"Introducing..."

(posted by Paul Zilmer)

Last night we kicked off one of the final classes in our spring term. It's called "Introducing..." and each week we'll do an introduction to a book of the Bible. The students will choose which books we look at. In a very few cases, we'll take 2 weeks to do a book.

We started off with a look at how the Bible as a whole is organized. We touched on all 66 books, and how they relate to each other – both in type (law, history, poetry, etc) and in time.

The students then selected which books we would look at for the first several weeks. We had decided ahead of time (with input from those registered) that we would begin with Genesis. The students nominated books, then we voted. There were a couple of rounds of tie-breaking needed. It was gratifying to see that they really wanted to look at more than we can possibly do in the 10 weeks we have! The pictures below show the voting, and the tally on the board. After the decision making was done, we started in on Genesis, which we'll finish next week.

We are seeing a definite pattern of students registering and then not attending. For this class, 5 of the 10 registered came, plus one who hadn't registered in advance. (We're hopeful that 3 of the no-shows will join us starting next week, but we won't know for sure till it happens.) Our policy recently has been to waive the registration fee for students who have completed at least one class with us. This seems to be fostering a somewhat lackadaisical attitude toward the registration process. Is this a problem?  Hard to say. It does make it a little hard on the instructors, not knowing how many handouts to prepare or even how to set up the classroom. Small inconveniences. More importantly, is it good for the students?  Needs some thought. We don't want to create barriers, for sure. On the other hand we definitely want to promote an atmosphere in which Bible education is taken seriously.

Another issue: few of our students who took classes in the fall and winter are signed up for anything this spring. We've of course contacted them all, multiple times, to encourage them to sign up. Do they just need a break?  Are they tired of us?  Are we not offering topics they have an interest in?  We don't really know.

These questions aside, we had a very lively start for what promises to be an interesting series. The students are all very engaged. We have 2 new students, which is great to see. And both of them indicated that they are also very interested in joining our Tuesday night Bible study, currently on 2 Corinthians. Good, positive and exciting things continue to happen!