What Educational Path Should Apostolic Students Follow?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Acts 17, 2 Timothy 2:15, 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-educational-path-should-apostolic-students-follow
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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let me start by saying education is a tool it can be used for good or ill it's a valuable tool but it has to be used properly also there are various ways of accomplishing the same goal so yes i certainly believe in education in various forms but i don't think you have to be highly educated to do god's will take a look at the apostles the foremost spokesman of the original apostles was the apostle peter he was a fisherman no formal training but yet god used him greatly in amazing ways on the other hand when god wanted to speak to governors kings and according to early church history even to the roman emperor who did he use the apostle paul who did have quite an education he had an advanced theological training he was trained at the feet of gamaliel who's known from jewish history as one of the foremost rabbis of the first century and in acts chapter 17 paul quotes when he was preaching to in athens especially two philosophers he he interacted with greek epicurean and stoic philosophers and the the council at athens he quoted from at least two perhaps three greek philosophers and poets and in his epistles there are a couple other places where he quoted from uh greek poets so i don't know if he just learned these from the common culture or whether he just read them on his own or whether he had a course of study but apparently he took time to learn the culture and some of the sources and in a time when books were all handwritten and so all manuscripts are rare and costly it seems that he did acquire not only scripture but he asked for the books and the parchments there seems to be he had scrolls of scripture but also scrolls or maybe books of other sources so it appears to me that paul had advanced training or education whether some of it was self-taught i'm not sure in both the the old testament or jewish beliefs but also in secular culture so i i see that as a model god can use all kinds of people in fact god needs all kinds of people so i'm not here to say everybody needs a certain kind of education or if you don't have a certain education you're not as important or you're deficient i don't want to say any of that god can use everyone however i would say and i think this is scriptural second timothy uh 2 15 study to show yourself approved rightly dividing the word of truth and of course the word study is not focused narrowly in the greek on reading or book study but it means be diligent but nevertheless i think the bible would certainly support you should be diligent in seeking truth knowledge training yourself educating yourself if you feel like god has called you to preach you need to prepare yourself your god's calling may be real but just because you're called doesn't mean you're automatically qualified you must qualify yourself and the scriptural qualifications for ministers of the gospel according to 1 timothy 3 titus 1 meaning apt to teach capable of teaching so you must study to be a good teacher able to handle the scripture able to handle the doctrine not only to preach inspirationally fervently with anointing but able to explain the word of god and instruct people carefully in the word of god so here's what i'd say in our culture particularly i'm talking about north america education is highly desirable for a productive life and for careers and jobs people that do have education training will generally earn a lot more and have more successful lives but not one size fits all so here's what i tell every young people in our ever every young person in our culture i think probably getting a high school education is is basic and minimum everybody should aspire for that and for some reason you don't have that consider the ged the equivalent but then from there i say you can consider not everybody should go to college although that's often promoted i think you should consider vocational school or if you if you know your career or your vocation maybe on the job training getting a good job that trains you in the area of your interest in your vocation that might be sufficient so consider vocational training or on-the-job training i do think many people should consider college and i do think many people should consider bible college and in the middle we have urshan college which has the features of a bible college but it also has other majors and it's accredited and we do have uh christian life college in stockton is also accredited stockton california uh we have other colleges that i understand are seeking accreditation and we have a variety of colleges now just from my background as you mentioned i graduated from rice university university of texas university of south africa i taught at the university of houston i taught at austin community college so i've been involved with many secular colleges but i also taught for five years at jackson college of ministries one of our bible colleges at the time i taught classes over the years for texas bible college in fact i taught the first extension courses called excel for for tbc i taught a modular class for apostolic bible institute in saint paul minnesota i did uh spiritual emphasis week or whatever they call it for indiana bible college in indianapolis for gateway college of evangelism in st louis i taught guest lectures for for gateway and so i at kent christian college i taught i think it was 90 hours total of video instruction for their distance learning program so one way or the other i've been involved in most of our bible college as a district superintendent i was responsible for overseeing the startup of our first spanish bible college ctm so i believe in all kinds of education now as a general superintendent i believe we need all these options so i think there should be a seamless hole and here's what i mean so you could start with purpose institute which is training in the local church and we also have a base in california um ctsi ministerial training and ministerial broadly defined lay leadership as well as minister of leadership and in uh alberta canada we have the genesis institute so we've got three endorsed projects that give you local church-based training but then what if you want to go on you can use those credits to help you towards bible college or ursuline college or what if you