School of Biblical Teaching, training local leaders in North India

The School of Biblical Teaching is a movement that started 23 years ago. Rev Devender Verma, the Director, based in Delhi, shares its vision and challenges.

Our vision: the planting and growth of healthy local churches that are reproducing and continuing to multiply. These are the agents of God’s kingdom who transform the communities around them.

We believe that each local church needs local leaders gifted and called by God from their own people, as well as teams of gifted teachers from the wider church, so that they can nurture new disciples and equip all God’s people for service and maturity of life and witness (Ephesians 4:11–16).

The need
In two large networks alone, over a million people have turned to Christ in the last 20 years in North India, with thousands of small house churches. Can these local churches become the servants of God’s kingdom, serving as salt and light to transform the communities around them?

These new churches have two major needs:
• The need for discipleship: these new believers are coming to the Lord from different faith backgrounds, and the need is to teach them the Bible and disciple them.

• The need to train pastors and leaders: the majority have very little education and no Bible training or theological education. They too need teaching and training to teach their church members.

The School of Biblical Teaching has, in the past twenty years, trained thousands of pastors around North India and Nepal and is growing in other states of India.

Context
As mentioned, most of them have very little education, so they don’t qualify for the regular Bible seminary. They do not have the resources to pay the heavy fees. Even if they meet all these challenges and try to go there, they can’t leave their family and the congregation.

That’s why SBT is very much needed. It reaches their contexts and teaches them in their language in very simple terms. We organize regional SBT workshops in their villages and cities, with 25-40 attending for three and a half days, during which we teach them the basic principles of homiletics. Each year we plan 20–25 regional workshops. We have two central workshops, each lasting five and a half days and attended by 60–70 pastors.

Our approach
SBT works through building up and equipping its team of resource people (20–25):

• who teach and train a larger circle of trainers (‘A’ trainers—around 80–120);

• who teach other church planters and leaders (‘B’ trainers, around 1200 every year);

• to bring teaching and training right down to the level of local house church leaders, so that the movement continues to multiply organically from a local church base.

Outcomes
Over the last ten years, we have seen significant change in the way people study and teach the Bible, especially among the group of around 200 ‘A’ trainers who have been regularly involved. Most of them can teach effectively in both smaller and larger groups, as well as train others using the ‘Basic Skills’ material that we have developed. They are all engaged in teaching and training their local house church leaders. The ‘B’ trainers also show development in their skills and attitudes and can progress to the next level as ‘A’ trainers.

SBT has also developed the Ezra Theological College, a higher level Bachelor of Theology course for four years, in which they study 36 subjects. They are required to attend three modules in a year. This helps them gain knowledge and understanding of different ministries, and they also get recognition. 70 pastors have completed this course and 51 are in training at present.

Challenges
• Bringing teaching to the right level of their understanding is always a challenge.
• They come from independent churches and low-income communities so they can’t pay for their travel and modules, we have to raise funds for them.
• We always need more resource people to give their time to teach these pastors.

Article by: Rev Devender Verma