Foundational Bible Teaching - It takes TOO long! Or does it?

Here at the Missionary Training Center we have been going through a class entitled "Foundational Bible Teaching." Foundational Bible teaching is the method that New Tribes Mission uses to teach in a tribal context. This tool allows the missionaries to lay a solid biblical foundation for those who have never heard His message. We begin with God creating everything in Genesis and go all the way through to the ascension of Jesus Christ highlighting key passages and important themes that revolve around the character of God, who Satan is, and the condition of man. While the foundational Bible lessons to do not go through the entire Old Testament it does involve seventy lessons. Sometimes, depending on the culture that the missionaries are in, they may add or remove some of the lessons but the standard is seventy. Because of this some have said that foundational Bible teaching takes too long. 

Some may ask why don't we just share the Gospel? The problem with simply sharing the Gospel without laying a biblical foundation first is that the nationals may come to an incorrect understanding of who Jesus is and why He came. They may simply combine the Gospel with their current religious system (this is called syncretism) and not realize that there is only one God and what Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross means for them. As one of our teachers said in class, the tribal people are not a blank slate, they are not an empty vessel waiting to be filled with Truth. On the contrary, Satan has prepared them against the Gospel. Therefore, it is even more important to start at the beginning so that they can see the character of God and who He is and who they are.

But does foundational Bible teaching really take that long? Wouldn't it be worth taking the extra time so that the people can come to a full understanding of the biblical truth we are seeking to share with them? Yes, they only need Jesus to be saved, but how much of "Jesus" do they need to correctly understand in order to have true salvation? Is believing He is another spirit good enough? I would rather not take any chances in such an important matter and make sure they have a full understanding of who He is.

* Used with permission

In our "Foundational Bible Teaching" class, FBT for short, we were shown this chart depicting just

how much time it takes to go through the teaching compared to an average 70-year lifespan. I was blown away by the results! If you click on the picture to the right, you should be able to see the numbers magnified.

Basically, if you teach all 70 lessons at two hours each and do this 40 times it will take just over 33 weeks which is less than 2% of your awake weeks in your 70-year lifespan! It is still a ten to twenty year process to plant a self-sustaining tribal church with language and culture acquisition, literacy teaching, translation, lesson development and so on but the actual time to it takes to teach foundationally is a very small percentage of your life.

This just really struck me that it does not take as long as we may think. Yes, there is urgency in the need; there is no question about that. People are dying around the world and around the missionaries without the Good News and they are heading for an eternity separated from God forever. But we need to be careful when we allow the urgency to circumvent the necessity of communicating God's Word with clarity. There is a tension between the urgency and the clarity of the Message and this is a tension that we will have to rely on the Lord's leading for because there is no easy way to reconcile the two.

We hope you found this challenging! Thank you for your prayers and support as we continue to prepare and train to serve the Lord overseas. If you are interested in supporting us financially, please check out the support tab of our blog.

United in Christ,

Caitlin and Cameron