{"id":250,"date":"2018-07-05T21:20:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T21:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?page_id=250"},"modified":"2018-07-08T19:43:37","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T19:43:37","slug":"handy-extra-learning-packs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?page_id=250","title":{"rendered":"Handy Extra Learning Packs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"dslc-theme-content\"><div id=\"dslc-theme-content-inner\"><span itemprop=\"description\"><p class=\"H1\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><span class=\"C-15\">HELPs &#8211; HANDY EXTRA LEARNING PACKS &#8211;<br \/>\nResources for Christian Education<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"H3\"><strong><span class=\"C-16\">Tunbridge Wells Baptist Church Learning Centre<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\"><span class=\"C-17\">During my years at Tunbridge Wells Baptist Church (1986-1991) I was privileged to be involved with Rev. Philip Gathercole in establishing their Learning Centre. This met for terms of eight weeks at a time for an hour before the morning service and offered a choice of three or four short courses of Christian Education. The subjects studied embraced Bible study, doctrine, ethics, church history and sociology as well as a number of courses based on Christian books or videos, and courses designed to train believers for Christian Service e.g. in preaching, counselling or teaching children and young people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\"><span class=\"C-17\">This time convinced me of the enormous value of such short courses using lecture and seminar styles to cover topics that are not easy to address in sermons or indeed in Home Groups. I am convinced that \u201cdialogue teaches the parts monologues can\u2019t teach\u201d. \u201cDisciple\u201d means \u201clearner\u201d and we must all be learners if we want to grow in our faith.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"H3\"><strong><span class=\"C-16\">Handy Extra Learning Packs (HELPs)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\"><span class=\"C-17\">From around 1989 the Christian Education Department of the Baptist Union of Great Britain was particularly interested in providing resources for Learning Centres and similar \u201cAll-Age Sunday Schools\u201d. The idea of Handy Extra Learning Packs (HELPs) was developed as a way of sharing courses already written conveniently and inexpensively with a wider audience. Each HELP would include a Leaders Guide and Participants notes for a particular course. In 1991 the Baptist Union published HELP 1 containing four courses written by Rev. Philip Gathercole and myself. Then financial constraints closed the Christian Education Department.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Normal\"><span class=\"C-17\">This corner of this website has a simple function to carry on the philosophy of HELPs. It offers into the public domain materials that I developed over the years particularly for the context of short courses for Christian education in small groups. If any parts of these materials are of any use to you, please copy them or adapt them freely for your own purposes. An acknowledgement of authorship would be appreciated (and please don\u2019t sell them as your work) and feedback by email is always welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<span><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\"><span itemprop=\"description\">HELPs &#8211; HANDY EXTRA LEARNING PACKS &#8211; Resources for Christian Education Tunbridge Wells Baptist Church Learning Centre During my years at Tunbridge Wells Baptist Church&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p btn-align-center\"><a class=\"blue zoom-btn\" href=\"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/?page_id=250\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/250\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}