Student Study Aid Program
The Need: Training program for church workers
In the 1970s Ps Dennis Balcombe started a “Donkey for Jesus” program for the Chinese house churches. Since then, supplying bibles has become our focused ministry. Of course, the bible is not an easy book to understand. So while the overseas short-term mission teams joined hands with us in the bible delivery ministry during the 70s-90s, some ministers also took the opportunities to visit house churches to conduct revival meetings and to train believers in handling God’s word.
In this regard, the official Three-Self churches are already way ahead in running training programs for their church workers. The house churches, however, could not openly conduct systematic bible schools for their workers. They could only hold revival and bible training classes sporadically, say a few times in a year. And as the trainers themselves were rarely theologically trained, the classes offered were of varying degrees of quality. Sometimes, erroneous scriptural interpretations occurred during classes.
Since 2003, we have conducted different types of trainings for the house churches. In the last decade, the Chinese government appeals to be relaxing its control over the Christian churches. The house churches seem to be enjoying greater freedom of contacts with the outside world, an opportunity that helps broaden their horizon. While we are developing our training programs for the Chinese house churches, we notice that some Hong Kong and overseas Christian seminaries and organizations are moving into Mainland China doing classes and even bible schools for different levels of needs.
There is apparently a great need for bible trainings in China. To the Chinese house churches, the most ideal long-term strategy is for them to design a training program of their own. To us, therefore, the training program we are offering is not one that only equips pastors and preachers but also teachers.
Objective: Training of Teachers To help train teachers of quality, we have been upgrading our curricula and setting higher demands on students in the last 10 years. The courses have been progressively transformed from training for Sunday school teachers to theological classes designed for ministers. Correspondingly from certificates and diplomas, we are now conferring degrees. Since its inception in 2003, SBCC has trained more than 700 graduates. In 2012, our first group of students graduated with their bachelor degrees. To encourage post-graduate pursuit, we have since 2013 started to a master program jointly with a Bible seminary in Malaysia.
We thank God for leading us from offering regular courses to adding systematic study in theology. We are grateful to all our teachers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, United States of America and elsewhere during the last 10 years.
With all these blessings, SBCC is now dedicated to running bachelor and master programs of study catering for some 50 Chinese students per semester. Apart from being teachers in SBCC, you can also financially support this training ministry for Chinese church leaders!
Our operation cost is estimated US$130,000 per year, facilitating two semesters with a total of 100 students. We really need your help to finance our school. With US$110 per month, you will help us to offer education to one Chinese church leader. Your help is very important to us which will sustain our ministry in China. If you can offer your help, please feel free to contact us!
