Hey all,
Its been a week and a bit since my last update, so I thought I’d let you all know that I’ve arrived!
YWAM The King’s Lodge
I arrived on Thursday of last week, and both Thursday and Friday were full of orientation, training and information about the base. There are 16 of us in the SBS (School of Biblical Studies); 6 boys and 10 girls. There is also a Discipleship Training School (DTS) happening at the same time, they have 2 boys and 9 girls; 11 in all.
My SBS comprises of people from India, Samoa, Italy, Northern Ireland, England, the US, Canada, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and South Korea. We also have 7 staff members, and they’re from South Korea, Wales, Ukraine, the US, Canada and Tanzania. Truly an international school!
Our SBS staff team
On Saturday, both the DTS and the SBS went into Stratford-Upon-Avon for the day to explore and get to know each other a bit better. It was neat to see the places where Shakespeare lived and where he is currently buried!
Fun fact: Shakespeare’s body is in the church across the river
Lots of swans in Stratford!
We have spent the majority of this past week in the classroom learning the foundations of the school, walking through the book of Philemon together, and practicing what we’ve been learning.
Our classroom
Teaching time!
There are 3 main approaches when we study the Bible:
2. Deductive - Using the Bible’s content to prove/present an idea/theology
3. Inductive - Uses the Bible’s content to form an idea/theology
Throughout this school, we will be using the Inductive approach to see what the Bible ‘actually says’, but all 3 approaches are valuable in their own way!
The main “method” of inductive approach that we will be taking over the next 9 months has 5 steps:
2. Read - each book will be read out loud to start, then a total of 5 times as we go through all the steps. We read differently depending on the various genres etc.
3. Observe - this is the stage where we are looking at the text, and trying to see what it actually says. This can be difficult because most of us tend to read and instantly jump to how this applies in our lives.
4. Interpret - we ask the question “what did this mean?” (not “what does this mean?”) We are a very different and removed culture than the people the Bible was originally written to! We need to interpret the text in relation to these ancient cultures, not in relation to our modern-day culture
5. Apply - Once we have gone through all the steps, we can then think about ourselves
I will explain more about what we’re doing in a later post, but for those of you that have made it this far, thanks for reading about what I’m up to!
Prayer Requests:
- There is one more trainee arriving for the SBS this week, their family just had their visas approved. Pray that they would settle in quickly, and be able to catch up on the material they’ve missed- Rest: It’s very easy for me to stay up late and not get enough sleep. We also have had mounds of information heaped on us this week, which has been quite overwhelming. My class tends to shut down and go to our rooms after classes.
- Peace: my SBS experience has been vastly different than my DTS, and I’m realizing I came with a lot of expectations from DTS that haven’t been met. I thought because I was “going back to YWAM”, that things would be similar, but they aren’t!
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for rebuking, for correction, and for training in righteousness”
2 Timothy 3:16
