University of Liberia finally grants Spiritual Life Bible College’s Liberia-branch rights to award degrees 

By James Kokulo Fasuekoi|Editor-Publisher|editor@globalekklesia.com

The University of Liberia’s board of trustees has finally granted Liberia’s branch of U.S.-based Spiritual Life Bible College & Seminary International, rights to give out degrees at various levels in Biblical Theological studies at the college in Liberia, West Africa. 

This step by the faculty of the nation’s highest learning institution comes after 29 unbroken years of academic hard work and discipline by the college’s staff and its U.S. sponsors.

An elated Dr. Judy Fornara, who broke news to her congregation Sunday, about the UL’s accreditation, attributed this latest development to her college’s hard work and academic excellence.

“It was unbelievable!” said Dr. Judy, founder of the U.S. Minnesota-based Spiritual Life Church, Bible College & Seminary. Nevertheless, she adds that ““Part of it [positive outcome] was because we’ve passed the test.”

The good news came just two days after SLBC-Liberia International had finished graduating its 2024 batch of students, most of whom are already active evangelists and pastors in the country and beyond. 

Less than a week, after conducting SLBC-Seminary graduation in the U.S. Dr. Judy traveled to Liberia to participate in the exercise at the college’s sister schools in Monrovia, Buchanan and Tubmanburg. She was accompanied by her husband, the college’s president/senior pastor, Dr. Joe Fornara.

Dr. Judy praised her church members and supporters, saying, about “ninety to ninety-five percent” of the funds paid to build and run the Monrovia-college plus others in upcountry, came directly from the church in the USA. 

The couple first set foot on Liberian soil actually in 1991, (not 1992, as we previously reported), and started the college 1994, at the peak of a bloody civil war. The school has since put out more graduates and those students, she notes, have “produced [up to] 150 churches” in Liberia alone. 

Such endeavors, she reasoned Sunday, in the middle of her sermon, didn’t go “unnoticed by the UL Trustee Board”, which accordingly, had followed SLBC’s activities and even watched their last local commencements via social media livestream, prior to giving the accreditation.

James Kokulo Fasuekoi is an award-winning journalist, author, documentary writer and news photographer. He previously covered civil wars in West Africa for both local and international news media, including The Associated Press. Listed on his college’s Dean’s List for academic excellence, he holds an AA Degree in Biblical Theology and became a Bush Foundation Scholar twice in 2017. His works as a civil war journalist in Africa have also brought him face-to-face with the law in his native Liberia and in the U.S. where the Fed subpoenaed him twice to give testimonies as state-witness in two major international war crimes trials of 2017 & 2018 in Philadelphia. Once an African national ballet dancer, he now writes, photographs and dances for Christ. Read profile @ https://globalekklesia.com/profile/