The spiritual challenges of teaching (Biblical Interpretation course)

This past week I finished my two sections of a Biblical Interpretation class in the Saturday Ministerial Institute of Medellín (IMM) program. This was the same course I taught last fall, though with some adjustments for the new semester. The biggest challenge this time around was having a ton of students (2 groups of 38, though a few students dropped out early on), which made it hard to adequately respond to students’ questions. Apart from this, though, it was a good experience.

One of the sections of the Biblical Interpretation course last week.

I just got the results from the student evaluations back, which are always something I greet with a mixture of excitement and dread. In general, the results were quite positive, I saw a general trend of more positive evaluation of my teaching and of the course compared with last semester, and I heard a lot of personal positive feedback from students. A lot of students said that the course helped them substantially in understanding how to go about interpreting a biblical text; others commented on ways that studying 1 Peter 2:4-12 for some of the assignments challenged them in their own walk with God. One student, for instance, told me that doing the final assignment, applying 1 Peter 2:4-12 to a contemporary church context, challenged him to take more responsibility in his role as leader of evangelistic outreach in his church. He started the assignment looking for ways to apply the text to critique the shallow commitment to evangelism of the rest of the people in his congregation and ended up realizing it was a message first for himself. 

On the flip side, as someone who struggles with perfectionism, reading student evaluations shows me how far I still have to go in growing in humility. Literally I sometimes have to stop and pray in the middle of reading something to recenter myself on God and not take a comment too personally. The comment that most hit home this time around was when a student commented that they really shouldn’t have a foreigner teach this class because it requires a lot of ability to explain subtle distinctions and that I just wasn’t able to do that in Spanish. I realized through my reaction how easy it is for me to fall into pride over my Spanish skills. A lot of times people comment that my Spanish is really good for a missionary, especially one who hasn’t spent a long time in Latin America. But, these students remind me that I still have my work cut out for me and that I’m still far from a native speaker. I’ve noticed that especially in this program, at a lower academic level where students have a harder time grasping theoretical concepts, students seem to make more comments like this and have a harder time grasping my explanations. This can be frustrating, but it helps me identify areas to grow. Perhaps even more importantly it helps me see where I continue to need the gospel to shape my identity more than putting my confidence in ministry in my own competency. Resting in God’s love and grace sounds so simple, but it is a long, ongoing process for me as a teacher.

Intro to the New Testament "Leveling Course"

This last month (or, really, most of the semester) has been full to the brim with teaching, class prep, and other work responsibilities here, but thankfully I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the semester! This week, on Thursday and Saturday, I taught an 8-hour "leveling course" in Introduction to the New Testament. These "leveling courses" are designed for students from our Ministerial Institute of Medellín (IMM) program (our five semester basic Bible Institute program that students can attend on Saturday mornings or weekday evenings) who hope to now study the complete undergraduate program in theology. Over the course of this semester they have had the opportunity to take up to eight of these courses which seek to deepen their knowledge and make up for competencies that they didn't cover in the IMM program. This gives them the chance to enter the undergraduate program with up to 20 credits already under their belt.

We have 16 students who are going through these courses and, while not all have the financial resources to enter into the undergraduate program right away, or at least not full time, I think we will have good enrollment for the coming semester with a lot of them starting full time studies.

Given that the IMM program has a very strong biblical studies component, I didn't have to cover any of the basic introduction to the content of the New Testament books, but rather cover a few things that make up part of the New Testament Intro course here as it relates to the academic study of the New Testament. While I am sure that doesn't sound particularly exciting, it's very helpful information for enabling them to navigate the different commentaries they'll be using in further New Testament courses (or in preparing sermons or discipleship classes) and understand a bit of the context of some of the quite confusing discussions found therein.

Basically we covered three main areas:

First, an overview of textual criticism of the New Testament. Textual criticism is the study of the different manuscripts to establish what the New Testament originally said by comparing the different small variations from the ancient manuscripts we possess from different times and geographical regions. While this can consternation in students at first when they realize that there are a number of small errors that have become part of their most well-loved Bible translations (especially the Reina-Valera 1960; the KJV and NKJV in English have the same issues), the reality is that by having so many copies of the New Testament from early on in diverse regions we can actually determine with great certainty what the New Testament originally said (for example, this is why most modern translations omit or put explanatory notes regarding Acts 8:37, part of 1 John 5:7-8, Mark 16:9-20, and John 7:53-8:11). I know this class won't give my students many tools to evaluate the evidence for themselves (especially not knowing Greek), but I hope to at least have given them the ability to understand what commentaries are talking about on these points and to respond to the pastoral questions that arise when someone runs across these ideas and starts wondering whether they can really trust the Bibles we have today.

