November 02, 2017
Written by Dr. John Neihof
The big box stores are everywhere. Home goods, electronics, food, and clothing are hawked by these 21st-century titans of retail. Mass-production, uniformity, and efficiency are the precepts of the big box enterprise.
Dr. Neihof with a recent WBS graduate.
Contrast the big box retailer with the hand-crafter. Charlie makes hand-crafted furniture with dovetails and joinery of a bygone era. He takes his time. He crafts heirlooms of priceless beauty that will be passed down from one generation to the next. Beth makes quilts. Family fabrics representing romance, marriage, pregnancy, birth, grief and sorrow are pierced by needle and thread until the story they tell is one of beauty, recollection, and poignant wonder.
The big box versus the hand-crafter. Product versus keepsake. Consumer versus customer. Quantity versus quality.
We live in an age of big box education. Schools of all sorts operate online and on-campus. They churn out degrees with dizzying speed. All too often the Biblical and theological pursuits they purvey are a mile wide and a veneer deep. No handcraft. No fingerprints. No signed work. Just speed and volume.
Wesley Biblical Seminary is a place of hand-crafting people. If you come to Wesley Biblical Seminary, it will be because you have turned your back on the big box professional schools of ministry. In choosing WBS, you choose a seminary that will leave its imprint upon you.
Online or on-campus, at home or around the world, the faculty of Wesley Biblical Seminary embrace your formation as a disciple of Jesus Christ with a transformational passion. They will love you, care for you, challenge you, pray for you, grade you, and disciple you. And when you graduate, you will have made friends for life that will continue to pour into you for years to come.
Dr. Matt Friedeman, WBS professor of evangelism and discipleship, is in his 31st year at WBS. Each week Dr. Friedeman meets with former students, alumni of WBS. They study scripture, pray, challenge, encourage, motivate, and even grieve together. The handcrafting never stops.
At Wesley Biblical Seminary, you will not be an anonymous customer at a big box seminary. You will be a member of the family. The spiritual DNA is tightly wound in a shared passion to craft, be crafted, and to continue to craft other disciples. If you want a seminary that is hand-crafting disciples of Jesus Christ, who demonstrate the heirloom quality of His Gospel, you don’t want a big box seminary. You want Wesley Biblical Seminary.