Learning of Protestant church’s leaders from global encounters

This study explores the learning acquired by the Protestant church’s leaders with regard to partaking in global encounters. It was conducted in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Sub-Saharan country that has been facing heavy crises due to armed conflicts and unstable political institutions for decades. The study focuses on the church leader’s learning outside academy, as they get in touch with other people and places globally. The research discourse sums up what education or learning would be as ‘lifelong learning’. For church leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, so far, no research has been conducted about their global and informal learning, their global encounter-related experiences and the implemented improvement ideas brought from abroad. Being conceptualized as a qualitative empirical research, the relating data were collected using individual semi-structured interviews with 28 Protestant church leaders from three major Protestant church denominations in the area of study. From the content analysis applied to them, five ideal types of learning from global encounters emerged, namely the personal well-being-oriented learning, the own ministry-oriented learning, the local society-oriented learning, the organisational change-oriented learning, and the world society-oriented learning. These types were discussed in light of quality global/informal learning and its importance in shaping both local and global societies. Recommendations for practice and further research close the study.