Second, we looked at historical-literary criticism of the New Testament, specifically form, source, redaction, and literary criticism, as well as touching on a couple of other issues such as pseudepigraphy, the idea that some epistles were written by different people than their supposed authors. This is one of the parts of seminary that many students would probably prefer to avoid, but it is actually crucial if we are to understand and respond to historical skepticism regarding the New Testament documents, especially the gospels (such as Bart Ehrman's books, for one). We looked at the presuppositions beyond these academic approaches to studying the New Testament, what positive things we can learn from each approach, and what dangers can arise from uncritically accepting each approach wholesale. Especially interesting was applying these methods to a study of parallel passages in the gospels, applying redaction criticism to the story of the rich young ruler and literary criticism to the portrayal of the end of Jesus' life on the cross, looking at how each writer portrays Jesus' death as part of his overall narrative portrayal of Jesus. We talked a lot about the importance of finding complementary perspectives in the diversity of the New Testament instead of assuming there is a contradiction that the text never actually explicitly affirms.

Third, we looked at some basics on the historical context of the New Testament, looking at the history of intertestamental judaism and the philosophical and religious context of the Greco-Roman world. This part was unfortunately too brief, but students said it helped unify a bunch of bits of information they had heard here and there in past, fitting it into a coherent framework.

Overall, the course went well. What most impressed me was how much students participated and the great questions that they had throughout. While Saturday was a long day with almost 6 hours of class, I can see that these students are both bright and pastorally minded, just the kind of people that will make great students as they transition to our undergraduate program.

Intensive course on how to study the Bible in Valle de Cauca

My Methods of Bible Study II group.

This past Tuesday through Friday I traveled to the department (Colombian equivalent of a state) of Valle de Cauca to teach a continuing education class for a group of pastors from the Evangelical Missionary Union of Colombia. The denomination has three large meetings per year at their camp in the eastern part of this department, about an hour and a half east of Cali, the third largest city in Colombia. The first two days of their meetings deal with matters within the denomination and in the final three days they divide into four groups to study different diploma programs, two groups studying diplomas in Biblical Interpretation, one group in Old Testament, and one group in Counseling, with the first three groups being taught by professors from the Biblical Seminary of Colombia (my seminary) and the counseling group being taught by professors from the Baptist seminary in Cali. They also have services each evening, and I got to preach on Jonah last Tuesday night.

Praying to finish my sermon on Jonah.

To give a bit of background on the denomination, they are particularly strong in this region of Colombia and, as is the case with many denominations here, have a generally Wesleyan theological perspective with some Pentecostal influences, especially stylistically in music and prayer (the continuing ed director told me they were “pentecostalized” rather than Pentecostal per se, since who counts as Pentecostal or charismatic can be very fuzzy in Latin America). They are strongest in the departments of Valle de Cauca and Cauca with influence extending in all directions from there. This location gives them an interesting ethnic makeup, having a very significant Afro-Colombian presence and some significant ministries among indigenous groups as well. One pastor in my class, for example, had worked in various towns, including a stint among an indigenous group in the Pacific coastal region.

Given their geographical location, many ministers are also on the front lines doing ministry in regions that are known for being caliente—that is, “hot”—regions where there has been a history of armed confrontations between the army and the FARC guerrillas. This region is not far from some of the rural mountain areas where the FARC originally started and have had some of their most consistent presence. Since I was at a camp or retreat center and travelling with two other professors from the seminary, I did not feel any particularly significant risk being in the region. Most armed confrontations take place exclusively between the army and the guerrilla, whereas the most common effect on civilians who live there are extortion or robbery, although in some areas with stronger guerrilla presence robbery and other run of the mill crimes are actually low, since thiefs who disrupt the order imposed by the guerrilla may not be spared. To put it in Colombian terms, I didn’t have any problems because I wasn’t dando papaya—“giving papaya”—an idiomatic way of saying when someone is “asking for it” by putting themselves in a situation where someone would want to take advantage of them, like strolling through town by myself as a foreigner or visibly displaying money.

