Maranatha History

Rev. G. Moses Choudary founded Maranatha Veda Patasala in 1984 with a vision to train the native youth for the unfinished task of reaching the unreached. Pastor Moses saw the need for and importance of theological education for Telugu speaking people in the state of Andhra Pradesh in Southeast India. God has given us the honor of being the first school to start theological education in our city. Now we are the oldest Bible School in the city of Vijayawada with thousands of students as part of our Alumni. As we continued to do His Work, our hunger and desire to train students theologically only increase with time. Students here are trained to live "For God and Country," and has been the goal for training students theologically and preparing them for God’s mission here in India.   It began its first academic year with 12 students in a small asphaltic-roofed room. We, however, had to move from Atmakuru village, which is the place we started, due to bad drinking water and poor location. We also wanted to bring the Bible School back into the city of Vijayawada, where God has provided for us to be able to build a Bible school that can accommodate approximately 60 students.   After staying in that place for 15 years, God laid a burden and gave a vision to expand the campus to our current Director Rev. Alluri Viswa Prasad, who has a zeal and a burden to see more students go to the Seminary and prepare for ministry. As we prayed and anticipated to see more growth, God has opened doors to buy a bigger land at a place closer to the city. We were able to sell the old building and purchased the land to construct a new building for the school. In 2017, we finally moved to the wonderful new facility God has provided. Praise be to God. With the future growth in mind, we have decided to change the name from Maranatha Veda Patasala (Bible School) to Maranatha College of Theological Studies.   When Maranatha Bible School has started back in 1984, the school had a two-year Diploma program in Biblical Education. Currently, we have a three-year Undergraduate program (Bachelor Degree) in both the English and Telugu languages and a Graduate distance learning program in English. During the initial years, we did not have a chance to enroll and accommodate women and girls at the Bible School. Later in 1995, God has provided us a facility, which enabled us to open doors for girls to attend Seminary. The first group had 4 girls, and we are happy and proud to say that all 4 of them are in Church ministry today. We continued to see growth in the number of women that attended seminary over the year. Currently, we are able to enroll about 40 women at the Seminary. God is using women greatly in the Church ministry here in India, and we are proud to play our part in preparing them for God’s work.