Joe Rigney is on staff at The Bethlehem Institute.

Bethlehem College and Seminary is offering new undergraduate programs beginning in the fall of 2010.

We'll be offering a two-year degree in Christian Worldview, a four-year degree in Biblical and Theological Studies, a four-year degree in the History of Ideas, and a non-traditional degree completion program.

Whichever of these programs students choose, they will not find a typical college experience.

The classes are small.

For starters, we keep the classes around 16 students per instructor (instead of those mammoth introductory courses at most colleges).

The price is small, too.

For 2009-2010, the tuition was under $5,000 for 32 hours of credit (compared to $24,000 for a typical private Christian college). And if you apply and are accepted before June 1, we'll help you find affordable housing with other students near Bethlehem Baptist’s downtown campus.

The teachers are many.

Besides learning from their regular instructors, students will learn from as many as 40 scholars, pastors, and missionaries, all of them accomplished in their fields.

The coursework is integrated.

In our foundational program in Christian Worldview, we weave Bible, theology, history, anthropology, world religions, biblical Greek, missions, science (and more!) into a single comprehensive course of study.

We take a chronological approach, beginning with creation and moving through to the present day, exploring God’s mission in history and how various religions, philosophies, and worldviews have left their mark on the world.

Our two four-year undergraduate majors build on this integrated foundation.

The college is church-based.

We don’t just want to instruct the minds of our students; we also want to engage their hearts and shape their lives. Thus, the classes don’t just take place at the church building; all of our programs are woven into the life of Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Along with coursework, our programs include mentorship by Bethlehem members, field trips to mosques, synagogues, and temples, and ministry opportunities in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country.

In the end, our goal is simple: to provide a unique, God-centered, life-transforming, cost-effective, undergraduate experience. John Piper explains,

What we have seen, and what we would like to teach, is a God-entranced vision of reality that will make all other study and all the rest of life, deeper, richer, and more in sync with God’s ultimate purposes for your life.

Applications for our primary undergraduate programs are available now. For more information, visit our website, download our undergraduate brochure, and listen to John Piper’s special address on the Biblical Foundations for Bethlehem College and Seminary.

Did you know that you can complete your freshman year of college through The Bethlehem Institute (TBI) at Bethlehem Baptist Church?

TBI, in conjunction with Northwestern College in St. Paul, offers an accredited, one-year undergraduate program designed for the freshman or sophomore year of college. It’s called INSIGHT, and it’s not your typical college experience.

The classes are small.

For starters, we keep the class sizes limited, around 16 students per instructor (instead of those mammoth introductory courses at most colleges).

The price is small, too.

For 2008-2009, the tuition was only $9500 for 32 hours of credit (compared to the national average of $25,143 for private college tuition). And if you apply and are accepted before June 1, we'll help you find affordable housing with other students near Bethlehem Baptist’s downtown campus.

The teachers are many.

Besides learning from their regular instructors, during the year students will learn from over 40 scholars, pastors, and missionaries, all of them accomplished in their fields.

The coursework is integrated.

Rather than taking separate courses on anthropology, Bible, history, missions, and world religions, all of these subjects (and more!) are integrated into one comprehensive course of study. Students will see the connections between Darwin and Moses, between Confucius and Solomon, between Athens and Jerusalem, between Genesis 1 and taking out the trash (no, really—there’s a connection).

We take a chronological approach, beginning with creation and moving through to the present day, exploring God’s mission in history and how various religions, philosophies, and worldviews have left their mark on the world.

The program is church-based.

We don’t just want to instruct the mind of our students; we also want to engage their hearts and shape their lives. Thus, the classes don’t just take place at the church building; the entire program is woven into the life of Bethlehem Baptist.

Along with coursework, the program includes mentorship by Bethlehem members, field trips to mosques, synagogues, and temples, and ministry opportunities in the most diverse neighborhood in the country.

In the end, our goal is simple: to provide a unique, God-centered, life-transforming, economical, one-year, undergraduate experience.

John Piper explains,

What we have seen, and what we would like to teach, is a God-entranced vision of reality that will make all other study and all the rest of life, deeper, richer, and more in sync with God’s ultimate purposes for your life.

For more information, visit our website, or contact us at info@thebethleheminstitute.org.

They say that nothing is certain except death and taxes. In America, at least, we can add one more thing to the list: Every four years politicians and pundits will wax eloquent about the “difficult” and “controversial” issue of abortion.

Debates about “a woman’s right to choose” and “a baby’s right to life” will quickly degenerate into shouting matches that obscure rather than clarify the issues.

As Christians, we don’t have the luxury of speaking with vagueness, ambiguity, and cliché. When we open our mouths, we must speak clearly (Ephesians 6:19-20; Colossians 4:3-4).

But if we are to speak clearly, we must first think and feel clearly about difficult and controversial moral issues.

So we need to realize that abortion is not mainly about a woman’s right to choose.

And it isn’t mainly about a baby’s right to life.

Abortion is about God, the Creator of the universe, the Giver and Sustainer of all life, the Judge of the living and the dead, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Redeemer and Forgiver of all who trust him. Abortion is about God.

To leave God out of the picture of abortion is to trivialize it. All things are trivial without God. God is the ultimate reality over the universe. All other reality is derivative and dependent and has no ultimate meaning at all without reference to God the ultimate reality. In him we live and move and have our being. If we leave him out of account, we know nothing of any lasting significance about ourselves or the world. (John Piper, “Where Does Child Killing Come From?”)

During this election season, as politicians court the evangelical vote, it is vital that Christians remind themselves why abortion is the transcendent moral issue of our time.

To that end, The Bethlehem Institute has designed a unique, six-week Sunday School curriculum advancing the truth that the deepest evil of abortion is that it defies God’s supremacy over life in the womb.

Entitled Abortion Is About God: Reframing a Moral Issue, the course provides a biblical and theological foundation for the pro-life cause from a God-centered perspective.

At a time when being pro-life is marginalized in some evangelical circles, we want to lift up the cause of the unborn and urge our fellow Christians to not grow weary in doing good.

We will reap a harvest if we do not give up. And the strength to persevere comes from realizing that God’s supremacy over all things includes his work in the womb.

Abortion is an assault on the person-forming work of God. Children are a gift from God. To reject them through abortion is to reject him.

But we do not merely preach against sin. We also preach Christ crucified—crucified for women who have had abortions; for family members who have pushed for abortions; for doctors who have performed abortions; and for Christians who have failed to love both mother and baby as we ought to.

In that spirit, we commend this new curriculum to you. Our prayer is that God would use it in churches around the country to reawaken people to the centrality and supremacy of God in the cause of the unborn so that one day soon abortion will not only be illegal, but unthinkable.

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Discounted Pro-life Resources

• 20% off “Abortion Is About God: Reframing a Moral Issue” and a free copy of Why Pro-life? by Randy Alcorn with each purchase.
• Get additional copies of Why Pro-life? for $.99 each.

Free Online Pro-life Resources

• John Piper Video: Abortion Is About God
  
  


• All John Piper’s Sanctity of Life Sermons
• A great website for awareness: Abort73