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Voices in the Wilderness
Helping People to Listen to God
2008 dates T.B.A.

People are dying to hear from God.  Sunday after Sunday, church sanctuaries fill with people hungry for God to speak into their lives.  Some journey up the mountains with the faint hope of hearing God’s whisper in the sounds of nature.  Some scavenge the shelves of bookstores looking for traces of God’s handwriting.  Still others contort their bodies and curve their minds listening for the divine.  People long to hear from God.

We inhabit a noisy world of competing ideologies clamouring for our souls; a world where God’s voice is increasingly hard to hear.  Every day, we are assaulted by a barrage of sound bytes and news bits urging us to give our allegiance to the idols of our time.  In the cacophony of ideas and whirlpool of ideologies, it is difficult to distinguish God’s word from the “word from our sponsor.”

The good news is that we Christians serve God “Who is out there and Who is not silent.”  The better news is that we are God’s voice for our generation.  In calling us to speak for God, Jesus leaves us no legroom to hide behind the cross.  Jesus wants us to be his lips, his feet, his hands.  For most people today, we are the only hope they have of ever hearing from God.  In view of our calling to speak for God to a dying generation, we stand before the question, “How now shall we preach?”

The seminar, Voices in the Wilderness, seeks to wrestle with this query.  The uniqueness of the seminar stems from its commitment to answer this question from the biblical perspective.  We start and end with the Bible.  In the course of our studies, we will endeavour to discover the biblical content and form of our speech.

The course will help the participants to reflect on the biblical theology of communicating God’s word.  We will pause to establish the basis for the relevance of the ancient text for our contemporary context.  A core commitment of our studies will be the mastery of the process of extracting biblical ideas from the biblical text.  This will be followed by a further reflection on what is required to frame truth for the consciousness of the listeners.  We will consider the elements of preparation and delivery.  However, the desired outcome of the course is to prepare you to preach God’s Word to the people within earshot of your voice.  Your work in the course will equip you with the necessary competency for crafting and delivering biblical sermons. After ten classroom sessions, there will be three preaching workshops in which all participants will have an opportunity to preach the sermons prepared during the seminar to their classmates.

We live and die by the conviction that our love for God is evidenced by our handling of His Word.  We preach God’s Word as if lives depended on it.  We invite you to take your calling seriously.

This course is open to anyone who loves to study and proclaim God’s word.  Qualifying students may also take this course at full graduate credit awarded through ACTS Seminaries of the Trinity Western University.

Contact us for graduate tuition rates.  

Cost:         $120 plus books
Time:        Mondays, 7-10pm
Location:  Church of the Nazarene
                 4277 Quadra St. 
                 Victoria, BC

See the Course Syllabus
Apply to Take This Course