Studying God's Word

Studying God's Word

In 2008 when we were en route to come back home to Manchester, we began to search God for his will for our lives as we really wanted to make a lasting impact on the Christian Community in Manchester and in the wider UK / Europe.

It was whilst praying that the Lord gave us an idea to start a part-time Bible School back home. We acknowledged that not everyone would be able to go full-time as we did in Sweden, but we could bring back a bit of the Swedish Bible School plus "the Word of Faith" preached there.

So in July 2008 we offered a free taster course on Wednesday nights 7pm - 9pm for 3 weeks on "The Character of God". We invited Christians from many churches within and without COGOP. After we completed the taster session to our surprise 63 people signed up for the course, paying a range of discounted and introductory fees.

The Bible school is named after our local church in Firswood , Manchester and Natalie Chen is currently the Director. A third of the local church was among the first intake of students with the blessing of Pastor Daisy Bailey who helped to facilitate the school by releasing the Wednesday nights from the church calendar. In addition to this she helped to promote the school by encouraging all members to attend.

The Course is taught every Wednesday evening 7pm-9pm in the months of September, November, February and April then concluding with a Graduation Service in May. The course includes 4 subjects:

The Authority of the Believer
The Holy Spirit and His Gifts
Financial Freedom
Biblical Healing

Each subject has reading materials linked to the topic. At the end of each subject during the last session a written test is taken by the students in the class. To accompany each subject students have to remember 2 scriptures verses off by heart and are tested to see if their memory verses are exactly word for word.

In October 2008 one of the Bible School teachers from Sweden (Pastor Ake Carlsson) came over to teach at a weekend conference on "Deliverance" and Pastor Jenny Stone (Oxford) came in January 2009 to teach a morning conference on the subject of "Prayer".

Last year May 2009 out of the 63 students who signed up 43 people graduated in a Spirit-filled service. Bishop Richard Trotman (TSM) came and gave a final challenge to the students as well as presenting students with their certificates. Due to the take up and success of Year I the graduating students requested that we continued with a year II, so we did.

The year II course includes 4 subjects:

The Life & Ministry of Jesus
The Blood Covenant
How to be led by the Holy Spirit
Evangelism

So as well as running the Year I course again we also concurrently ran the Year II course. The new intake for year I had 9 different churches represented, approximately 70% of the class were non - COGOP. In May 2010 students from both year I and II were able to graduate and celebrate together. We were delighted that over 60 students were able to graduate at our second graduation service. We are about to embark on our third year and students are still enrolling for both year I and II courses. We praise God for giving us the idea of this bible school and we are so glad that we obeyed his voice.