB) & Harapan Bangsa Business School (HBBS) held a Pastors’ Dinner function on Monday, 20 March, 2017, at Aryaduta Hotel Ballroom, in Bandung. This initiative was embraced by a significant number of churches and about 140 pastors from 80 denominations attended the dinner.

During the gathering, ITHB & HBBS called for churches to promote the Gerakan Gereja Belajar (GGB) or the Churches’ Learning Movement, which disburse full eight-semester scholarships to church members who have outstanding academic potentials yet have financial problems to continue their study. Last year, 56 students from 18 provinces and 35 denominations receive GGB scholarships.

During the dinner function, the audience directly heard the testimonies of some GGB 2016 scholarship awardees. Within a year, these awardees were able to attain a GPA of above average (3.2 in a 0-4 scale), while still maintaining active engagement in such campus service activities as cell groups, discipleship, students’ fellowship, and mission trips. In performing these services, they recognize God’s works in their life and experience a spiritual growth, which bring them to better realization that the technical, business, and design knowledge and skills they learn at ITHB & HBBS are part of God’s plan for them. They have been given the opportunities to study so that they can later bless the country, by becoming the light in the marketplace. Thousands of ITHB & HBBS graduates are now doing their best in their career worldwide.

Seeing the program’s success in 2016, this year in 2017, ITHB & HBBS reopens an opportunity for academically outstanding church members from all over Indonesia to compete for 50 scholarships that amount to IDR120 million per awardee (or IDR6 billion in total). The pastors who were present at the dinner welcomed the initiative enthusiastically, promising that they would disseminate the information to the entire country immediately. For further information about the scholarship scheme, please visit www.ithb.ac.id or contact Ms. Susan at (+62 22) 250 6636 during office hours.