Teaching Truth
Courses and Lectures for the Greater Community By Bill Wilder Director of Educational Ministries
INSIDE Parents and the Study Center Amazing Grace
Praxis V11 N1
Spring 2007
Pr a x i s
God's Calling in Life's Decisions
in the geographical sense mentioned above. By way of one-time lectures and seminars, biweekly discussion groups, four-part lecture everal miles from the Grounds of the series, and full-blown courses we engage a University of Virginia, nearly two whole host of Biblical and cultural issues on dozen adults benefit from weekly cours- a number of different fronts. This semester es from the Center for Christian Study that alone, for example, has had lectures on parensupport the ministry of local church congretal authority, Bob Dylan, and contemporary gations. cultural authority (as personified by Oprah), The seminary-level classes, co-sponsored among others. Amidst this flexibility and flux, with the churches, draw recent college gradu- however, can be found two fixed points. ates and other adults who work in and near One is a grounding conviction that seriCharlottesville. The courses help the Center ous and sustained Christian reflection is not fulfill its mission to the wider community, just for an elite coterie of seminary-trained offering for-credit seminary courses to laypeo- pastors and theologians. We believe that it is ple and expanding the reach of the Center’s vital for all believers to grow in their underhigh-quality teaching. standing of a Biblical worldview and, increasThis work is in addition to the Center’s ingly, to see all of life and culture from that well-established and dynamic outreach to vantage point. University students. Our building is a hub Our second fixed point is what we might of student ministry and activity: we host call the core curriculum of our educational a residential program for undergraduates; ministries: the trio of courses we offer in sponsor three graduate student fellowships; Biblical studies, church history, and systematic and befriend, counsel, and serve students in a theology. These are seminary-level courses host of other ways. As the former director of (indeed, seminary credit is available for two graduate ministries, I have great appreciation of them through Reformed Theological for these ministries. Seminary-Washington, D.C.). While many of But the educational dimension of minisour educational offerings must shift and adapt try — not just the courses, but also the six to rapidly changing cultural challenges, these lecture series each year, and numerous other three courses provide the immovable center lectures — are equally vital to our larger from which all theological and cultural reflecvision. University students do enroll in these tion must proceed. Thus, the Biblical courses, programs, but their value extends far beyond which I teach, convey a strong sense of the way in which God’s creation and redemptive purposes for his world come to their climactic completion in Christ and his church. The continued outworking of those purposes in the life of God’s people since the apostolic age is the theme of Scott Amos’s rich survey of church history. Wes Zell provides a systemScott Amos teaches his course Apologists, Fathers, Monks, atic summation of Christian Scholastics: The History of the Church to 1500 teaching with sensitivity to both Biblical and (photo by Carl Briggs) theological precedents. the Grounds. Indeed, we have frequent conThis vision of a broad-based Biblical and tact with friends of the Study Center in theological education for all believers has other states who visit our website to listen worked itself out in encouraging ways over to lectures and read course materials we post the years. As evidence, one could point to the online. sheer diversity of those taking these courses. Thus, educational ministries at the Study (Last semester, nearly three dozen students Center cover a lot of territory — and not just enrolled in the three courses.)
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