Bible Boot Camp

Exciting day yesterday. Our friend from Taiwan is in town now, and he spoke at a friend’s underground church across town last night. We had close to a dozen people from our Bible study come along, and I was so happy to finally let them have the opportunity to experience Bible teaching in their own language. I was pretty jealous, though! Praise the Lord, though, I understand more every time…

So some cool things happened last night. Some of the regular-Thursday-nighter students that came last night are from a university clear on the other side of town. It is a real hike for most of the students that come to our house for Bible study, but for these students, it’s a genuine pilgrimage. They told my wife last night that more and more people at their campus are finding out about the Bible study and would like to start one of their own. Oh, great, let me just duplicate myself real quick and move an hour away. It’s really exciting to find out that the word is spreading through the student population, though. It still isn’t fast enough to shake this city, but it is faster than we have workers for, so it’s really too fast.

St. came last night. Just back from Beijing, this guy read his Bible the whole time he was gone, and he’s hanging around the middle of Acts right now. He told me before the service last night that he wanted to have a word with me afterwards. So after a great message that pretty much spanned God’s redemption plan for mankind, I asked St. what was up. He asked, “What should I do if I want to be a Bible teacher?” He wanted to know if he should quit his major to study the Bible more. He also wanted to know where and how he could get the training that he needed. Good question.

I explained to him that starting a place of Bible training in or near China is really my whole purpose for coming here. I also told him that if he wanted, he could spend a couple of weeks with me to study the Bible and experience the life of a Bible teacher. Only rule is he can’t speak English. And I told him that, two weeks from now, I wanted him to teach for 5 minutes at our Bible study. Surprise, excitement, and terror seemed to hit him about simultaneously. But he agreed. And then he found out I was paying him to be my language teacher for a couple weeks. He felt bad about that, but he won’t after talking to me for four hours in Chinese today! I tried to explain to him that quitting his major, committing his life to being a Bible teacher is a huge step. He ought to read through his Bible and study with me for a while before making this decision. So pray for St. – he’s got a long two weeks in front of him!

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