Bible College Class

This is a prayer update on the Bible College Class. 

We want to thank you for your prayers.  The class ended on June 7^th and you are probably wondering why it took so long to post.  I am too.  Our son Greg and wife Wendy along with 4 of our precious grandchildren arrived before the class ended.  We certainly enjoyed spending time with them.  Now that they have returned to the USA I am taking time to share some of the highlights of the Bible College class.

<![if !vml]><![endif]><![if !vml]><![endif]>During this block period I taught two courses: Spiritual Leadership [There were 16 students]; and Pentateuch [20 Students].  Nancy taught Gospel and Culture to 18 students.

These classes were exciting to me because these classes were the best ever as far as open classroom discussion and participation.

In Spiritual Leadership we looked at Jesus’ model of servant leadership.  This definitely involves a change of mind-set because when we, from a human standpoint, think of a leader we don’t think of a servant.  This concept evoked a lot of discussion.  The Solomon Island motto is, “To lead is to serve.”  But even though that is the motto and frequently quoted, it has not widen been put into practice.  But Jesus taught the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven was the least on this earth, to be first you had to be last, etc. etc.  God is moving in the SI and is raising up Godly leaders.  We need leaders of integrity.

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In the Gospel and Culture class, Nancy asked the class to identify cultural concerns, problems, and issues that they felt needed to be addressed by the church.  Then the students were assigned different topics and researched the scripture to see if and how these cultural issues were addressed in the word.  Then there was open discussion as they looked at their own Solomon Island/Melanesian culture and discovered how the Bible spoke to this culture.  This was primarily a class of discussion and searching the scriptures and then also using reason, experience, and Christian tradition to discover and identify the proper response.

The Pentateuch class can be described by one word, “awesome.”  This was the first time for me to teach this class and the first time it required a lot of preparation and prayer.  We primarily used the Bible as the text, but I also drew heavily from Victor Hamilton’s “Handbook on the Pentateuch”, and “Discovering the New Testament” edited by Alex Varughese.

What has been a blessing is the results after the class.  I have visited churches where one of the students is preaching and hear sermons that were taken from the material talked about during this class.  Every scripture class I have the students preach a sermon as part of their grade. 

By George Miller