This summer “back to school” took on a whole new meaning for the Schmitt household.  About five years ago, Cru leadership decided all staff should have solid theological training. Previously, only those in field ministries took these graduate-level courses; now the men and women in administrative roles do as well. For the last few years, we’ve been taking classes to complete the 12 required courses.

This summer, Rollins College was the host site for 400 staff attending Cru’s Institute of Biblical Studies (IBS), and other training. We took Biblical Interpretation and Biblical Communication. Each class was two weeks long and involved lots of reading, worksheets, lectures, discussion group time, papers, and more. We learned a lot and were definitely stretched by the challenging schedule and great content. (We were very glad we did all our reading assignments ahead of time!) Step on into the classroom and learn along with us.

The Bible contains poetry, prophecy, proverbs, and other genres. We were focusing primarily on narratives. We learned various techniques and tools for analyzing key themes, the intended audience, cultural and historical contexts, et cetera, searching for elements of Man’s “Fallen Condition” and God’s “Redemptive Solution.”.

During our four weeks of study, we each worked from a specific passage of Scripture. Mike chose 2 Samuel 9 and Sus, Mark 4: 35 – 41, the miracle of Jesus stilling the storm. To give you an idea of the Fallen Condition (FC) and the Redemptive Solution (RS) in this miracle story, Sus wrote these for her passage:

• FC: While attempting to serve God, His people are likely to meet resistance so that they may react in fear, doubting His presence and unaware of His power.
• RS: God’s people need to know God as He truly is, to recognize His presence even when they are hindered in their service to Him, and to know He is pleased when we respond by faith during life’s storms.

Thank you for praying for our month of studies. These classes will definitely help us in our teaching ministries of leading small groups and blogging. If you’d like to learn more from our summer classes, we’ll be posting our papers and also recommended resources on MikeandSus.org. By the way, that’s our discussion group in the photo. We enjoyed getting to know more of our fellow missionaries who are working to reach college students, even globally.

We hope this little peek into our two classes is a blessing to you as you are a blessing to us.