Biblearc EQUIP Vision
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July 26, 2023
Category: Announcements
Online training and Bible studies abound in our day. What makes Biblearc EQUIP unique? Why do we exist? To answer these questions, we wrote a vision statement:
We equip the church to follow Jesus through the faithful and accurate study of his Word.
Let’s unpack that vision statement.
We Equip the Church
This phrase describes the main action of our vision.
Let’s begin by noting the subject: “We.”
Biblearc EQUIP is a team of coaches, editors, course creators, and collaborators. This team is the heartbeat of who we are. But we are also more than this. Biblearc EQUIP is also an international community of students, users, followers, missionaries, pastors, schools, and churches connected to us through our courses, the Biblearc site, and the Gospel Paths ministry. While the core team powers our mission, the wider community drives our vision forward as they learn, teach, participate in, improve, and spread the content we produce.
Next, let’s focus on the main action: “Equip.”
There’s a reason that Biblearc features so prominently in our name. Biblearc is like a workshop that provides the place and the tools for faithful Bible study and teaching. Biblearc EQUIP exists to equip the church to wield these tools faithfully and fruitfully. This is what makes us unique in the world of online Bible study education. We equip our students to dig deeper, read better, teach more faithfully, and learn more fruitfully with the tools provided at biblearc.com. We are like the wood shop teacher who brings the students into the workshop, teaches them about the tools, and then guides them as they grow in skill and knowledge.
It’s worth noting here that we are, then, a ministry of support and preparation. We support the church by preparing Christians to read and to teach their Bibles faithfully and fruitfully.
This brings us to the final piece of the main phrase: “the church.”
Biblearc EQUIP exists to serve the church. This includes individual Christians, schools, ministries, and agencies. But in all these efforts, our equipping ministry is ultimately geared towards serving local churches. As we train students, we hope to equip them to serve and bless their local churches, whether they are members, pastors, planters, deacons, missionaries, small group leaders, disciplers, teachers, etc.
Note as well that the vision statement says: “the church.” We are thinking here of the global church. As an online ministry, we want to serve local churches around the globe because we have heard about an all-sufficient Savior through a cosmic and universal gospel (Col 1:15–23). Our hearts beat fastest when we think about serving churches in the Majority World, where access to the tools and training we provide is least available. We long to see Jesus magnified in all the world, especially in those places where his name has not yet been heard. So, our equipping efforts are especially geared towards this goal of serving churches in the Majority World.
We must not miss here that the church consists of the new humanity in Christ, where “there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved person nor free, but Christ is all and is in all.” So, in equipping the church, we seek to serve all Christians to take up their specific callings within their local churches. Our content is not merely for one kind of Christian, such as the educated or the English-speaking or the tech savvy or men. We aim to equip all Christians, especially those most marginalized by our world (Deut 10:17–19).
This, then, summarizes our main action as a team: We equip the church.
However, we are not aimless in this action. We equip the church with a specific goal in mind. This brings us to the next phrase of our vision statement: the purpose of our efforts.
To Follow Jesus
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
-James 1:22
We are an equipping ministry, not a merely educational ministry. What distinguishes these two kinds of ministry?
A merely educational ministry seeks only to teach content and pass on knowledge. An equipping ministry provides the tools necessary to do something. In this age of digital consumption, this is an essential difference. We do not want to puff up with knowledge but to build up with love. We do not want to grow in power and pride but to empower others in love. We do not want to produce fools but wise followers of Jesus, followers who then encourage others to follow them as they follow Christ.
So then, we equip churches to follow. Our content aims to give churches the tools to know God’s Word and so to obey God’s Word: to worship God in Christ. We prepare students with these tools so that they can make disciples by teaching them all that Jesus has commanded in Scripture. We want to empower churches to live faithfully and fruitfully as those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes as he reveals his will in the path of his Word.
Finally, we must not miss that our aim centers on the Lord Jesus Christ. We equip churches to follow Jesus. We do not equip churches to follow a generic god or a specific idol. We equip them to know Jesus as he reveals himself in Scripture and to make him known to others through Scripture. We equip the church to follow and to treasure and to worship our Lord Jesus Christ.
This, then, brings us to the final phrase in our vision statement. We equip the church to follow Jesus through the faithful and precise study of his Word.
