Over Five Decades of Global Impact

Our DNA Remains the Same

Our Vision

Every nation redeemed and transformed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Our Mission

To equip and inspire strategically positioned leaders to more effectively demonstrate and present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to prepare others to do the same.

WHY WE BEGAN

Founded by Dr. John Edmund Haggai in the 1960s, Haggai International emerged in response to the limitations of the Western missionary movement. At the time, Western missionaries often faced restricted access to the places and people most in need of the Gospel. As Western colonization declined and nationalism rose, Dr. Haggai recognized the need for a new strategy.

In 1969, he launched the Haggai Leader Experience to equip national leaders to champion the love of Christ within their own cultures. By empowering locals, the mission could reach areas previously inaccessible to outsiders.

In the early 1970s, Dr. Haggai also recognized the need to include women — who were largely excluded from formal ministry training and organized missional work. Haggai International equipped its first cohort of women in 1977, long before it was culturally accepted to do so.

Today, both men and women trained through the Haggai Leader Experience continue to make a global impact across ministries and marketplaces. For six decades, Haggai International has equipped leaders to demonstrate and present the Gospel of Jesus Christ — and that work continues to grow and innovate

OUR FOUNDER

John Edmund Haggai has been called a visionary, a Christian world statesman, an evangelist, and a master of the pulpit — all of which is true of this dynamic man of God.

Never content to follow the crowd, Dr. Haggai initiated a unique and forward-thinking mission plan in obedience to the Great Commission. A visit to Asia in the early 1960s convinced Haggai that changes in global geopolitics, brought about by the end of colonialism, required a new strategy for world evangelism. In 1969, after years of research, prayer, and development, he presided over the first advanced leadership seminar, designed to empower and mobilize nationals to reach their own people for Christ.

Haggai International has equipped and motivated more than 170,000+ Christian clergy and lay leaders working in almost all the non-Western countries of the world. They multiply their effectiveness significantly by passing on their training to an average of 100 other leaders.

An alumnus of Moody Bible Institute (where he was named “Alumnus of the Year”) and Furman University and the recipient of honorary doctorates on both sides of the Pacific, Dr. John Haggai lived unflinchingly by his own motto: Attempt something so great for God, it’s doomed to failure unless God be in it.

He authored more than a dozen books, including How to Win Over Worry, The Influential Leader, My Son Johnny (who died in 1975 in his 25th year) and Success Secrets of the Bible.

John Edmund Haggai was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the eldest son of a Syrian immigrant and a New Englander whose English ancestors settled in America during the 1600s. While at Moody, he met and married Christine Barker of Bristol, Virginia. Atlanta, Georgia, was their base of ministry since 1961. (Mrs. Haggai went to be with the Lord in August 2019, a week after their 74th wedding anniversary. John Haggai was reunited with her and their son, Johnny, in Heaven on November 18, 2020.)

DR. JOHN HAGGAI FEATURED SERMONS

HAGGAI INTERNATIONAL STATEMENT OF FAITH

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, and authoritative Word of God, without error in the original writings.

We believe in one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We believe that by one man, Adam, sin entered the world; that for the salvation of lost and sinful men, regeneration by the Holy Spirit through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely essential.

We believe in the deity and virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He died upon the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sin of the world and that He arose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, from whence He will return with power and glory.

We believe in the doctrine of justification by faith, realizing it is impossible for man, through works, to please God or save himself.

We believe in life after death; that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.

We believe in the resurrection of the saved unto everlasting life in Heaven and the resurrection of the lost or unsaved unto eternal punishment.

We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, Whose indwelling enables the Christian to live a godly life.