Madras Theological Seminary and College

Madras Theological Seminary & College was founded by the OMS International, which was the mother organization of Evangelical Church of India.

OMS International was founded in Japan in 1901 by The Rev. and Mrs. Charles E. Cowman with the help of The Rev. E.A. Kilbourne . The work was born out of the conviction that the Christian message must be taken to the un-evangelized masses as quickly as possible.

Believing that this could best be done by a trained and Spirit-filled national ministry, a distinctive policy of the OMS International is to establish Bible Seminaries in each field for the training of such ministry.

The other distinctive policy is to directly evangelize the masses in obedience to the Great Commission given by the Lord Jesus to His disciples in Matthew 28:19-20. This has, in a practical way, been done by what is known as the Every Creature Crusade (ECC) ministry, which endeavours to place a portion of the gospel in every home of a given area of Labour. This assures every creature of at least one chance to know about Jesus Christ through the printed word.

Between 1912 and 1917, in a nation effort, 1,030,000 homes of Japan were visited with the message of the Gospel. This distribution campaign was greatly blessed by the Lord and for the first time in the history of the church, an entire nation was covered in a systematic way with the printed Gospel message. One outstanding result of this crusade was the emergence of organized churches as well as some eight hundred preaching points scattered throughout the land. These were ministered to by pastors and evangelists who had been trained in OMS International’s Tokyo Bible Seminary. The fire that was kindled in Japan spread in 1917, to China in 1925 and to various Latin American countries and India in 1941.

OMS International is now working in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal. OMS International is currently operating three Bible Seminaries in India, one in Allahabad, the other in Madras (Chennai) and one in West Bengal as well.

Madras Bible Seminary (MBS), now Madras Theological Seminary & College (MTSC) was founded by the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS) in the year 1953. Since its inception, thousands have been trained as pastors and evangelists and most of them are serving the Lord with the Evangelical Church of India (ECI) in various capacities throughout the length and breadth of India and some even abroad. In the year 1993, the name Madras Bible Seminary was changed to Madras Theological Seminary & College.