This period the School of Bible had over 140 students in 9 courses. I am teaching two of them. Both of my courses are in the new Theology training series that began in March. One of the courses is called Introduction to the Bible. It deals with basic questions like: “Can we believe the Bible?”, “Who wrote the Bible?”, “How should we study the Bible?” There are 18 students enrolled in this course. Most of these are not church members but come to us from the community.

The other course is called Biblical Counseling. In this course we learn how to hone our skills as informal counselors to those who come to us seeking advice. It answers questions like; “I know people that need counseling, but how should I go about it?” and “What is the relevance of counseling in the process of salvation?” There are 21 students enrolled. Most of these students are members of one of the congregations. While I deal with the Biblical side of things, I am blessed to have a Christian couple who are practicing psychologists willing to help me teach it. They deal with the technical side of counseling. Evandro and Dilane are longtime members of the downtown congregation (on my right in the photo at the bottom).

There is a third course, History of the Church, taught by one of the local church leaders, Rogério. He has a formal education background in history.

The Theology Training Track is geared towards helping brethren who don’t have access to formal education get a solid biblical foundation for ministry. We also have basic Bible courses and English as a second language which uses the Bible as the reading exercise.

All the School’s students this period are encouraged to attend the one day seminar on The Steps to Salvation that will be at the end of this period.

Mike’s Biblical Counseling class

Josh’s How to Read and Understand the Bible class

One of our English as a second language classes