(While I didn’t know it at the time of the class, there was a FARC attack on the army on Tuesday night in the department of Cauca to the south of Cali, killing 11 soldiers and imperiling the progress in the peace talks between the FARC and the government. Please pray for wisdom for Colombia’s leaders in how to best respond and for lasting peace and reconciliation in Colombian society.)

With that background, back to the course. Methods of Bible Study II was the fourth course in the Biblical Interpretation diploma. They started with an introductory module a year ago, took a course on Literary Genres last September (the course I taught in early March elsewhere), studied Methods of Bible Study I last December, will take a course on Applying the Bible this September, and will finish with a final course on Biblical Theology this December. In my group were 31 pastors, all of whom have at least 10 years of ministry experience.

Their first methods course covered the inductive Bible study method, using Philemon as their text they worked on throughout the 15 hours of class. My course looked more in depth at different aspects of the historical context, literary context, other literary features of texts, identifying the main idea and theological principles of a passage, and then briefly touched on application of these principles (which they’ll look at in more depth in the next class). We used Haggai as our text to which we applied the different concepts, which turned out to be a great choice.

A few of the ways we got to see how these aspects provided a deeper reading of Haggai were:

• We saw how the historical circumstance of drought was explicitly connected with the problem of priorities in Haggai’s hearers in Haggai 1. In theory they thought rebuilding the temple was a good idea, but said the time wasn’t right because of their economic problems. God’s message to them was that they had it precisely backward—their economic problems were the result of their failure to prioritize the temple project, not a legitimate pretext for delaying that project. God drives this point home by intentionally choosing to call the temple his “house,” setting up a contrast between their attitude toward their own houses versus their neglect of God’s house.
• We also worked to identify the main idea of Haggai 1. While it sounds simple to identify what the passage is talking about and what it says about what it’s talking about, it can actually be quite tricky in practice. Students invariably struggle with putting the main idea in one sentence, but I have found it is one of the most important steps. This exercise helps students synthesize all the details they’ve learned from the study of the historical and literary contexts.
• We looked at the significance of the fact that the political leader of Israel was a governor under a foreign king rather than a king himself and how this showed an incomplete restoration of the nation. Later we looked at the prophecy in 2:20-23 to that governor, Zerubbabel, compared with the background in Jeremiah 22:24-30. By looking at this literary context of Haggai among the other prophets, we saw how Haggai’s message shows God’s reaffirmation of the Davidic covenantal promise to the post-exilic generation, reversing the curse on Jehoiachin (Zerubbabel’s grandfather), one of the last kings of Judah before the exile.
• I had students read 2:1-9 in three translations and discuss how each understood 2:7 (“Desire of the nations” or “wealth of the nations”), seeking clues for understanding the phrase in its immediate context and how it impacts the interpretation of the prophecy. This was the part that caused the most consternation as many students didn’t want to even consider the possibility that 2:7 may not be messianic. I think there is likely at least some messianic element or undertone to the passage (in 2:9 at least, and given the use of 2:6 in Hebrews 12:26), but am not entirely positive whether it’s best to see that in 2:7 itself, so I sought to show how the different readings understood the passage and how to use comparative analysis of translations to identify interpretive issues when one doesn’t know Hebrew or Greek.
• We looked at the comparisons between Deuteronomy 28 and the consequences Haggai’s hearers faced to understand the blessings and curses of the Law. Then we discussed the importance of knowing where a text is in redemptive history and in what sense the teaching on blessings for obedience applies under the New Covenant. While we don’t have specific promises related to fruitful harvests in a promised land (since we live as exiles on the earth awaiting a heavenly inheritance), God does urge us to seek first his kingdom trusting that he will supply our needs (Matthew 6:33) and he does indicate that he still uses adverse circumstances as a form of discipline (Hebrews 12), whether directly for a specific sin or for more general character formation.
• We noted the importance of paying attention to the historical moment of a message, such as that Haggai’s first two prophecies occurred on Jewish feast days (the New Moon and the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles) and that the name Haggai means “festal”. This points out the importance of the temple project for Israel’s religious life and relationship with God.
• We saw how there is a general pattern in Haggai of how in the face of the people's necessity, in each of the four prophecies God responds with his grace, promising his presence, blessing, or faithfulness. While Haggai emphasizes the need for human response, he does so in a way that clearly highlights God's grace in the face of our spiritual and practical needs (note especially 1:13 for God's role in stirring their hearts to respond!).

