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For four years now we’ve been meeting together with a handful of pastors and church leaders to traverse the chasm that is higher education. The School of Antioch has provided for us a robust curriculum, fully accredited for Bachelor and Master level degrees, and through our months of study together we have seen that this Bible training program is far more than simply warranting a paper certificate. The program has been instrumental in growing not only their faith and usefulness in church ministry, but almost refocusing the purpose of the church against their nominal experience and cultural expectations. In short, the discipline of careful and purposeful study and mentoring through the Bible has helped to redefine what it means to be Christian.
This sounds perhaps more grandiose than it is in reality, but it is to point out that there is something central in the calling of the church that so many of the local denominations have lost focus of: their mission.
One of my students said, “Its just amazing, you can see how all of this is simply needed in the church today.” Another said, “I’m just so thankful for this practical teaching. I first started looking for classes for me and my understanding of the Bible, but now I can see how the classes have changed me. No one is offering this kind of teaching to us.”
The church today must recognize that it is positioned in a time where religious expression is dying with the aged, and our dogmatic forms of worship are no threat to the world’s half-mustered attractions. That which worked 50 years ago, no longer motivates today. But the Lord can still capture hearts. We must focus on the harvest fields, and accommodate our harvesting tools towards reaching the ripe corners, we must speak the gospel in a language that our youth understand, we must acquiesce the hallmarks of our comfort if discomfort means drawing the next generation to Christ.
Pray that my students keep their diligence in foraging for the Kingdom in the highways and byways of Eleuthera. We have graduation next month.