Calling on all future Bible teachers: Do you want to be raised up as a DBS Teacher? Has God called you to teach His Word but are not sure how to get started? Do you have a love for God’s Word and a desire to share it with others? The DBS world is a growing network of Bible schools training students around the world to know and share God’s story. But as the school multiplies, there is also a growing need for more teachers. The Bible Teacher School (BTS) aims to raise up more Bible teachers! A three-year program that consists of three separate three-week seminars, each covering four weeks of the DBS to complete all 12. The hope is that it can be incorporated into your existing schedule. It doesn’t matter whether you are presently staffing in a DBS or in some other capacity in YWAM or are a Church worker or have regular job. Pre-requisite for enrolling is that you have done a DBS or one of YWAM’s other Bible courses (SBS, BCC, BSN, etc.). We prefer you also have already staffed one or two DBS schools but are open to make exceptions especially if you are going to continue staff in DBS after the seminar for some time (a recommendation from a YWAM leader would be required). You can attend all three seminars and end up having taught the entire Bible in three years! You can also attend just one or two seminars depending on your specific interest and timetable. The vision is to expand BTS into all the continents but that will take time and therefore recommend that you do not wait but join us right away in 2023!  Each subsequent seminar focuses on equipping you to teach the next four weeks of the DBS curriculum:

Seminar BTS 1: “From Adam to David”
Seminar BTS 2: “Kings and Prophets”
Seminar BTS 3: “New Testament”

In each of these seminars the first week will focus on teaching principles and honing your skills as a communicator. Then the second and third week will be full of important content covering the background, genres, and how to study the Bible books specific to that seminar. During the year in between courses, you will be assigned a mentor to help you prepare teachings and who together with school leaders help you find opportunities to teach and who will debrief you after each teaching so you can continue to grow in your skills. At the end of the program the goal will be to have each participant who has completed the whole program to also have taught every week of the DBS.

The first seminar will be held in February in Mexico (English/Spanish) with our beloved speakers Jeanine Martinez teaching the first week of the seminar on How to Teach and Dan Lewis who will bring to us deep Bible content tailored to prepare upcoming teachers of God’s Word. We hope many from Latin America but also from the rest of the world will participate. If you feel called to become a Bible teacher and would like to teach in DBS schools, please join us in one of these two locations!

Seminar BTS 1: February 5 – 25, 2023 in Tijuana, Mexico (Spanish/English)

Costs (Room & Board, lectures and airport shuttle): US$ 400 (Nation C), US$ 500 (Nation B) and US$ 600 (Nation A). To check your nation’s category, go to: https://uofn.edu/nation-category-list

For information on how to register please email us at: teachersbts2@gmail.com

You can fill out the registration form here: https://forms.gle/zWRmfC9mW9xYJnYb7

Introducing our guest speakers…

Dan Lewis

For much of his life, Dan has worn two hats so to speak. He has served as a professor at William Tyndale College in Michigan as well as teaching at Robt. H. Whitaker School of Theology (Anglican seminary in Detroit), South African Bible Institute (Pretoria, South Africa) and Caribbean Bible Institute (Kingston, Jamaica). He also has served as an evangelical pastor for 34 years at Troy Christian Chapel, Troy, Michigan. He and his wife Peggy, married more than 50 years, have three sons and seven grandchildren.

Academically, Dan is a graduate of the University of Detroit-Mercy (M.A.) and a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the international society of biblical scholars. He is the author of several books, including Three Crucial Questions About the Last Days (Baker Book House), Esto Creemos: Compendio de Doctrina Cristiana (Ediciones Crecimiento Cristiana, Argentina); “Biblical Exegesis in the Two-Thirds World,” Text and Community: Essays in Memory of Bruce M. Metzger (Sheffield Phoenix Press, England), and Journey Out (Amazon e-books). He maintains a website for biblical studies as a resource with more than 5000 pages of commentaries he has written on the various books of the Bible as well as central theological subjects (www.dkonos.org). 

In 1991, he was invited to lecture at one of the YWAM Schools of Biblical Studies in England, and he has been active in SBSs, BCCs, and DBSs ever since, teaching in various schools in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, Western Samoa, England, Scotland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, and South Africa. After his retirement from William Tyndale College and Troy Christian Chapel, his teaching schedule for the University of the Nations has been full, averaging about two weeks each month somewhere in the YWAM world.

Jeanine Martínez de Urrea

Jeanine currently serves as Director of Instituto Reforma a Bible school in Guatemala City and initiative of Reforma Church where she serves as a deaconess, sent as a missionary by the International Baptist Church (IBI) in her native Dominican Republic. She worked as a Civil Engineer for over 10 years before going into full time cross-cultural missions, 13 years ago. She focuses on biblical teaching, missionary training and discipleship serving churches and schools in South and East Asia, Australia, Latin America. She earned a Master of Art in Theological Studies from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Master of Science in Environmental and Sanitary Engineering. With 27 years of teaching experience and coming from a family of teachers she continues to be passionate about learning to pass it on to others and seeing a new generation and an army of faithful bible teachers raised.  She married Alex Urrea in April 2020 and a year later they became family forever to Flor and Matteo, two teenage siblings.  She has published 3 books with Lifeway: “Cómo ordeno mi vida”, “Por amor de su nombre” (Co-autoría con Catherine Scheraldi de Núñez) and “Doctrina Para Todas”, and has collaborated in several published devotionals, a devotional Bible and e-books. She actively writes for Gospel Coalition, Revive our Hearts amongst other ministries.

Seminar BTS 1 “From Adam to David”, lecture description

How to Teach:

Most of the Church finds itself in a crisis of Bible illiteracy. The DBS worldwide wants to meet that need but now a new problem has risen: The need for Bible Teachers in the DBS schools. The BTS answers that call and the How to Teach – week will provide the skills necessary to empower and equip upcoming teachers to not only teach in context but with a methodology to prepare and present the Scriptures confidently and full of the Spirit! We will follow the same five practical steps as set out in “Creative Bible Teaching”, written by Lawrence O. Richards and Gary J. Bredfeldt:

I: Study the Bible: Gathering information for context: survey method, book structure and text natural divisions or paragraphs. Getting in the text, reading to understand, identifying the main idea, asking the right questions to the text. How to make your book structure. Planning your study and preparation time and schedule up to the week of your teaching.

II: Focus on the Message: How to research and choose what is relevant or important for the week. Recommended resources and process. Using the DBS teacher’s manual as the basis: topics to cover, main texts, character studies. Identifying main discipleship principles. Guiding the students through key and general observations, context, interpretation and application.

III: Structure the Lesson: Steps to preparing a DBS lecture week, different styles of teaching notes. How to teach the class presentation methods, communication guidelines. 

IV: Teach the Class: Teaching and presentation principles: Common practices of truly great Teachers. Teaching Effectiveness: Motivating the Learner: Using visual aids, videos, teaching tools, group discussions, handouts and activities for the different learning styles and settings.

V: Evaluate the results: Follow up and evaluation: teachers self-evaluation, students-teacher evaluation, DBS one on ones, small groups, feedback from students and staff, accountability, prayer and community. Passing the feedback on for improvement. Brainstorming together. Encouraging for continuous growth. Identifying and recruiting for future DBS staff/leaders. Talent is not enough: we need character.

Deep Bible Content:

THE BIG IDEAS

God as Creator, Father and King (metaphors of fatherhood, suzerainty)

The people of the ancient world were entirely polytheistic, believing in many gods and goddesses. These deities were characterized by power struggles between each other, while the role of humans was to appease them, sometimes to the extent of human sacrifice. Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible, was distinctly different. He was the one Creator of the universe as well as all humans, and his relationship to humans was that of a Father to his children. A central metaphor for God was his kingship, often depicted as a divine Shepherd.

Humans as prodigal children (the fall, the flood, Babel, rebellion)

Early in the biblical story, the humans whom God created abused their freedom to rebel against him. What sometimes is called “the fall” was not a brief stumble, but a headlong plunge into violence and depravity. Even a watery flood of judgment did not alter the basic problem, and humans expressed their narcissism and self-worship epitomized in a great tower. Their rebellion knew no bounds, and it was prevalent even among the people of Israel, the ones God chose to be his special people. The nation of Israel and its unfaithfulness becomes a paradigm of all humans in all nations.

Chosen for service by grace (the election of Israel)

God’s solution to the human problem began with one man, Abraham, whom God chose as the ancestor of a chosen people. To this man God promised posterity and land, and most importantly, blessing for the whole human race. He chose the descendants of Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, to be his special people. He redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, gave them his instructions for life, and called them to serve as priests to the nations of the world. This gracious election set apart Israel as a holy example of wayward children, redeemed by love and called to serve.

Concept of covenant (Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel)

In the absence of international law, humans established and maintained their relationships with each other by covenants, binding agreements confirmed by oaths and attended by reprisals if they failed to keep their covenant promises. God used this well-known institution of covenant to relate to his people, beginning with Abraham, then Moses, and then David. At last, he offered the vision of a new covenant described by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. All these covenants were attended by divine promises: some had conditions that were temporal, and some had features that were to last forever.

Role of faith (even though they were under law, the people of Israel still were called to a relationship of faith)

Faith is not merely a matter of believing certain facts; it is a relationship of complete trust. This, ultimately, is what God, the Father, desired from his human children. The laws of the Torah—God’s instructions for living—were intended for guiding Israel toward a life of complete trust in Him. Waywardness was not merely a matter of breaking the rules, it was breaking a relationship with one’s Father. While faith and faithfulness were intended to be the hallmarks of God’s people Israel, mostly they failed to live a life of faith, and in the end only a remnant survived.

KEY CHARACTERS

Adam (the prototype failed human)

As the original human, Adam was the ancestor of all who followed him. In disobeying God, Adam was estranged from his true home. His descendants followed in kind, living lives of desperation, oppression, and violence. Adam became the prototype for humans in rebellion, alienated from God and alienated each other.

Abraham (the paradigm for faith and faithfulness)

Abraham was called by God to leave his home and go to a land that God would show him. He became the model for true faith and faithfulness, which is God’s call to forsake one’s natural home and way of life in order to receive a home and way of life from God’s hand. The greatest thing Abraham ever did was to believe in God’s promises.

Joseph (the model for forgiveness)

Disowned by his brothers and sold by them to slave-traders, Joseph still maintained a life of faithfulness to God. In time, God blessed Joseph and elevated him in Egypt. Eventually, he would have the opportunity to avenge himself of his brothers’ treachery, but instead, Joseph chose the high road of forgiveness.

Moses (the first pastor and lawgiver)

Born in slavery, Moses was called by God to lead forth the Israelites out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai, where they would become God’s holy people. For forty years, he served as their pastoral leader, mediating God’s instructions for life and leading them to the borders of the land God had promised to Abraham and his descendants.

Joshua (the faithful successor)

Transitions in leadership in the ancient world were often violent, but the transition from Moses to Joshua was a striking exception. The Spirit of Yahweh that was with Moses came to rest upon Joshua, enabling him to successfully lead the Israelites into the land of Canaan. Under his leadership, the Israelites remained faithful until he died.

Samuel (the model for faithful prophethood)

Samuel, the last of the judges, also served as a true prophet-leader. Though only a boy when called by God, he faithfully spoke the word of God to the Israelite nation, providing spiritual leadership in a world of many threats, both external and internal. He became the pivotal figure in helping the nation make the transition to a monarchy.

David (the great king)

Though Yahweh was the Great King of Israel, David, the man after God’s own heart, became God’s royal representative, if effect, a “son” of God. He rose to power during a dark period of internal instability and formidable threats from surrounding enemies, forming the weak clans of Israel into a united kingdom where God was the true center.

TYPE OF LITERATURE COVERED IN WEEK 1-4 OF A DBS

The literature of the Old Testament is of various kinds. The largest portion is historical narrative, where the stories reflect upon God’s expectations, explain how God’s people were blessed for trusting in Him, and shouting warnings to them about behaviors to avoid. However, there is also law, which comes in two forms, apodictic law (absolute law) and case law (conditional law). In addition, large portions of some books are written in Hebrew poetry, a style widely used in the ancient Near East. Finally, some texts, called Wisdom Literature, address subjects like suffering, sex, work, family, justice, society, and most importantly, whether or not there is a single purpose in human life.

SOME CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES OF THE ADAM-TO-DAVID TIMESPAN