www.acom.edu.au
Randy Edwards has been teaching Bible (both Old and New Testament) for nearly 30 years with the Australian College of Ministries and its Queensland predecessor, Kenmore Christian College. He has served as Principal of KCC twice and was instrumental in the formation of ACOM. He has also been involved in generating a “Missional curriculum” which seeks to train people for mission within Australian culture.
He has a passion for not only discovering the original message of Scripture, but also for recasting it in contemporary Australian culture so that the message remains the same as it is transferred into a new setting.
Randy is married to Marie and they have two children (twins) and one grandchild. Recently Randy and Marie have moved into a unit in the Brisbane CBD and love the way the city resonates with life. They have been involved with Pathways, an experimental mid-week church that has been operating for over 5 years. Its goal is to equip its members to be incarnationally relevant in their daily lives and to help find ways of communicating the great news of Jesus to those who don’t or won’t attend a church.
(Wednesday 2:00pm)
The Bible is pivotal to understanding what God has done to connect us with Him, yet in the past few centuries, it has largely been read through the filters of a modern church. The primary approach has been one of atomizing the text, dividing it into its smallest bits for examination and scrutiny. While an appeal to “context” has always been made, the practice of Bible reading both in sermons and personal devotion has seldom placed the Bible in its contexts.
This elective explores what it means to read the Bible through post-modern filters, where story is more important than facts, truth is more personal than objective, wisdom surpasses knowledge, and ethics are derived from values rather than rules. Can we read the Bible differently without losing its essence? Will the Bible continue to have a legitimate place in a post-modern society? If the answer to these two questions is to be yes, we must learn to read it differently, and this elective will start you down this path.
(Thursday 8:30am)
The parables of Jesus contain the essence of the Kingdom values, and Jesus told them in order to call people to a decision: live according to these values or miss out on the Kingdom altogether. However, throughout history, the parables have been tamed, twisted, and turned upside down in such a way that their original message and impact are often lost. Meant to be powerful tools for transformation, they have often become supports for the status quo of the church.
In this elective, participants will be shown the keys to unlocking the power of the parables by exploring several parables of Jesus as a paradigm for reading others and by seeking ways to make the message effective in our own culture and context. No previous knowledge or background is required as we explore and apply the real message of Jesus to life, the church, and the world.
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