ESBS welcomes two new students for the Old Testament!

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Taylor Wilsie and Abigail Buckman, new students starting this quarter

This semester we are joined by two new students, Abigail Buckman and Taylor Wilsie.  Abigail was a students in 2012 and had to withdraw from the program after the New Testament to undergo brain surgery.  Now a year later, she is well and she's returned to complete the course!  We're so excited to have her back!

Taylor Wilsie is Julia Phillips' cousin, and comes to us from Jacksonville Florida.  He's the first ESBS student we've ever had who is beginning in the Old Testament.  Taylor has been with us since November, and has been working on his own to get up to speed with the inductive Bible study method, and he now joins the class as a full-time student starting this week as we begin Genesis.

We have an exciting quarter in store with 5 guest lecturer's lined up (David Hansen, Jon Black, Cam and Kaari Speer, Evan Hays) and a late January surprise for the students!  It's going to be a great 2014!

Help us fill the ESBS!

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Take a minute to watch the e-mail embedded below and be a part of filling next years ESBS!  Can you identify people you know who may be a good fit for the ESBS?  Let us send you some brochures and help us introduce the program to those people!

contact tom phillips (tphillips@camplurecrest.org) and request your brochures!

An ESBS graduate doing awesome stuff!

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Sarah Murphy, ESBS 2009-10:  missionary in South Africa

I thought it would be fun to catch up with Sarah Murphy, who is currently doing amazing things with YWAM South Africa.  She's out there making disciples, training the church, and having a huge impact.  Here is an update from her recent newsletter:

Eastern Cape Outreach I spent July and August leading an outreach team from the School of Biblical Studies in the Eastern Cape (a province of South Africa).  We were a small team of 2 staff and 4 students teaching in various churches. Five of us squeezed into my little Toyota to drive 2 days up to Lusikisiki to our outreach location.  Our aim was to help people to see that the Word of God is accessible to them and that they can study for themselves without needing a pastor or serious study guides. We taught a Biblical Overview showing God’s plan of redemption from Genesis to Revelation in many different churches and also taught seminars on how to study through smaller books of the bible like Philemon, Titus and Ephesians.  We had a great response to our teaching with people seeing how they can study the Bible for themselves and giving testimonies such as “this is the first time I have really understood my Bible!” It is a wonderful privilege to see people getting to know God through his Word and realising that God is knowable.  Teaching the bible is an awesome blessing in my own life as I realise the truths about who God is continue to become more and more established and deeply rooted in my own life and heart. I was also greatly touched by the hospitality of the Xhosa and Zulu people.  We stayed in peoples homes and it was a great blessing to be so warmly accepted into these families and churches.  Yes we came to teach but I left with my heart deeply touched by peoples love, care and generosity.

School of Biblical Foundations and Leadership For years our mobile bible teaching team has been dreaming about offering more in-depth biblical training to Pastors and church members in the Cape Town area.  This dream is finally being realised as we are pioneering our first intensive bible seminar - School of Biblical Foundations and Leadership.  Normally we teach in churches across Cape Town however for this seminar we have invited Pastors and key leaders from churches we work with to join us for this five week seminar in Muizenberg. We have 10 participants who are coming Wednesday and Friday evenings and all day Saturdays. We are introducing our participants to the Inductive Bible Study Method we use in our Biblical Training Schools and teaching these principles through the books of Titus, 2 Timothy, James, Ephesians and Mark.  As we go step by step through these books we are looking deeper into the context, understanding the historical background and implementing application in all our lives.                         Sarah's full update and contact info

A few thoughts from an ESBS graduate

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Carli Cannon, ESBS 2012-13

“Carli Cannon here, a student from the 2012-2013 year of awesomeness. Just wanted to give you a little picture of what life, or at least mine, looks like 6 months after graduating from ESBS.

