About Us
The Bible College in a Box
Evangelical: core text books from some of the great scholars of the present and past generation. Bible based, inspiring and encouraging. The content of the box will share the values of our mainstream evangelical faith.
Cost Effective: buy the box and study online. No hidden fees or paywalls. Create a hub for learning in your church or community. We provide video content for each textbook and are in the process of creating additional media.
Flexible: study from anywhere in the world. Form a local hub to study with others. Study at your own pace, over one year or three. We believe in life long learning. New content and subscriber content will help you feel part of the School for Discipleship community.
Growing: new content is being developed all the time and fresh opportunities are being explored to make discipleship training accessible to everyone. The core textbooks will always remain part of the box but other content will develop over time.
Vision
Discipleship is for the local Church.
Every Christian is a disciple and we are all called to follow Jesus and serve him by bringing his blessing to the world.
We are all different: diverse gifts, experience, personalities and at different stages of life. So how do we grow as disciples?
The School for Discipleship is a ministry of Lansdowne Church in Bournemouth. We want to make theological study and application life accessible. The course we run in Bournemouth is a foundation for Church interns who may be training to be pastors and evangelists. The online content allows anyone, anywhere, to access some of this content.
The three key aims of SfD are
LEARNING: study the Bible
SERVING: get involved in local church ministry
LIVING: apply your study and experience to daily life.
Bible Based
The Bible is our textbook. Everything we teach is based on understanding the Biblical text. Though we have other textbooks to helps us in specific areas of study, we really want to encourage you to deepen and widen your reading of the Word of God.
During the course of studies, whether online or in person, we will direct you in some study of Church history, Biblical background and Doctrine but we will always come back to the study of the Bible as our authority and foundation.
Local Church
The School for Discipleship was created by a local church in Bournemouth that wanted to provide accessible training. We are accountable to the local church and funded by them. Part of our training centre at Woodbury Avenue is also a church plant and community outreach. This helps us to keep focused on the importance of theology for practical ministry in the area.
The development on online resources helps us to offer teaching that can be flexibly accessed by Churches anywhere in the world. But we would still emphasise belonging to a local church.
Evangelical
Course content is delivered by a range of evangelical pastors, theologians and ministers. They all have relevant levels of training but are also engaged in real world ministry and this is reflected in their teaching. We are non-denominational, with representatives from various church networks.
Lansdowne Church, of which SfD is a ministry, belongs to the Evangelical Alliance, Wessex Gospel Partnership and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.