International Baptist Theological Seminary of the European Baptist Federation, or simply The International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS), located in Prague, Czech Republic.
Seminary was founded in 1949 in Rueschlikon, Switzerland, and transferred to Prague, Czech Republic, in 1997. It is wholly owned by the fifty Baptist Unions of the European Baptist Federation. It is accredited by the Czech Ministry of Education offering a European Union Bologna-standard Magister in Theology. It is also validated by the University of Wales, Cymru (www.wales.ac.uk), for Master's degrees in Applied Theology, Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, Biblical Studies and Contextual Missiology. Specialist research institutes in these areas and in Human Rights exist at the seminary. Its alumni serve in over 60 countries throughout the world. Rectors (Presidents) of the Seminary have included Dr Josef Nordenhaug who went on to become General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) in the last century. More recently Dr Denton Lotz, Professor of Missions, served as General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance (1989–2007).
The seminary houses one of the largest collections of books in theology on the European mainland. Lecturing is in English and faculty are drawn from throughout Europe. The post graduate student community is currently about 140. It remains a unique organisation in the world Baptist family as no other BWA regional body in the world has such an institution.
It is a founding member of the Consortium of European Baptist Theological schools. It offers programmes of Continuing Professional Development.
The current Rector is the Revd Dr Keith G Jones PhD, an ordained minister of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Chair of the Implementation Task Force of the Baptist World Alliance.