First a little background on me: I’m a 19 year-old from just south of Nashville, TN. And no, I unfortunately don’t have a southern accent.J I absolutely LOVE travel and mission work. I have a passion for kids with special needs in underprivileged countries, and I spend a good chunk of my time watching children in one way or another. I sing, so there’s a little bit of Nashville that’s gotten into me. I graduated a year early from high school and took a year to attend a Discipleship Training School with Youth With a Mission that took place in Charlotte, NC and India! It turned my life around 120%, being the knucklehead high school punk that I was. While I was in this school God made it clear in a supernatural way that my next step was to go through an SBS school. So, a year and a half, a lot of grace, and about a million pages of reading later, here I am.

The common denominator every student shares from my year at ESBS is that we now have a gold mine of knowledge about God’s word.  A surface level understanding has been replaced with a deep knowledge. As ESBS graduates, we’re privileged to know a depth of historical context behind the passages we study in church (which makes the meaning of the passage SO much richer), and passages that once seems insignificant are now VITAL to understand life and walking with God!

That said, coming home from ESBS was difficult for me.  When I first came home I had this subconscious notion that I now knew nearly EVERYTHING that there was to know about God and the Bible. I wouldn’t admit that to anyone, myself included. But now I realize that pride was festering in almost every thought that popped into my mind spiritually.  The thing that I am realizing now is that God is SO much bigger than ANYTHING I could fit into my teeny tiny brain. He doesn’t fit into a box. Even in the Bible God scarcely worked in the same way twice! I mean, hello, Carli?! Yes, ESBS was a solid foundation on knowing His character and the Holy Spirit continues to lead me to help discern what is of Him and what isn’t.  In humility Im now learning to quiet myself and continue to receive as a learner, rather than have explosive historical diarrhea on anyone around me.

I am continuing to learn SO much since I’ve been back home, and a lot of which has come from people who don’t know Jack Squat about the Roman Empire, historical facts, etc...  Don’t get me wrong, I think the Bible is the biggest way that God reveals Himself to us and it is of our benefit to marinate in all of its goodness, both inductively and in meditation.  ESBS is an amazing way to do that, AND I am realizing that God has many tools of sharing pictures of Himself, whether that be the Bible, nature, other people, what have you. He works in more ways than any of us could imagine, and that’s the beautiful thing about Him: He is not contained. And even in just the Bible, who am I to think I’ve discovered it all in those zillion some odd words He provided for me to feast on for my entire life? Pride is a sneaky little monster.

So, going to ESBS was one of the most important things I’ve ever done. The ways I think and have relationship with the Lord will NEVER be the same. It is amazing to go back and read journals about how I’ve been sanctified over the past year and the richness of how I read the Bible now. Now 6 months out from graduation God is still working in me through teaching and relearning things I studied… and then some. The Holy Spirit’s revelation plus Biblical knowledge make a pretty awesome baby, just sayin’! God is good, people! In the words of a wise professor of mine, “posture to receive, posture to receive.” And that is precisely what I am learning to do…continue to receive good things from the same good God I learned so much about at ESBS.”

Your sister in our Savior,

Carli Cannon

Chris Lautsbaugh teaches Galatians

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Chris Lautsbaugh teaching Galatians this week

This week we were excited to welcome Chris Lautsbaugh for several days of lecture through the book of Galatians.  Chris is a 15 year veteran of the SBS program within YWAM, and currently heads up the SBS department in Muizenbrug South Africa.

Four years ago Chris felt a challenge from God to become a part of what he recognized as a fresh and growing discussion within Christianity on the subject of grace.  Recently Chris has released a book on the subject, entitled "Death of the Modern Superhero:  How Grace Breaks our Rules."  The book investigates how the radical truth of the gospel of grace turns our western performance based acceptance culture upside-down, showing us that Christianity, at its core, diverges from our culture, and  other major religions, with the radical truth that it is God himself who accomplished the work to make us acceptable to Him:  something we could never have done ourselves.

Check the book out, and investigate Chris' regular blog site on the subject of grace: