Preparing students for service to the nations and neighborhoods at the lowest possible cost.

The Missio College story began in the hearts of leaders at Salem Alliance Church (SAC) in Oregon, with a passion for training pastors and international workers who are debt-free and field ready. Field readiness is defined as biblically trained, theologically discerning, culturally engaged, Holy Spirit-empowered, and skilled for effective ministry.

Missio enrolled its first cohort of students in January 2014, in direct response to many students who experienced a call to missions.

After seeing very few of these students enter into full-time ministry, Salem Alliance Church leadership began dreaming and praying about establishing a college to train future ministers of the gospel. Missio College is committed to providing a low-cost, accredited undergraduate degree, emphasizing practical hands-on experience.

MTI to RTI to Missio

The first Bible college in North American history, established by Christian & Missionary Alliance founder A.B. Simpson in 1882, was devoted to serving unreached people and inspiring the church to fulfill Jesus’ commission of world evangelization (Matthew 28:18-20).

Established as the Missionary Training Institute (MTI), the first graduates boarded ship in New York City on November, 1884.

Since those first days of courageous global engagement, scores of ordinary men and women have been equipped with basic Bible training and practical ministry skills in order to reach lost people around the world. A formally-trained seminarian from Knox College in Toronto, Canada, Dr. Simpson regarded theological education as “often merely intellectual, scholastic, and traditional,” and that sometimes “God has to put us to school again to unlearn much of what man has crammed into our brains, then to sit at the feet of Jesus” (Simpson, March, 1880, The Gospel in All Lands). 

The MTI story intersects Salem Alliance Church history in the person of C.C. Fowler, grandfather of former lead pastor Steve Fowler.  C.C. attended MTI from 1929 to 1931 and established a long-standing tradition of faithful international service with the C&MA (carried on by his son and daughter-in-law Chuck and Midge Fowler in China with the Alliance for over 40 years).

In January of 2014 Salem Alliance Church launched Reach Training Institute’s first cohort of students. Reach Training Institute, a school modeled after MTI has continued to send out workers who are biblically trained, theologically discerning, culturally engaged, Spirit-empowered and skilled for effective ministry. In the wake of its tenth year, RTI leadership decided to change its name to Missio College. Our name change was inspired by the meaning behind missio. Missio is Latin for “being sent or mission.” But more importantly, inspired by the phrase missio Dei translated into “the mission of God.” We believe this name honors the ethos of our beginnings and represents our vision for students’ participation in God’s mission to the world. 

To the Ends of the Earth.

Established in October of 2013 to send out laborers into the harvest, Reach Training Institute hopes to build on the MTI tradition of equipping people with a clear call to full-time Christian service to the ends of the earth.

MTI to RTI to Missio

We dream of a time when individuals and families from the Pacific Northwest will be unleashed into the world as pastors, church planters, and international workers with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Many who have a sense of calling to career ministry are hindered from responding to the call with an unmanageable load of debt amassed during their college years.

According to a recent study ( 2015, CNBC: The High Economic and Social Costs of Student Loan Debt ), U.S. student loan debt has reached $1.2 trillion, with over 40 million borrowers who have an average individual balance of $29,000.