Scottish Baptist College – coming to a screen near you soon!
By Graham Meiklejohn, Tutor at the Scottish Baptist College
At the Scottish Baptist College we’ve always been committed to “equipping people to participate in God’s kingdom through the church and in the wider world.” We formalised this conviction when we adopted it as our vision statement a few years ago and we continue to consider ways in which we can make this vision increasingly become a reality.
As much as there has been challenges in the past year, we also saw it as a moment of opportunity. We recognised that with an increasing familiarity with life online we could take our learning community further afield. Furthermore, we recognised that gathering people together, even in online spaces, could be a way of providing connection during lockdown. The outcome was the development of the Scottish Baptist Learning Communities, which is our grassroots initiative to provide learning opportunities to as many people as possible in churches across Scotland. These sessions are aimed at those with no prior theological education (although not excluding those who do!) and are suited for a broad audience. SBLC is non-validated so there’s no assignments or exams but simply an opportunity to think through and talk about some of the important issues of the Christian faith. And at present they are exclusively online, gathering together via Zoom, making them accessible to people all across Scotland (and beyond!). We’ve covered Creation Care, Sabbath, the Mission of God, and more and in May, Andrew Clarke will be leading us through Missional Church Leadership in the Contemporary World. You can find out more an book a place at scottishbaptistcollege.org
Not only have the SBLC expanded our reach, our year spent on Zoom has helped us to develop a learning community that can sustain learning at distance without losing community. And we hope to continue expanding this mode of delivery beyond any continuing restrictions. Next year we’re hoping to expand our campus-based delivery of the Bachelor of Divinity course (restrictions allowing) to add a flexible model of learning community, largely taking place through evening classes delivered online.
If any of this sounds like something you’d like to find out more about then we warmly invite you to our first Discovery Day on Wednesday March 24th at 2pm. If you’re interested, just email graham.meiklejohn@uws.ac.uk
