After seven weeks of training in how to do counselling, a number of further training options were mentioned:
Grad Dip of Counselling or Masters of Counselling from the Wesley Institute
Various Courses from Relationships Australia
Diploma and Degree courses at Tabor College
Clinical Pastoral Education
Advanced diploma of Counselling and Family Therapy from the Australian Institute of Family Counselling
An insightful list of things to avoid while studying at bible college, framed as a list of 45 ways to waste your theological education.
Update: more thoughts on this topic over at the PTC blog.
Wondering what one of the oldest copies of the Greek New Testament look like? Have a look at these Scans of Codex Sinaiticus - even if you can’t read greek, you can see that everything is in capital letters, and they’re pretty stingy with their spaces too!
It’s been a while since I put up a big list of grammatical terms, so here are a list of the different types of participle. A participle is that part of speech where a verb is used as a noun or an adjective. If the verb is “drive”, then the participle is “driver” or “while [...]
Four more hours of Romans today (we finished chapter one!), and another four hours of lectures tomorrow, including our first quiz. The Greek is starting to come back to me: I find myself able to follow - for the most part - what’s going on, and even ask intelligent questions on occasion.
At the moment, [...]
College is back on for the year. I’m studying Romans in Greek, and (2nd year) Greek Grammar. So far I’ve read one book (see below), skimmed a couple more, and started wrestling with some translation work - I’ve forgotten quite a bit over the break, but it’s starting to come back to me.
Greek is over for the year. Today was the final exam. There was a real sense of anxiety in the room before the paper was handed out: people frantically pouring over their notes, reading the passages in English to try and remember key phrases, packed with unfamiliar words.
At last, the paper was handed out. Reading [...]
Reference work for Early Church History - Augustine On the Spirit and the Letter
With special guest lecturer Ian Smith.
Had a moment of clarity: while working through the pericope of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand, I finally found myself looking at the Greek, understanding what was going on, and desperately keen to find out what happened next. It was even more immersive than reading it in [...]
The end of the textbook! Really, just a collection of miscellany. In brief, we learned:
Conditional sentences: this is the kind of “if A then B” sentence. The “if A” part is called a protasis, and the “then B” part is called the apodosis. It’s also possible to make an “indefinite conditional”, where you’re not sure [...]
Now that my essay is out of the way, I can catch up on blogging about Greek. As you can tell from the lack of Greek posts, I haven’t been spending as much time revising as in previous weeks: I often carry the textbook somewhere, but then end up working on something else instead. As [...]
This was the first day of Greek where we just looked at bible verses, and translated them / watched the new lecturer translate them.
You can see the OHP in action: the Greek text is on overhead projector slides double-spaced, and projected onto a whiteboard. The lecturer points at the words as he goes, writes down [...]
One of the best sites for NT Greek is Zhubert - you have access to the full Greek New Testament, and a lot of information about each word, where you need it.
If I’ve tried to complain to you about how much I have to do for college, you might have heard me mystified about what an exegetical paper is: after a couple of people have helpfully tried to explain it to me, I’ve found some more detail in this document that covers guidelines for exegetical papers.
This whole weekend is earmarked for Greek study, with the half-semester exam on this Tuesday morning. The last chapter was a bit of a shock - I know now that the pace of content picks up as you head towards the end of the book, but I wasn’t ready to find out that we have [...]
A few weeks ago, a nespresso machine turned up at college; students can now buy coffees (not great coffees, but there are slim pickings at Burwood anyway) for $1.00, without going off-campus. Partly, this was to raise money for the SRC (Student Representative Council) to buy stuff for students, but the other part of the [...]
Just an insight into where my mind is at: while doing some Greek translation exercises at lunch today, I caught myself thinking: “So does that mean the future passive is derived from the aorist passive? Yes it does… ah… that makes sense now…”
The last three chapters of the textbook are on miscellany. The words for “I sit down”, “I lie down”, “I know”, “I am able” are interesting: they have perfect endings, but present meanings. Have I lost you yet?
The most scary part of chapter 18 (this week’s chapter) is the notion of principal parts. For various [...]
This week, we had a look at a couple of actual verses in Greek: instances where what we have been learning will help us see extra layers of meaning in the text that can’t be seen by looking just at the English.
We learned the subtle difference between purpose (what you’re seeking to achieve) and [...]
Started the intense-mode “Psalms” course today. It’s been an overview more than anything else. The pre-reading I’ve done for the course has put me in good stead to be able to follow what’s going on, though occasionally there will be mention of something in Hebrew (kindly transliterated into English characters) which reminds me of the [...]