Our Mission and Core Values
Source of Light Ministries International exists to bring people of every nation, language, and ethnicity into a mature relationship with Jesus Christ and into fellowship with a local church family. To achieve these purposes, SLM carries on the following activities:
Our Vision
Source of Light’s vision is to reach the people of the world through Christ-centered and time-tested materials, which will result in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. We envision our Discipleship Training Branches and our Associate Discipleship Schools impacting communities of people around the world by bringing them to a vital relationship with Jesus Christ, and to a level of commitment to Christ that can reflect and demonstrate His life to the world around them. As we equip these believers, they will mature and bear fruit, repeating the process of evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.
We at SLM will continue to develop Bible study materials that are doctrinally sound and culturally relevant and can be used as tools to accomplish this task.
Our History
The Source of Light Mission (now Source of Light Ministries International, Inc.) began in 1952 when two servants of God were moved by the Holy Spirit to expand the effectiveness of Gospel distributions by the means of free Bible correspondence courses. Source of Light had its beginnings in the building which is now The Chamber of Commerce in Madison, Georgia.
Challenged by Rev. Cameron V. Thompson, founder and director of the Pan American Testament League, Rev. Charles Gilmore and Rev. Edward Steele participated in a Gospel distribution campaign in Jamaica, covering the island with Gospels of John and a planned program of follow-up material. Each Gospel booklet contained a coupon entitling the reader to a free Bible study course that had been written and mimeographed in the U.S.
By the time the men returned from the island, the entire supply of 500 lessons had been mailed. Additional copies were hurriedly reproduced to meet the demand for that first lesson. The pressure mounted as hundreds of people requested a second lesson, then a third and a fourth. As a result, seven lessons on the Doctrines of Salvation were prepared, printed, and distributed. A simple mimeograph machine was used to produce these first lessons. Soon the requests came by the hundreds. The ministry of Source of Light has been growing ever since, as demand for continuing studies of the Word has increased and spread to other countries and continents in ways those original two men could never have imagined.
Mr. Weyman Carmichael, formerly a publisher and businessman in Madison, Georgia, assisted the work initially through gifts of equipment, use of a building, and the donation of approximately seventeen acres of land fronting on U.S. 441 (one mile south of the present I-20 exit) within a very short distance of the place where it all began.
In February 1954, the Source of Light Mission was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit religious organization in the State of Georgia.
In order to more accurately reflect the organization’s scope and activity, a name change to Source of Light Ministries International, Inc. was effected by the Executive Council and approved by the U.S. government in 1980.