Overall, the course went well and students commented that they were challenged both in learning some new approaches to interpretation and also in the powerful message of Haggai regarding proper priorities in life. I pray that this course has served as another step in learning to be better readers of Scripture and more faithful preachers and teachers. It was a tremendous blessing to be a part of training so many people with a passion for the gospel and serving in what are often quite difficult contexts.

Afternoon soccer game amongst the different pastors. They were surprised I actually played decently. Playing since kindergarten has paid off in Colombia!

Camp/retreat center facilities.

View from the car of agricultural region in the Valle de Cauca. The valley there is one of the largest in Colombia and is known across the whole country simply as "the valley". This region grows almost exclusively sugar cane, and at times we saw trucks with five or six trailers attached that were hauling sugar cane away from the farms. I'm not sure how they can possibly drive them safely, but I'm sure they find a way.

Intensive Course in Puerto Libertador

This past weekend I traveled to Puerto Libertador, Colombia to teach the second of five modules in a diploma program in Biblical Interpretation. Here’s a not so brief rundown of the experience and the reality of this small Colombian town that I got to know firsthand.

Center of Puerto Libertador. The church I taught at is the white building in the back center-left.

The Church Context

Puerto Libertador is a city of around 15,000 people (according to the pastor) with a number of smaller villages or settlements nearby (which are called veredas in Spanish). There's quite a bit of agriculture in the region, as well as mining (an activity that has caused significant environmental issues, such as sedimentation of the river). The temperature seems to reach the upper 90s most of the time, making for a strong desire to do nearly nothing in the afternoon!

View of the city from my hotel at sunrise.

The denomination with the greatest influence in the region is the AIEC, or Association of Evangelical Churches of the Carribean, a denomination whose origins go back to mission work through Latin America Mission. The course was held at the central church in Puerto Libertador, a church that has been around for 55 years and has planted churches in all of the surrounding areas in the region. Even in the smallest of outlying villages, they have a church in nearly every one. This central church has around 450 regular attenders, a sign of its vitality in a town of its size.

The pastor of the central church, Pastor Olger, is a graduate of the one year online post-graduate program of the Biblical Seminary of Colombia in Ethics and Christian Thought. He has a passion for the Bible and hopes to study in the Master’s program in Biblical Interpretation we are developing here at the seminary once it gets approved by the government, as he really wants to learn Greek and Hebrew and go deeper in biblical study.  

He is also the most organized pastor I have ever met. In the second half of each year he sets aside time to pray about the church’s needs and determine which themes need to be covered in the teaching for the coming year and how he can design series of expositional sermons to address these areas. He then spends a great deal of time studying the passages or books he plans to preach on, prepares sermons for the books as a whole, and prepares a book with all of his sermon outlines for the coming year which each church member brings with them on Sunday. This year, for example, they are spending around two months studying the second coming of Christ and will be studying the book of James, among other themes.

With Pastor Olger and his wife.

He told me that one of his big concerns is that most pastors here in Colombia do not take the time to really study the Bible in depth. One of his goals is to begin doing this annual sermon planning in conjunction with other pastors in the city and region so that all of the churches of the denomination preach about the same topics each year and those with more education can help those who have less. But, he said, there is a big difficulty—a lot of the pastors don’t have sufficient Bible training to be able to participate meaningfully in such planning or be able to understand the results of the work that others do in researching a biblical book. So, for example, if a pastor was given sermon notes that related the historical context of a passage to the message of the passage, the pastor needs to know what to do with that information.

This is where our involvement as a seminary comes into play. Pastor Olger, as a key regional leader, decided it would be a good idea to have a diploma in Biblical Interpretation with the seminary to help the pastors and other ministry leaders in the region learn how to be better readers of the Bible. Many don’t have much educational background, but he has sought to provide practical tools that can help them in learning to faithfully preach and teach from the Bible. The diploma program that the seminary offers really is a supplement to another theological education program that nearly all pastors in the AIEC are involved with called CIPEP, the Corporación Instituto para la Educación Pastoral (Institute Corporation for Pastoral Education). CIPEP is an online program run through the AIEC to bring basic Bible training to the pastors and ministry leaders throughout their denomination. Nonetheless, Pastor Olger saw a need for more training particularly in how to interpret the Bible with a lot of hands-on application applying the concepts to specific texts, so he sought our help.

The Students

For this module of the diploma program there were 45 students in attendance, mostly pastors, but a few other ministry leaders as well. I got to spend time with a couple of the students from the central church outside of the class setting and it was inspiring to hear their stories and the ways they are using their gifts to serve.

