Announcements
Introducing the New BJU Press Bible Program
A comprehensive Bible program should provide students with knowledge that leads to heart and life change. Ultimately, teachers want to see students living with a biblical worldview in all areas of life.
However, students need an ordered foundation of Bible knowledge to achieve heart and life change. At BJU Press, we have updated our Bible series (elementary, middle school, and high school) with a careful scope and sequence that includes Bible knowledge, Bible doctrines, applications for biblical living, tools for Bible study, and a comprehensive biblical worldview. This program seeks to provide students with an understanding of Scripture that will shape their lives and futures.
A structured approach to worldview shaping
Our elementary Bible program teaches basic Bible doctrines to create a strong foundation for more complex study later. Students learn to connect scriptural accounts to each of the Bible truths and apply truths to their own lives. Socratic questioning, teacher modeling, guided formative assessments, and independent study expand and reinforce students’ understanding of Bible doctrine and knowledge.
Bible 1–3
In Grades 1 through 3, students learn 147 foundational truths from the true accounts they find in the Bible. They’ll learn to think and connect Scripture passages to each of the Bible truths, and they’ll learn how they can apply them to their lives. In addition, they’ll gain a basic understanding of how to defend the Bible by connecting truths to the stories.
Bible 4–5
Grades 4 and 5 give students a full picture of the Big Story of Scripture. Students will learn major themes from the Old and New Testaments and how they contribute to the overarching story of Creation, Fall, Redemption that gives the foundational narrative of a biblical worldview.
Bible 6
Basics for a Biblical Worldview begins the middle school years by showing students how to apply the foundational truths to their own lives and to how they live in the world around them. Students will see that they are included in God’s story and that story helps them to understand their world.
Bible Study, Bible Knowledge, Biblical Worldview
Our Grade 7 through Grade 12 Bible courses teach students to observe, interpret, and apply Scripture through a structured survey of the Old and New Testaments (Grade 7–9), followed by systematic theology (Bible Doctrines, Grade 10) and a wide-ranging Biblical Worldview course that applies the biblical framework of Creation, Fall, and Redemption to foundational and current cultural issues.
Bible 7–9
Students will practice and develop the skills of observation and interpretation by studying through major themes of the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Acts and the Epistles. To develop a lasting faith that will carry them through the rest of their lives, they will need to learn how to study and interpret the Bible on their own.
Bible 10
Bible Doctrines takes students through a systematic study of foundational doctrines of Scripture so they can understand and apply them. These deep truths are covered in age-appropriate, engaging ways.
Bible 11
Biblical Worldview takes students through the truths they have been learning and applies them to a culture that is antagonistic to God. This course prepares students not only to know what the Bible teaches about controversial and complicated issues, but also to stand for and defend their beliefs.
Bible 12 (In Development)
Ethics will prepare students to challenge unbiblical worldviews and navigate ethical dilemmas throughout their lives. This course will give them practical and direct application for all the Bible study skills and interpretation skills they have learned.
The Most Dangerous Place for Christian Young People
Recently, a movement has begun to gain momentum. Parents are pulling children out of public schools and enrolling them in Christian schools. However, much of the good they are doing by choosing Christian schools may be undone at secular colleges and universities. There is no place more dangerous for Christian young people than those classrooms. The secular system, by its nature, grooms Christian students away from their faith, family, and church with devastating effect. The question is, have Christian schools prepared young people for the kind of spiritual warfare that they will face when they leave their Christian high schools?
Unfortunately, educational standards provide little to no guidance or accountability for schools on how to construct a Bible program or how to build the foundational knowledge that prepares students for the battle they are waging now or the warfare they will face. If we are going to prepare Christian students for a world that hates God or believes He has no place in public life, we must use the most effective strategies to embed God’s Word in their hearts, minds, and actions. The foundation of this work must be in the Bible class.
Given this unique responsibility and wonderful opportunity, we should approach our Bible curriculum with as much focus and structure as the other courses that we teach. This means we must map out a trajectory of how students will interpret, analyze, and apply biblical content from Grade 1 to Grade 12. BJU Press has built a Grade 1–12 Bible program with this structure.
Our thinking as Christian educators needs to be as strategic and intentional as any general who understands his enemy and the nature of the war he is fighting. Since the enemy’s battle for the hearts and minds of our children is very real, let us not be as missionary Jim Elliott described: “spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in the battle-to-the death with principalities and powers in high places.” Christian education will be only as Christian as the centrality of God’s Word in our schools. If we understand Ephesians 6, we should strive for what Elliot concludes in his plea to God, “Oh, that God would make us dangerous!”