Whiteboard Church

Turned out to be a pretty fun week, even though I had to go to school twice. It’s actually not that bad – characters are naturally more fun to study than the spoken language, which is partly why most people focus on it. It’s not too hard so far, I’ve got a lot of familiarity with the characters that we’re studying (so far), so it could change up ahead. 

Me, St., and T. spent a ton of hours studying together this week. St.’s a couple days away from dropping his major, which his parents aren’t real comfortable with. Our class the other day was interrupted by two phone calls from his family trying to tell him what a dumb idea this is. It looks like he can leave his name on the register at the college though for up to two years, and that let his parents rest a little easier. Getting into college here isn’t the same as America apparently – if you drop out, it’s pretty tough to get back in.  

Anyway, we talked all week about what kind of a church we should be. Which there isn’t really any question about that, but it was a good exercise for them to start with a blank slate and fill it up with the duties of a church from Scripture! Turns out we want to be a church that loves Jesus, teaches the Bible, and reaches the lost! What a surprise! It really was a lot of fun, though – then we spent a day talking about why students don’t love Jesus, study the Bible, or invite their friends to church, and what we can do to change that. We’ve got some ideas and some changes that we’re going to try to incorporate over the next couple of months. I’d really love to see us take some giant steps forward in our ability to disciple new believers this semester. We’ve got twice as much manpower this semester than last, so that’s a start. 

Last night we had the girls Bible study and the Old Testament survey class. Lot of girls were back from vacation and have their school schedules straightened out, so the last of the home-goers have returned, I think. One of the girls had a few notebook pages of questions about the Bible she had accumulated over her vacation. The guys studied all of Solomon’s writings last night which, aside from being ridiculously confusing, are pretty powerful. We’re going to start registration for our mini-Bible institute this weekend. We’re hoping to see a bunch of students register for a class – we’ll probably only have two or three. Due to the necessary preparation time, I just want to teach one. We’re working on other teachers and classes, though.