3 FREE Christian Education Sites
Have you ever wanted to take seminary classes, but not spend all the money and not get a degree? Now, you totally can. At these three web sites, you can take seminary quality classes in your own home. You don’t get credit for them, but you might get a nice certificate out of it (with no real meaning other than you completed the class).
You could use these in your church as a curriculum for Bible study classes or listen to them on the way to work. Check out the syllabus (if there is one), get the books, listen to the lectures, read the required sections, write the papers (and grade them yourself, I guess), take the test (if there is one).
I recommend all three.
BiblicalTraining.org
Includes lectures from Dr. William Mounce (wrote several Greek textbooks used in seminary classes, though not the one we used in my Elementary Greek class), Dr. Bruce Ware from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Lots of good stuff here.
“BiblicalTraining.org exists to help make new and fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ. Our vision for accomplishing this is to create world-class educational resources that can be used within the local church.”Covenant Seminary’s “World Wide Classroom”
Covenant Seminary is the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a good school. We differ in some places, since I’m a Baptist and they’re Presbyterians, but there are more places that we agree than disagree. I especially liked the homiletics class and the youth ministry class. They even have some (if not all) their lectures up on iTunes, so you can download them to your iPod really easily.
“As a ministry of Covenant Theological Seminary, our Worldwide Classroom offers God’s people everywhere free access to biblically-based, grace-centered theological training materials for the benefit of the church. Our hope and prayer is that no matter where God has stationed you in his Kingdom or how he has gifted you to serve, you will find that these resources encourage you in your Christian walk and strengthen you in your ministry.”Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s “Dimensions of the Faith”
GCTS is a non-denominational seminary. They offer several classes in their “Dimensions of the Faith” ministry. In their own words:
“Dimensions of the Faith at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary is a free online theological education program. The Ockenga Institute of Gordon-Conwell has taken seminary level courses and adapted them to a ‘go at your own pace’ distance learning program which includes audio lectures and a study guide.”