We're kicking off our #GreatGain giving campaign this Giving Tuesday with three essential causes: Biblical Education in the Developing World, Global K-12 Education, and Sustainable Christ-Centered Community Building.
We'll hope you'll take a moment to listen to (or read) GOD Int'l founder Gregg Garner as he talks about the heart behind our Biblical Education cause this year.
The following is a transcript version of the video linked above.
At the heart of who we are at Global Outreach Developments is that we are a people who believe in the authority of the Word of God. And that authority to us is so permeating & expansive that we believe that if it can find its way to be written on people's hearts, their desire, their will now becomes that which enacts out of obedience the will of God.
But a person can't do that if they don't know what the Word of God is. Paul the Apostle would say, how are they going to hear if someone doesn't tell them about it? And how is someone supposed to be able to tell them about it if they're not sent? And he highlights that there's something beautiful about bringing the Word to people. He would even highlight in that same chapter that faith, it comes by hearing and specifically hearing the Word of God.
Now today we're not an oral community that has a high concentration of illiteracy [like in Jesus' day]. And in that case we don't have to have scribes or our church leaders stand up and read the Scriptures to us. Because of where we're at in history and the blessing that God has in our lives, most of us are literate. Thus, we can read the Word of God for ourselves. In that case, faith comes by reading and reading the Word of God.
If we want to develop people's faith, it only comes on the other side of a biblical education. A lot of people develop faith, but that faith comes not from the Word of God. It comes maybe from their cultural belief systems or the other inherited institutions that have influenced the way they think about the world. But a biblical education says that God's view, God's perspective, God's lens on how he sees the world becomes the definitive lens for how we also see it. And this is actually really good news because God is hopeful. God is redeemer, God is Savior and he has good plans for humanity.
Now what he needs are his kids, whom he would call heirs to his kingdom. If you're an heir, that means you're going to inherit what is our inheritance. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. In that case, the meek will inherit the earth. As God's people, we may not have all the trappings of power that we sometimes see with large national, state driven institutions. But as the church, as God's people, we do have a power that's in these earthen vessels.
The Bible will say it's like we're jars of clay. And inside of us there's this power and that power that's alive within us is the Spirit of God that is articulated and manifest through a speaking of the Word. God himself created the heavens and the earth as a result of what he said. John 1 says, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And in verse 3, it tells us that all things that were created were made through him. And in verse 14, we get the whole reason why we celebrate at this holiday season that the Word became flesh. Jesus is an embodiment of what it means to live out a biblical education. And all of us as Christians have come to confess that as Lord, we believe that he lived a life that did not fall short of God's expectations. He was without sin. And this life that we now believe in, this life of Jesus, the Son of God, is the one, the very one, who's saying, come and follow me, come and follow me, come and enact my way.
But how is someone going to do that if they don't know what the way is? That's kind of what Philip said after Jesus is like, 'but you do know the way'. And he lets them know that he knows him.
So how do we get people to know Jesus? There's a lot of folks out there who are trying to promote forms of Christianity and forms of spirituality. And for the most part, I really believe by the grace and mercy of God, it's good stuff. However, it's not going to be as good as giving people the bread that comes from heaven. The very thing that God has provided for us, the very thing that Jesus himself said. Man does not live by bread alone, but lives by the words that proceed from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). And we've been so blessed to have the biblical text, to be able to learn it, to study it. It is more than just a religious document to us. It is the inspired word of God that helps us to understand who God is and in that case, who we are as his kids.
On top of that, it tells us what it is that we're supposed to do and how it is that that we're supposed to do it. And God gives us the sight that, without His Word, we would have been blind to. So this holiday season, we're finding that there is great gain in biblical education. Every year you've heard us talk about the benefits of seeing communities transformed as a result of receiving biblical education. And we can only testify that to a greater degree. As we continue to share the Word of God with various communities this year, we have opportunities to expand sharing the Word of God into so many diverse Communities, various church communities, church communities that are not a part of our denomination, that are not a part of our organization, just blessed brothers and sisters who have decided they really want to learn the Word of God.
Many of these folks are actually pastors and ministers and they've never had an education in the Bible. And unfortunately, when people are denied that their spirituality is not necessarily rooted in Scripture. This is not to say they don't have a relationship with God, but their relationship with God isn't as robust and as fortified as it could be if they knew the Word. Jesus said that everyone who hears these words of mine and does them, that's a wise person, that person is going to build in a sustainable fashion so that storms get hit and it won't fall. But everyone who hears these words and doesn't do them, this person is going to build foolishly (Matthew 7:24-27).
Everybody's building something with their lives. And what we want to do is be people who know the Word of God and build our lives according to that Word. So to these pastors and ministers who are now availing themselves to learn the Word of God with us, it's such a blessing to be able to extend that to them so that with their respective church communities they can build up the body of Christ and we can see the Word of God bring about transformation in those different societies.
I mean, we're talking about five different countries around the world where in which people are participating with us, longing to learn the Word of God. And that's where we, we need your help. We really need your help in ensuring that the stewardship of this resource, which is a knowledge of the Word of God, could be extended to the body of Christ all over the world. Ephesians 4:13 tells us that this would be our responsibility. It first highlights it in verses 11 and 12 that It would be the responsibility of certain leaders who are gifted in certain capacities to ensure that the holy community of God is equipped so that they can do the work of service and also build up the body of Christ. So verse 13 says this has to keep happening until they reach a unity of faith and a knowledge of the Son of God and that unity of faith and that knowledge of the Son of God. In other words, Paul will use phrases like "having the mind of Christ" that comes as a result of learning God's Word.