Jaime, for example, is 30 years old and serves as a worship leader and a regional coordinator for classes with CIPEP. He grew up very poor, as the youngest of seven children with no father in the picture. But he worked hard to get ahead, taught himself to play the keyboard, and eventually studied a short program in keyboard in the city of Montería. He also built his own house while engaged, got married, and he and his wife are expecting a child.

With Jaime at the church.

José Luis is another student I got to spend time with and is involved preaching occasionally at the central church in Puerto Libertador. He also is very excited to be one of the key local leaders that will work with Compassion International in opening a Center for Holistic Development in one of the underdeveloped neighborhoods just outside of town. They already have 200 kids lined up with sponsors, they just need to build the center later this year and begin ministry. This will be a tremendous blessing to the region considering the serious socioeconomic needs there and the strong Christian presence in the region to provide a solid spiritual support for the sponsored kids.

Eating ice cream with José Luis's family; here pictured is his son Alejo.

The Course

The module I taught covered the interpretation of different literary genres of the Bible. Due to various factors, including the heat, we had to abbreviate the course from 16 hours to about 12 or 13, requiring some last minute modifications. As with any new course, some things worked well and others didn’t click so easily.

Students working on a group activity putting into practice what they learned.

Some activities that worked well:

• Discussions of the impact of the use of similes, metaphors, and parallelism in the psalms, using Ps 102 and Ps 57 as examples. (For example, to see how big a difference parallelism makes in communicating the message, try reading the first line of each verse in Ps 57 without the rest of the lines. The message is basically coherent, but has nothing of the same power. )
• Looking at what we can learn about the problem that provoked the writing of Colossians by studying Col 2:8-23 and then using this information to go back and interpret other aspects of the letter in the light of this historical context.
• The importance of historical context for interpreting prophecies directed toward the people of the prophet’s generation, using Isaiah 1:10-20 as a case study.
• Looking at examples that show that most Proverbs don’t function as absolute promises. For example, what do we do with Prov 14:11: “The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish”? In a country where over 10% of the population has been internally displaced, it’s essential to see that these are not absolute promises for earthly life, but point to God’s role in bringing about justice, something that will only happen fully when Christ returns, but that sometimes is experienced in the here and now. Likewise, we looked at Prov 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”, a verse that highlights the importance of childhood in character formation, but can often lead to a false sense of guilt when people who did their best to raise their kids to follow God see their children abandon their faith.

Students working on another group activity.

Brainstorming problems that Paul responded to in Colossians 2:8-23.

Some areas where students struggled:

• I was surprised that students had a bit of a tough time with the concept of identifying the structure of biblical narratives, showing the antecedents to the story, the conflict that begins the action of the story, the intensification of the action, the climax, and the resolution.
• Interpretation of prophecies for the distant future (distant from the perspective of the prophet). As was expected with these prophecies, the example we looked at from Micah 5:1-7 raised a lot more questions than we could easily resolve. For example, what do we do with the fact that 5:2 is a Messianic prophecy, but 5:5-6 talks about this king providing protection from the Assyrians, a people that no longer existed as such at Jesus’ first coming? I see this as a symbolic way of talking about how Jesus provides protection against any enemy of the people of God, since the Assyrians were the prime enemy of Israel in Micah’s day. Yet there are a lot of tricky hermeneutical issues involved that obviously couldn’t be addressed in an hour.

Visiting Pastor Moisés and his wife Narcisa at their home in one of the veredas outside Puerto Libertador. He is a seminary graduate who also attended the course and is involved in pastoral training through CIPEP.

Thank you to those who prayed for me throughout the course! The heat didn’t end up being as big an issue for me as expected, and overall it was a very positive experience. I also got to preach at the central church on Sunday, using a sermon I had previously preached at my church in Medellín on what we learn through the book of Jonah about God’s merciful character and how we ought to respond to that character by participating in God's mission.

Sunday worship service at the central church.

One last note: As can be seen by these photos, the airport I flew into was the smallest I have ever seen in my life (it just opened in December). They had no X-ray scanner, scanned my ID but wrote out my boarding pass by hand, and had no flight attendants on the 17 passenger plane. Add to that a harrowing descent into Medellín and it made for quite the unique flying experience.

The entirety of the airport building in the town of Montelíbano, Colombia.

Boarding the tiny plane to fly back to Medellín.