Leaders of the European Baptist Federation (EBF) voted overwhelmingly Sept. 28 to move the International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) from Prague to Amsterdam as an international Baptist studies and research center with close ties to the Union of Baptist Churches in the Netherlands.
The EBF council approved three recommendations from seminary trustees at their annual meeting Sept. 26–29. The proposals respond to changing needs for theological education, costs of maintaining an aging campus in the Czech Republic and loss of donor support in a poor global economy.
According to European Baptist News Service, the EBF council voted 92 percent in favor of selling the Prague campus for the best possible price. Eighty-nine percent favored moving to Amsterdam and converting a little-used Baptist church into a “Baptist House” with studies planned to begin in the fall of 2014.
IBTS was established by Southern Baptist missionaries in 1948 in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, to help unite Baptists in Western Europe in the aftermath of two world wars. It relocated to Eastern Europe in 1997 amid financial struggles and changing educational needs after the end of the Cold War.
Declining donor income and rising maintenance costs brought on an economic crisis. In 2011 IBTS operated at a deficit of 306,000 euros, the equivalent of about 394,000 U.S. dollars.
(ABP)
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