Through the Faithful and Accurate Study of His Word
The Lord Jesus is our shepherd. He leads us to life upon the path of his Word. Thus, our Path Courses focus on equipping the church to follow Jesus by reading the Bible well. Indeed, the Bible is Jesus’s book. As the Word of God, he makes the Father known through himself by the Spirit-inspired writings and testimonies of the Prophets and the Apostles (Matt 11:25-30; John 1:1–18; Eph 4:9–13).
What does it mean to read the Bible well? Consider the two adjectives that describe our study:
Faithful describes our study in two ways.
First, we seek to equip through faith-filled study. Biblearc EQUIP wants to equip the church to read the Bible in faith. We do not want to equip with mere tools, as if we could ever accomplish our goal through a dry and disinterested study. We seek to equip through study that begins, goes on, and ends with a Spirit-empowered faith in the apostolic gospel. In other words, we want to read the Bible as the Bible demands to be read Since the gospel reveals the mystery of Christ (Col 1:24–2:5), we equip the church to study the Bible through the light and lens of Jesus Christ.
Second, we seek to equip through faithful study. This means that we equip the church to follow Jesus through Bible study that truly represents the message the Author intended when he wrote this book. God has entrusted the church with his words about Jesus. We want to equip the church to guard the good deposit as trustworthy servants.
The second adjective, accurate, represents the kind of Bible study provided by the tools we teach. We equip the church through tools that enable accurate and careful reading and study of the Bible. We want the church to dig deep until they hear Jesus rightly, see him clearly, and worship him wholeheartedly. In other words, we equip the church to read the Bible as the Author intended. This is what accurate study means. Further, we want to study together so that we can increasingly refine our reading as we discuss the Bible in love through the tools our courses teach.
Let’s briefly consider one final word: study. Our content equips through study of the Bible: rigorous, disciplined, and arduous study. We demand much from our students because the stakes are so high. This does not mean that our content is inaccessible or overly complicated. Instead, it means that we model rigorous, disciplined, and arduous study through simple and succinct content.
Finally, as we look towards the future, note one missing adjective from the word “study”: “online.” We are and will always be an online ministry. We equip the church to study the Bible through an online platform and tools. However, we are not limited to online work. Already, Gospel Paths brings our content to be taught and modeled within a specific local church community. We aim to partner with other ministries and places to do the same. And we dream about other opportunities that our God may provide: opportunities to equip the church around the world through in-person teaching as well as online.
This then is our vision: We equip the church to follow Jesus through the faithful and accurate study of his Word.
Yet, we do not look to our team or our tools to accomplish this vision. We look to God, who raises the dead. So, we pray that God, by his power, would bring to fruition our every desire for goodness and our every deed prompted by faith. And we pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in us, and us in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess 1:11–12).
Prayer
Father,
We praise you for making Christ known to us.
Through him, you created us.
Through him, you reconciled us.
Now through him, you lead us upon the path of life, the path of your Word.
And so, we come to you now in him. We joyfully declare that your plan is bigger than us. Your saving plan in Christ is cosmic in its scope. It stretches over millennia. With Paul, we praise you that the gospel of Jesus is growing and bearing fruit throughout the whole world (Col 1:6). We are just one little piece of the plan. But what a joy it is to have this high and happy calling of knowing Jesus and making him known by the Holy Spirit.
And we know. We know that you are the God who loves to magnify Jesus through the weak and small and insignificant people and places of this world. So, we come and pray no little prayer. With the eyes of our hearts opened wide to your limitless love for us in Christ, we look to you, the One who can do immeasurably more than we can ask or even imagine. Strengthen us to equip the church all around the world to follow Jesus through the faithful and precise study of his Word. Open our eyes to see Christ’s wonders in your Word, and through our efforts open the eyes of others. Make us part of your saving plan to raise up faithful witnesses, shepherds, and churches around the world who will follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Do this in our generation and among the generations that follow us just as you have been doing for millennia. Continue to give us a vision filled and fueled by the gospel ambition to know Christ and make him known. And we ask that you wouldn’t merely give us this vision but that you would bring these ambitions to fruition beyond our wildest gospel dreams.
May the name of Jesus be glorified in us, in our students, and in churches around this earth according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen!