Free education

I frequently write about the need for bivocational ministers, and all Christians, to develop their minds through reading, attending continuing education (CE) opportunities, listening to podcasts in the car rather than the mindless drivel many listen to while driving, and other ways by which we can improve our knowledge. We must do this is we are to develop a sound Christian worldview and be able to defend our faith and values in a world that has largely rejected both.

Education is not inexpensive. Attending college and seminary can lead to huge student loans if one is not careful. Many CE opportunities are fairly inexpensive, but for the bivocational minister many of them will require missing work to attend those held during the day. Podcasts, for the most part, cost nothing to download, and over the years I've found that books can be expensive or rather inexpensive depending on where you buy them and if they are used or new.

However, there is one free way to get some great education, and that is through the Internet. YouTube offers a huge collection of educational courses that are free for the taking. Last week I started a six session course on YouTube on logical reasoning taught by an instructor at the University of Oxford. Obviously, this is not a full course that covers everything that would be taught if I were a student at Oxford, but I am also not paying the $12,000 Oxford would charge for the course if I were a student there. And, I can watch a session any time I want, stop it if I need to and come back to it later.

Every day we are bombarded with arguments on everything from politics to religion to business and every other area of our lives. People put their own private spin to convince us their argument is right. How can we best determine if their arguments are valid or invalid? Perhaps even more important, how can we determine whether their arguments fit into our Christian worldview, especially if we don't have a particularly Christian worldview or can't defend it?

As Christian leaders we have a responsibility to not only have a personal Christian worldview, we have an obligation to help others develop one as well. The sad fact is that many Christians have allowed themselves to be more influenced by our culture than by biblical teaching. Many sitting in our churches cannot explain their Christian worldview, cannot defend it to others, and many couldn't even explain what a Christian worldview is.

Jesus told the Scribe that the greatest commandment was "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...and the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" Not only are our hearts and souls to be dedicated to God but also our minds. To me, that says that it is imperative that we continue to grow intellectually. And part of loving our neighbor well is being able to give him or her a reasonable defense of our faith.

There are so many ways to grow in our understanding of our faith and our culture. As Christian leaders we need to take advantage of as many of them as possible.