Zion Bible College

So I have started my part-time job as a lecturer with the mobile staff of Zion Bible College here in Swaziland.  Some people have asked how it's been going, so I thought I would post a blog about it.  I started at the end of January, and I'm teaching only 3 or 4 days per month, so it dovetails very nicely with my responsibilities at home watching William.  We have a housekeeper/nanny who comes two days per week, and she watches William on the days that I teach.

Zion Bible College targets pastors and church leaders in the Zionist church in Swaziland.  The Zionist League of Churches exists throughout much of southern Africa.  The church started near the beginning of the 20th century when a missionary named Daniel Bryant came to southern Africa from the Zion Church of America (based in Zion, IL).  He only stayed for a few years before he had to go back to the United States (for an unknown reason), but several thousand people had come to faith in Christ.  However, after Mr. Bryant left Africa, the new churches had no siSwati Bibles.  Through the years, the churches grew but became syncretistic without having any Scriptures.  As other western missionaries came to southern Africa throughout the 20th century, the Zionist churches were largely ignored because they were considered a cult.  All the while, the Zionist church was working its way deep into Swazi culture.  The Swazi League of Zionist churches asked the Zion Church of America to send Bible teachers way back in 1963, but nothing happened until 1986, when the Zion Church of America began to send missionaries back to southern Africa, specifically for the purpose of teaching the Bible to Zionist church leaders.  The Bible was finally translated into siSwati in 1996, and Zion Bible College was finally started in 2004 under the leadership and direction of an American missionary couple, Bruce and Carol Britten, who returned permanently to the US last year.

The objective of Zion Bible College is to provide very-low-cost biblical and pastoral training to pastors and church leaders within the Zionist church of Swaziland.  ZBC is a diploma-granting institution that operates rurally, offering classes in 19 different locations throughout Swaziland.  The program lasts four years and covers 14 different modules: Bible Survey, Pastoral Studies, Church Administration, Religious Movements, Systematic Theology, Biblical Characters, Preaching, Hermeneutics, Spiritual Life, Evangelism, Biblical Exegesis, Missiology, and Chronological Bible Study.  The school has grown to over 900 students throughout Swaziland, many (if not most) of whom have had no biblical training at all.  The classes are work-shop style, offered in each location once each month, and last all day long (6 hrs total teaching time).  Students pay just under $2 per class day to attend (as well as purchasing their own notebooks) and are required to complete basic homework assignments every month designed to help the student interact with the biblical text to a further degree than can be covered in class.  Classes operate on Saturdays, and in the remote area where fewer people have steady jobs, Tuesdays or Thursdays. 

I am one of nine lecturers, all of whom are men: including the Principal of ZBC, a white American; the Academic Dean, a black Swazi; the team leader for the northern region, a white South African; and the rest are black Swazis.  Most of the teaching is done directly in siSwati.  The three of us whites teach in English, which is translated into siSwati.  These nine lecturers are divided into teams of three - one of which covers the five locations in northern Swaziland, and the other two rotate between the other 14 locations in the rest of the country.  I am on a team with the principal (the other American) and a black Swazi named Dumisani.  Dumisani is currently attending theology school here in Swaziland, so he is unable to teach during the weekdays.  So he teaches on the Saturday class days, and I teach on the weekdays.  Of the 14 locations that our team covers, the two of us each teach in 7 of them.  So I personally complete the rotation every two months, which means that I will visit each location 5 times throughout the academic year.  I teach 3 lessons each time, which means that I will teach 15 lessons in total this year.

Because the classes are in a work-shop format, it operates differently than a typical curriculum in the US.  The academic year matches the Swazi education system, beginning at the end of January and running until the end of November.  There are no terms or semesters, per se.  the curriculum consists of a certain number of hour-long lessons in each module.  For example, in the Bible Survey module there is a lesson for each book of the Bible.  In the Systematic Theology module, there are 8 lessons on bibliology, 9 lessons on theology-proper, 12 lessons on Christology, etc.  Here are the lessons that I am teaching this year:

Biblical Survey -- Leviticus, Numbers, Nehemiah, Song of Songs, OT Summary, and Story of the Whole Bible;
Pastoral Studies -- Prayer, Filled with the Holy Spirit, and Listen to God's Book;
Church Administration -- Evangelists;
Biblical Characters - Enoch, Josiah, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus;
Preaching -- Sermon Outline of John 15.

In my current cycle, I have been teaching Josiah, Leviticus, and Numbers.  It has been a challenge teaching the entire books of Leviticus and Numbers in one hour for each, but that has an advantage, too.  As a teacher, it really forces me to identify the truly important things and focus only on those.  I've been trying to work in as much reading of the biblical text as I can, and that is really rewarding.  I have discovered that most of the students are reading these stories for the very first time.  I take for granted many of the biblical stories because I have read them so many times, and it's so fun to watch people experience the dramatic story-telling of the Bible for the very first time.  For example, one of the things that I have done in my Leviticus class is this: I've had the class read the entire chapter 26, which is where God makes promises about what He will do if the Israelites obey the law (v.3-13), what He will do if they disobey the law (v.14-39), and what if He will do if they repent of their disobedience (v.40-46).  The differences between these three sections of the chapter are really dramatic.  It's really quite something to watch the mood in the room from happiness when reading about God's promises of blessing in the first part to shock and astonishment when reading God's promises of disaster in the second part.  We have had some very spirited discussions in class over these two questions in particular -- 1) Do we (also the Israelites of old) still have to pay for our sins if we repent of them? [Why?  especially since Jesus came?!?] and 2) What do these three groups of promises (in ch. 26) tell us about God?  Even for the most biblically literate person, these questions are NOT easy ones to answer when you really think deeply about them.

I have really enjoyed being able to teach same material over and over.  Thus far I have taught the same three lessons four times.  I am a tinkerer by nature, so it is enjoyable for me to experiment with different things in terms of communicating the material most effectively.  I have not often had time or opportunity in my scholastic-type endeavors to work and re-work things like I'm able to do now.  It fits my personality as a craftsman, and it's very rewarding.  I enjoy the science and art of communication, and in this role I get to practice both.