Introduction
The purpose of this Old Testament overview course is to help students to learn to faithfully read and apply the Old Testament in their lives, church communities and local contexts. The goal is that they understand its place in the narrative of the whole Bible, how it testifies to Jesus and its place in God’s mission through his people throughout history.
Three objectives: Knowing, Being and Doing
Because we are committed to training believers in faithful and fruitful ministry in our context of the world, we have designed the teaching and learning in all the chapters with the purpose of facilitating growth and maturity in three areas; knowing, being and doing in Christ. We have called these Content and Cognitive Competencies (the knowing), Character and Spiritual Maturity (the being) and Mission & Ministry Competencies (the doing). The teaching and learning activities and the assessments are shaped by the goal of seeing progress in all three areas. This might be different to some courses that the student has completed in the past, which may have put most of the emphasis on learning and reproducing content. While it is important to learn what the Old Testament teaches and ideally read through all of it throughout the duration of this course, the most important thing is that the believer actually grows and bears fruit for the glory of Christ in this part of the world. Although these three goals overlap continually, we have deliberately indicated next to the learning activity or task which goal we have designed the task for.