European Baptist leaders recently voted overwhelmingly to move Europe’s only international Baptist seminary from Prague to Amsterdam given declining donor support and the rise of national Baptist seminaries that offer similar degrees.
The 63-year-old International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) will relocate to the Netherlands over the course of two or three years.
Previously, IBTS trustees recommended to the European Baptist Federation that the seminary relocate “due to funding challenges and changes in the educational needs among European Baptists.”
But this would not be the first relocation for IBTS, which originally was started by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) International Mission Board in Switzerland in the wake of WWII. Following the decision by the SBC to de-fund the seminary in 1991, members of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship raised financial and faculty support for the school, and later supported its move to its current location in Prague.
