It’s finally here! This last week we kicked off our first full year with our revamped School of Biblical Studies. We have been waiting and praying for this day for months and it’s crazy to think that it’s finally here. As always, I want to give you an inside look at what is going on here at the school, give you a picture of what is to come, and then a quick prayer request. This fall we have welcomed 6 new students into the school and 4 students from the spring semester are continuing their journey. We are always excited to help students begin their Emmaus journey, this year we have been blessed to have the nations come to us. When we changed the school to be part-time, we thought that was the end of seeing students come from all over the world and United States but were surprisingly and thankfully wrong!! This year we have a couple from the Netherlands and a student from Germany and Pennsylvania. This has filled our classroom with a diversity of backgrounds and cultures, this helps all of us to learn more about God, life in community and ourselves.Within our student body, 6 students are living on campus here at Canterbury. One thing that we strive for at Emmaus is to establish genuine relationships and community life. So when we welcome new students I am always a little nervous. Will the students like living on campus? will they enjoy each other? how can we facilitate good community? A lot of my worries about our on-campus community were answered before the school even started. Several of our students showed up a few days early, before classes or our scheduled community times. However, our new students instantly started to cook food together and have game nights. The community on campus has already been a wonderful surprise. The students have started to grow closer together. Below you can see a picture of us sharing some Dutch pancakes for dinner. Afterword we played ping pong. I can already tell that this season is going to be very life-giving. [gallery ids="253,252" type="rectangular"] We have started to walk the students through the way that they are going to study Scripture this year through the Inductive Bible Study Method. I had the pleasure of teaching 4 times in the first week. On the first day, we talked about what inductive Bible study is, digging into what it looks like to lay aside our preconceived notions and let the text speak for itself. On our second and third days, we talked about methods of Observation. I was able to teach the students how to see and study the structure of each book and how to create and utilize their own color code. Thursday I walked the students through Interpretation, which is considering what the book would have meant to the original readers or hearers. On this day I had two lectures, one where I introduced the idea of what good interpretation looks like. Each year when we teach the students the Inductive method, we have them “practice” on a book of the Bible. This year we chose the book of Jonah to help them learn the method. Thursday morning I had the pleasure of walking them through the relevant historical background of Jonah. The difficult part of teaching this for many Old Testament books is that we aren't sure for a lot of it. This is part of why we wanted to start with Jonah. Right off the bat, our students have to wrestle with difficult questions like who wrote Jonah, when was it written, is it history or allegory? [gallery ids="263,261,258" type="rectangular"]This semester we are so excited to see these students journey through the Old Testament. I know that when I began my Emmaus journey through the Old Testament it was exciting, scary and awesome all at the same time. Please pray that God will work through us and help us to encourage these students as they begin their journey here at Emmaus. Lastly, we have started up our Biblical Narrative Series. This is our Monday night class open to the public. Our narrative series is designed to run in tandem with our school. At each lecture, we spend some time talking about the relevant historical information that all the books share and we give tips on how to study every book within that unit of Scripture. This last week we started out in the Pentateuch! One of our teaching staff, Sarah Wise, did an amazing job in leading this first session of the fall! Our next narrative series will be September 17th covering Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuels, and Kings! If you are local please join us!  

Prayer Requests:

This season is admittedly the busiest I have ever been. I am teaching full time for Emmaus, leading the new high school ministry at my church, speaking once a month at the assisted living home, and planning a wedding. I feel tired already, and have a long way to go. The wedding is closing in!!! With marriage just around the corner, I feel the pressure to get fully funded. Pray that God will help me find divine appointments and stir in the hearts of future partners to give. I am so thankful for your continual prayer and support! Thank you for partnering with me in the Gospel here at Emmaus! 

This last week was our first week running our brand new SBS program. If you have been following my updates you might know that we have drastically updated our program to be more accessible to the body of Christ. This program also opens up new avenues for us to partner with the local church.  In making these changes, we have seen a huge response, as we now have 8 students participating in our pilot school! Many of our current students would have not been able to attend our former school.We are so excited to see God call each and every one of our students to study scripture with us this semester. It has been such a wild ride. Five months ago, we sat down as staff and dreamt up a school for people without faces or names. Now we have 8 students, each one having been called to come on a journey down the Emmaus road and discover God through his own Word. Seminar WeekThis week has been our introduction to how we study scripture. We focused on teaching the students the Inductive Bible Study method (if you are not familiar with the Inductive method I suggest you check out this article). The students have had a crash course in studying Scripture, attending class every day from 8-12. For many of our students, the inductive method is a very new way to interact with Scripture. I remember learning it all as a student and finding myself frustrated and confused many times. It has been such a joy now on staff watching our students learn the Inductive method for themselves. Many of them understand the concept much faster than I ever did!Possibly the most exciting thing is to see the moment of discovery for the students. In one of my lectures, I told the students that they were going to be the GPS and I was just the driver. It was in this hour of class that I saw incredible learning take place as they directed me. They were the ones to explore the text and lead me in interpreting it.I’m so excited to walk with this group of students through the New Testament and explore with them on the Emmaus Road.  

Next For Me:At the end of the month I will be teaching the Gospel of Mark. In my lecture, I will focus on the major themes found throughout the book, the important historical context, and the structural layout of the text. Later in the semester, I will be also teaching 1^st Corinthians and 1^st Peter, as well as speaking at two different youth retreats. I have also started to teach at an assisted living home once a month on Sunday mornings. I have a pretty busy semester and I’m excited to step up to the plate. Current Prayer Requests:When you pray for our ministry, please join me in praying for our students. Pray that God would continue to open himself up to these students. Pray that each one makes serious progress in knowing God more while attending the school.Please also join us in praying for the financial support of the staff. Several staff members, along with myself, still have financial needs that need to be meet. Pray that God will work through individuals, excited about our ministry, to partner with us on this journey.Please also pray that Jesus will continue to speak through me, both in my one on ones with the students and through my bible lectures. I find myself more concerned with trying to impress people through my wisdom or the way that I teach rather than the actual development of students. I find myself obsessing over what I think the students will think of me. Pray that I'll be more concerned with what they think of Jesus and not myself. Thank you for your prayers and continual support.