The Benefits of Bible College
This article contains excerpts from Ryan Rench’s book A Case For Bible College. Many young people have enjoyed and benefited from his writings, and it has become our desire to share some of this helpful information with you.
Bible College Provides a Solid Bible Foundation for Life.
My brother is working on building his own little house right now. He and my dad went through the phase of digging ditches, setting rebar and pouring concrete. That was lots of work! Those footer ditches had to be deep and wide! That was no fun digging those footers by hand… they won’t even be seen!
Imagine if my brother just got sick of digging and quit.
“No one will see these dumb holes. We are just going to fill them up with concrete anyway. What’s the point! I just want to start building, man!”
Imagine him grabbing a 2×4, whipping it above his head with a scream of war (trying to summon the powers), and smashing it into the ground, hoping it pierces the topsoil enough to stand upright.
“Hey! It worked! All that rage and fury helped! I’ve got my wall started!”
So he thinks.
Now, imagine him doing that over and over until he has a row of these 2x4s pierced into the ground, standing upright like fence posts. “I’m sure my wall will be sturdy once I add the siding. Hey, at least something shows, man! I’ve got a wall up! Forget these dumb ditches and footers or whatever. I like these dirt floors anyway. I’m rustic. Yeah. That’s it. Rustic—like a log cabin in the pioneer days.”
Sure bud. Whatever you say. You’re cool.
That is, until the first bugs come through the walls and floors. Or until the first rain. Bye-bye house.
Bible college is like a concrete foundation.
You see, a concrete foundation seals out the bugs and the rain. It holds strong against the wind. It is unmovable. It is stable. You can build on it without fear of the building collapsing.
Bible college is like a concrete foundation for the rest of your adult life. Since the only sure foundation is God’s timeless Word, Bible college is a place that tries to anchor every part of your life to the Bible.
Imagine a place that teaches and preaches the Bible every day. Imagine classes that focus on studying the Bible. Imagine living with hundreds of people whose passion is to know the Bible—immersed in an environment where peers and mentors are all pushing you toward a deeper relationship with God and His Word. This is Bible college.
While some people might have had godly parents and a good church to give them a solid childhood foundation, a lot changes after high school. When a graduate is presented for the first time with much more freedom than he has ever had, he should strengthen his foundation rather than launch straight into building his life.
You still have room for improvement.
Is it possible to “make it” in life without Bible college? Of course! But at what other time in life will a person go through an intensive lifestyle of being immersed in the Bible? Was that level of foundation laid at home?
In most cases, it was not. Even in the best-case scenarios that I have seen where the Bible is central to a family and the kids have been raised in a solid, Bible-preaching church, the kids who grow up in that home still have room for improvement.
To be clear, no one is ever ready for life. I get that. The point here is not that a person is inept at life and has no foundation if he does not attend Bible college. The point is that Bible college is a powerful tool to form or strengthen a solid foundation for the remainder of one’s adult life.
What God used in my life was Bible college.
My wife had a roommate in college who was saved months before starting her freshman year. She did not have a childhood foundation and came to Bible college hardly knowing anything about the Bible. Everything she learned was new. The Bible Survey classes she attended were not review to her… they were foundational! She is now a missionary in Australia.
My best friend, John, was saved in Washington under Pastor Dave Brown’s ministry. He was a senior in high school with a mop of hair on his head. After high school graduation, he decided to attend Bible college, cut his hair and move halfway across the country.
God used Bible college to build a solid foundation for the rest of John’s life. He grew in God’s Word. He learned to read, study, live and love God’s Word. He became truly passionate about knowing and obeying God’s Word. He allowed God’s Word to be his only foundation. At first, he would sit through Bible college classes not knowing much of anything. The professor would say, “Turn to the book of Job” and he thought that book was a story of employment (“How To Get a Job”). Bible college was his first solid foundation, and it set him on the right course for a fruitful Christian life. John Lande is now the college director at the church he attended through Bible college, and he is using his life to train others to build their lives on the foundation of God’s Word.
Bible college was a foundation to the rest of my adult life.
My story is different. I was saved when I was 5, was raised in church and I knew all the Bible lessons. I memorized portions of Scripture, competed in Bible quizzes and could sing the books of the Bible. I was in Bible classes all through my Christian and home school life and was ever growing in the Lord.
While I was developing my own personal convictions through high school and had already received a solid foundation in my childhood years, I still had plenty to learn. Without realizing it at the time, I had no real answers as to why I believed what I believed. I had been taught correctly and I believed it, but I did not always retain it.
Bible college, for me, was as much a foundation to the rest of my adult life as it was to those who did not have the same upbringing as I did. Sure, I knew more Bible stories than they knew, but I still needed to know more than just the facts of the stories in order to have a truly solid foundation. I needed to know the truths of the Bible and make them mean something to me.
Yes, I knew much of the Bible already. Yes, I had been raised in a Christian home (a pastor’s home, at that)! Yes, God absolutely used my childhood years to mold and begin my life’s foundation.