On one occasion, Jesus said, listen, you guys are looking through the Scriptures and you're trying to find something in it, but what you don't get is that those Scriptures were written about me. He says, you're trying to ask me to give a sign similar to what Moses did. But what you need to understand is that Moses was writing about me. How can Jesus say that? Well, in Matthew 5:17 on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the Word of God, but he came to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus lived out the Word of God, and by living out the Word of God, he brought salvation to all of us. And now those of us who are able to learn the Word of God, we can usher in the presence of God, we can usher in his spirit into our various communities, so that now we're acting according to His Word, according to his ways, and that brings about the life, health and peace that God longs for all humanity to enjoy.
Let me share with you specifically how it is that we're going to be advancing biblical education for our brothers and sisters around the world.
The first way in which we're doing that is through the Institute for Global Outreach Developments, which is an association for Biblical Higher Education accredited college. And I'm so thankful to be a part of the Bible School movement and to join the hundreds of other Christian Bible colleges who have this conviction to get the Word of God to people who are desperately in need of it. And in this case, we are making offerings to specific people in these developing world communities who have the capacity to learn in that higher learning environment. In this post secondary academic environment. This means that even though a lot of people don't have the necessary prerequisites to enter into a post secondary education, there are some who do. And in that case, these folks are primed and ready to learn the Word of God so that they can be used by God to steward that knowledge resource and share it with others.
In fact, did you know that Paul the Apostle, unlike Jesus, who I think you Remember in Luke 2, had to go home with his parents and he couldn't stay in Jerusalem and go to university with the rabbis, but he went back home and apprenticed with his father. In contrast, Paul the Apostle, who grew up in the educational town of Tarsus, which would be modern day Turkey today, he actually ended up moving and getting to sit at the feet. He was essentially brought into Jerusalem to be personally taught by the great teacher of the time, Gamaliel. And sitting at his feet, he received a world class biblical education. So much so that in Philippians he said that to him it became a point of pride that even compared to the other Pharisees who were very zealous for the law, he said he even excelled beyond them. But he learned that the righteousness this kind of education, the education that was lacking, the keystone Jesus as Lord was to him now something that was just a righteousness of his own. But the righteousness that comes from God came as a result of him learning what we now call the whole Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the New Testament we know is all about Jesus.
So the combination of those two became a big part of what was in the heart of Paul. And he understood himself now to be a teacher who is going to help educate communities on how Jesus was Lord according to the Hebrew Scriptures and then to recontextualize that into what we now call the New Testament Scriptures in these various letters to these diverse Gentile communities. So having received this education, he, God saw him and said, Ananias (this was in Acts chapter nine) - He says, this guy is going to be an instrument of mine and I'm going to use him to spread the Word to the Gentiles. In the same way, there are certain people in our developing world settings who are also primed and ready to receive a higher level of education so that they can steward that gift and be able to share it effectively within their context. We're very excited to offer scholarships to these types of folks so they could participate and get a degree in Biblical Studies from the Institute.
The other program that we have is designed for those types of ministers that may not necessarily qualify with the prerequisites to get into a post secondary educational curriculum, but they still need to learn the Word of God. So at the Institute, we formulated a curriculum that is specifically tailored to teach very particular things about the Bible, all focused around Jesus as the center of how we look at community, how we look at healing, how we look at leadership. There's various courses that create a certificate. So we're offering a certificate program to these other wonderful people who can now get some biblical foundation from the Scripture, but on a level that works with what prerequisites they're able to meet. And we're very excited about that.
Finally, we are doing also seminars and workshops and these are for even a broader group of people. Specifically, this is part of what we call the Community for God Network (CGN). The CGN is a collection of various churches and various denominations who have come together because they believe they need more of God's Word and with what resources they have in their various denominations and churches. They just don't have people who are knowledgeable enough about Scripture to be able to teach it. So the CGN is this Network of people. It's made up of pastors and leaders of churches, and all of them coming together. We pray with one another. We even evaluate each other's programming to make sure it coincides and aligns with the Word of God. But we also do various teachings, and it's all regional. It just depends on where we're at and what concerns they have.
This last summer, I was with the CGN group in Uganda, and we had to talk about baptism for about four hours because that was something that they were really fixated on. They wanted to have a deeper understanding about it. And you would not believe the kind of folklore type understanding they had about baptism that was nothing even having to do with scripture. But they felt it was a major conviction that they'd uphold. You could imagine the freedom they entered into when they actually learned about baptism in scripture and how it's practiced and why we do it and why it's important. It lit their eyes up. And it was a very fruitful four hours, but it was tense.
But you see, that was a concern in Africa. That may not be the same concern in El Salvador. In El Salvador, maybe the concern there is that there's a lot of social pressure for gang violence, and there's a bunch of young people who are either being swallowed up into going up north or finding themselves in gangs, all because of economic instability. So that requires a whole other type of workshop and teaching curriculum. The CGN conferences avail themselves in that way, and we try to be as relevant and contextualized in teaching the Word of God.
So your support helps us to scholarship traditional collegiate students in the developing world into our Biblical Studies program. It helps us to sponsor and scholarship various ministers and pastors, ministerial workers who are going to get this certification that we offer that's tailored to their international context. And then finally, it's providing the resources for us to continue putting together these workshops and these seminars that meet people where they're at and help them to be more effective ministers in advancing the Kingdom of God.
I'm telling you that this kind of godliness, that's going to get you valuing and recognizing, wow, we build people. We are his workmanship. God's temple is not some structure down the road. But don't you know, you are the temple of God. And if we are going to participate with God in building what he wants to build, we're going to build people. So the godliness that we can implement here through obedience leads to great gain as we find ourselves bringing a biblical education to those who really need it. We need your help. Please help us.
Comments