“Building and equipping the church through training”
222 Bible College has a vision to provide online Christian theological education and certification to Farsi-speakers. We want to help train and equip the next generation of leaders for the church in Iran!
222 Ministries established a Bible College in Iran in early 2003 with 40 resident students. However, in September 2004 the authorities clamped down on our facilities and forced the closure and cancellation of all its training programmes. We have continued to conduct numerous teaching programmes in a variety of countries, and we have spent much time in research and preparation to identify a direction to provide distance extended training of Christians in Iran. The online Bible College was established in March 2006 with the help of Nations University – the fruit of 3 years’ study and research.
Through 222 Bible College registration can be anonymous for the student, their real names and contact details known only to the Bible College administrator in Europe. This way they can study the word of God in their own language, in all its richness and without any fear of intimidation from the authorities. By its nature the Bible College online is a highly cost-effective facility, particularly compared to what frequently become the spiralling costs of running a physical institution.
The 222 Bible College site became live in March 2006 and in just a few months, (and with no advertising) we already had 200 students registered and training in the word of God. By the beginning of 2007, the number had grown 50% to over 300 students and through 2007, much work was done on both the infrastucture and course material offered on the site to strengthen its infrastructure, security and the automatic testing of students. Meanwhile, student numbers kept growing and we started 2008 with well over 500 students, and by the beginning of 2011 the numbers are approaching 1,000!
With advertising on 222 TV channel, the 222 Internet sites and “word of mouth”, we will be able to reach millions people with the news of the online Bible College. This is being reinforced as we develop more of our own contextualised materials that will be accessible in audio, visual and text formats. We want to see thousands of students enrolled who will be equipped with sound and relevant theological material to see the church grow amongst Iranians.
Our current needs can be summarized as follows:
- New courses developed and uploaded
- About 50 units of course material required for Bachelor and Master level qualifications still need to be translated from English
- Technical and engineering work for the website that will allow us to post material online, teach and test online, and to include a secure online database to handle all student logins, study, examinations, and results (the systems need to be automated to handle large numbers of students, and security needs to be more robust; right now, most of the work is done on a manual basis)
Having, say, 2000 students will mean the annual cost of training each student will only be US$50, making running Bible College online a most cost-effective and strategic resource to train the future leaders of Iran!
222 Ministries International has pioneered the use of the internet to build and strengthen churches, and reach Iranians with the Gospel message. To find out more about the 222 Bible College (www.222bc.org) or to see how you may be able to partner with us in this strategic area of ministry, please email info@222ministries.org
