Dave Holdt of Equipping Pastors Worldwide is in the Carolinas through September 14 and available for radio interviews
NEWS PROVIDED BY
Equipping Pastors Worldwide
Aug. 28, 2026
CARY, N.C., Aug. 28, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — A pastor walked into a training conference in southern Africa wearing the animal skins of a sangoma — a witch doctor. On Sunday mornings he preached in a Christian church. The rest of the week he threw bones and called on the ancestors.
Dave Holdt was teaching that week. Over lunch, he told the man plainly: “Jesus plus the ancestors is death. It is Jesus only.”
The man muttered, “Never.”
A year later he returned to the same training. The animal skins were gone. Asked what he remembered, he answered: “It is Jesus only.”
Holdt, director of the UK-based Equipping Pastors Worldwide (EPW), arrives in the United States this week for a two-week tour of North and South Carolina.
He is a featured speaker at “Grow to Go /Go to Grow: A Global Missions Conference,” August 30 – September 2 at Lake Lure Baptist Church, 6837 US 64/74A, Lake Lure, NC 28746. Sessions are Sunday at 10:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., and Monday through Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. nightly, with special music at every service. Scott Huffman of Christ Cares 4 U Ministries also speaks. The public is welcome. For details, contact the church at 828-532-0220 or office.llbc@aol.com, or visit lakelurebaptistchurch.com.
On Tuesday, September 8, at 9:45 a.m., Holdt will speak at Cornerstone Fellowship Church in Apex, N.C., at a gathering of pastors, ministry leaders, and Great Commission Christians hosted by Missions:Together (www.missionstogether.church). His subject is the raising up of church leaders in the Global South.
The need he describes is not a shortage of pastors but a shortage of trained ones. According to EPW, the Global South now has roughly one trained pastor for every 450,000 people. The church there is growing faster than anywhere on earth, and it is growing without shepherds who have been taught to handle the Scriptures.
“A church can grow wide without trained shepherds,” Holdt said. “It cannot grow deep. Every year we delay costs a generation.”
EPW teaches biblical exposition and sound doctrine directly to serving pastors in their own regions, then hands the training to those men to run themselves. In Uganda, where the work began two decades ago, most training events are now taught entirely by Ugandans. Pastors trained through EPW have walked away from the prosperity gospel, from ancestor worship, and from syncretism — often at real personal cost.
At EPW’s first training in Darjeeling, India, a pastor in his eighties stood and told the room he had been weeping all week. Weeping with joy at hearing the Bible explained clearly — and weeping with sadness. “I wish I had received this training at the beginning of my ministry, not at the end.”
Holdt will also travel to Columbia, Greenville, Cary, NC, Aiken, South Carolina, to meet with pastors and church leaders. He is available to preach at local churches and to meet with elders and missions committees through September 14.
Holdt is available for radio and podcast interviews throughout his time in the United States. He can speak to the pressures now facing the church across the Global South — the spread of Islam, the prosperity gospel, syncretism and ancestor worship inside professing churches, open hostility and violence toward believers in parts of India, and the legal restrictions that make Christian teaching nearly impossible in nations such as Bhutan. He can also speak to how Western churches can help without creating dependency. In-studio availability in the Raleigh-Durham, Aiken, Greenville, and Columbia markets; by phone or Zoom from the UK after September 14.
To arrange an interview, a meeting, or a speaking engagement, contact Carl Dobrowolski at carl@goodwillmediaservices.com. Learn more at www.epwusa.org.
About Equipping Pastors Worldwide
EPW trains and resources pastors on the frontlines of the Global South so they can preach God’s Word faithfully, in their own language, where they serve. The ministry runs in-country training events, distributes and translates theological books, and develops indigenous trainers who carry the work forward. Learn more at epwusa.org and epworldwide.org.
SOURCE Equipping Pastors Worldwide
CONTACT: Carl Dobrowolski, carl@goodwillmediaservices.com