However, I see now that I needed much more than my childhood foundation in order to give me the tools to build my own foundation. What God used in my life was Bible college.
Bible college is completely focused on providing a solid Bible foundation for life.
Most Bible colleges are structured in a way that the student’s freshman year is packed with basic, but foundational, Bible truths. Many Bible colleges offer a one-year Bible certificate that will immerse the student in Bible classes primarily, and allow him to experience one year of this intensive study.
Whether you believe Bible college is for you or not, you cannot overlook the fact that probably no other place on the planet will be more intensive about building your life on the foundation of God’s Word. From the dorm life, to the classes, to the chapels, to the mentors and examples all around you—Bible college is completely focused on providing a solid Bible foundation for life.
Bible College Is a Safe Environment
Bible College Is a Safe Environment
Another good reason to consider Bible college is that you will be immersed in a safe environment.
When I think of safe environments, I think of clean-rooms where everything is white and germ-free. Or, I think of an overprotective mom who has wrapped her child in bubble wrap so he won’t get any bumps or bruises.
No, Bible college is not exactly that… but it’s close.
Most Bible college students are entering college right out of high school. It is their first time away from home. It is their first taste of “freedom.”
For a parent, giving a child any freedom is terrifying. “What will my child do? Will he make the right choice? Will she follow what we taught her to do?”
Scary thought.
Now, imagine if she was in a situation where everything she had been taught her whole life was being turned on its head. Imagine, for instance, that your child goes to a secular university as a biology major. All her life, all she has known is the Bible and creation. Now, she is immersed in a hostile, Bible-hating environment. She is taught every day and by everyone that creation is a myth and evolution is true science. In essence, she is taught that everything she has ever known is wrong. Her whole world is intensely attacked. From the classroom to the dorm room, from the textbook to the internet chatter—everything is against her.
Safe environment? Hardly. No matter how strong she is, she has to be at least a little bit affected by it all, right?
Now imagine a boy who has been taught that the Bible is God’s Word and that it is absolute truth. Perhaps he does not know all the depths of theology or perhaps he is not able to defend every point of Christianity, but he has a solid grasp of basic Bible doctrines. He has always been taught to use the King James Bible and serve in a local, Independent Baptist church. While he may not completely understand all the reasons, he knows that is what he believes. Imagine, now, that he goes to Bible college. At Bible college, instead of everything he has ever believed being turned on its head, it is reinforced! Rather than hearing all the objections to his core beliefs, he is receiving systematic reasons as to why, in fact, he should believe that way.
Bible college reinforces
Bible college is a safe environment because it reinforces rather than breaks down everything a child has learned in a godly home and in church. At a good Bible college (one recommended by your pastor), the student receives encouragement to follow the Bible. Any prospective student should be wary of any institution that will cause doubts about whether the Bible is God’s Word.
Will a child fail at life if he does not attend Bible college? Of course not. But Bible college can only help reinforce what has always been taught at home and in the home church.
Bible college in general is safer
Not only is Bible college a safe place for a person’s beliefs, but life in general is safer. I do not necessarily mean that driving conditions are safer or the weather is milder; rather, I mean that living in a structured environment with rules similar to home will help in this transition time of life.
For many students, their first time away from home is when they attend college. Should we automatically assume that they are grown up and can make godly decisions all the time? I don’t even assume that about myself now!
Bible college is regulated, scheduled, strict, and clean
Bible college provides a safe environment because it is regulated, scheduled, strict, and clean. Students are required to sign in and out rather than just given complete freedom to come and go as they please. Having a curfew and lights out rather than allowing an open free-for-all until late into the night. Students are monitored on their ministry involvement, class attendance, workload, academic excellence, church attendance, chapel attendance, and more.
“That’s so strict!” you might think.
Safety always has boundaries and limits. Freedom is never the absence of limitations. Rather, it is an understanding and compliance to those boundaries.
A Bible college student will have much more freedom than he had in high school, no doubt; especially if he is away from home for the first time. However, without unlimited freedom, Bible college is a safer environment than almost any other environment in the world.
Bible college provides a safe environment for all areas of life
Parents, are you worried about what will happen to your child after graduation? Are you battling the internal conflict of wanting them to grow up… but not wanting them to grow up? Are you concerned that no place will be as safe as home? Are you worried they will not be taught well? Or that they will not find good friends? Or that everything they have ever known will be undermined?
Bible college is the safest place you could put them, most likely. As much as humanly possible, Bible college provides a safe environment for teaching, for socializing, and for all areas of life.
About the Author
Ryan Rench serves as the youth director and associate pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, CA, under his father’s leadership, Pastor W. M. Rench. Ryan’s family moved to Temecula in 1987 to plant the church where Ryan was reared and is now on staff. He earned his Master’s Degree in Ministry from Heartland Baptist Bible College in 2010. Ryan Rench married his wife, Jamie, in 2008, and they have three children: Abe, Charlotte, and Gwen. Ryan blogs at RyanRench.com and has published several books, including, A Case For Bible College and One Youth Pastor’s Toolbox, available from Calvary Baptist Publications.