want specifically training for preaching or for music ministry or some other leadership in a local church well we have a variety of bible colleges and i think i've mentioned most of them if if i've omitted any it's i'm not thinking of them at the moment but well there's north texas college there in the dallas area and uh we also have a new training institute approved in tampa so some are training institutes some are true colleges bible colleges and so um i think especially for those who aspire for leadership in the church those are great options they can also be good options just for general life experience and then as i said erson college combines the best of both and then ursula graduate school is our only graduate school so another and that is also for for ministry and lay leadership and so that way if you maybe had a secular college or a bible college but then you want to go on to more specialized training for a master's degree and soon there will be a doctoral program then ugst is the natural choice so my goal is if you just want specialized training in the local church we've got several options if you decide you want to go to more formal training we have bible colleges and so can you can use the credits at one step to go the other if you want an accredited degree we have an option if you want a master's degree you have an option and so a lot of it's individualized now if you want a professional career in geology probably you need to go to secular college because none of our bible colleges or ursuline college will offer a degree or in accounting or law you know so depending on your career goals so you might start with a community college and then go to bible college or urgent college or you might start urshan college and then go to a master's program in another field or go to go to a bible college or ursula college for a year or two to get an apostolic grounding so there's so many paths that i don't want to prescribe anyone i will say though there's a big debate secular versus bible here's what i learned as pastor of course in my personal life i navigated secular college but i think my personal experience which i believe i i did a segment on this uh some time back

yes but i would say if you do pursue secular college you must make church first stay engaged in your local church committed to your local church and involved in personal ministry that becomes the proper context for handling secular college as a pastor here's what i learned i had many of our young people young adults and even nuts young adults pursue from associates degree to bachelor's degree mastery doctorate all that and here's what i learned if they stayed in the area and faithfully attended our local church and then went to a college within driving distance it was a very high retention rate actually even a little higher than those who didn't go to college and i think perhaps because we were more intentional and also because maybe in our culture at least that indicated a more discipline uh so in so college was not a detriment in fact if anything it was an advantage i also learned if i sent them away to bible college and i sent them to i think six of our bible colleges so i was a supporter and later of course ursuline college but at the time erston grad school if i sent them to any of our bible colleges or urshan again very high retention rate but if i sent them off to another city to a secular school a very high dropout rate for the church even though i tried to tell them here's a good church to go to and i would call the pastor and say i'm sending this person to you try to connect them but sadly if they moved off out of their local church culture now some were successful so i'm not totally against that i'm just saying there was a higher dropout rate not for our local church specifically but for the kingdom of god for the absolute faith so that's something that must care be carefully considered if your career and life goals mean you need secular training i suggest you explore colleges in your area or if you feel the right one is somewhere off you make a con intentional connection to a local church and pastor and become committed to that church faithful not only in attendance but involvement in ministry don't use college as an excuse that you can't be involved or you might consider even if you need secular degrees for your career goals you might consider going a year or two to urshan college or a bible college to make sure you get grounded in your faith on an intellectual basis so when you face secular college you already have some ammunition or you already have a foundation um and so i would recommend that you be very intentional with with your pastor and if your parents are in the church and plan something that not merely considers what's best in a secular way but what's best for your spiritual life and so i'll close with this when i when i graduated from high school i i had a national merit scholarship and and i had a lot of advantages and i had offers to some of the major universities on the east coast ivy league schools at that time we did not have strong churches in most of those areas so my parents really were reluctant for me to go well i found one of the top schools in the nations often called the harvard of the south rice university it was in houston there were a lot of good churches so my parents strongly advised me in that direction and so i did get a scholarship there i went there i was happy that i did they also were very reluctant for me to live on campus because the secular environment so i was able to rent a room from a family in the church and commute and that proved very beneficial to give you a simple illustration i had to be on campus for the first week of orientation and sure enough the orientation was over our mentor the upper class was leading us he said well we're all going to go out to a bar and it was a topless bar so there were a few of us who were christians we opted out we we found out was going but the whole i was 17 year old kid first time away from home 7 000 miles away from home and had i not had convictions and training and intentionally made a decision i would have ended up at a topless bar even though i was under age for for even drinking so my point is that secular culture and especially a campus dorm culture can be very detrimental so if someone is going to secure college you should certainly plan to safeguard yourself in these areas and make wise decisions of the right school the right living environment the right companions you know the right friends and the right church