BLT!!!!

Yes, I am back from 5 days and 4 nights of the BLT camp! And if you were thinking it, no this was not a subway apprenticeship training camp on how to make the best sandwiches in the world. In fact, it was far from it. BLT is the Brisbane Leadership Training camp, and it is a camp that brings together christians from various local Chinese churches to learn how to lead and teach ourselves and others on the Christian Walk. It is about bringing up leaders within the churches so that Brisbane and Queensland, Australia and all of the world would hear of Jesus and what hope, grace and salvation we can find in him.

The camp was split into 5 strands for people at different years of attendance at BLT, and as this was my first year at BLT I was in Strand 1. We learnt about how to interpret a passage by asking questions about it, about things we might not understand at first glance. By asking these questions, and reading the neighbouring passages and the book in which it is contained, we can find out the context in which the passage speaks from. We learnt that there was 3 types of contexts, Literary, Historical, and Theological Context with theological context being split into two sub-categories, which are Biblical and Systematical theology. Knowing the style in which the passage is written and who the author and audience was influences the way it is written and how the words can be intepreted. Knowing the timeframes and events that were occuring at the time during which the passage was written helps interpret the meaning and purpose of the passage. Knowing how it fits into events of the book as well as how it fits into the rest of the bible allows us to know what the passage's role in the whole bible is. Knowing what topics and issues the passage covers allows us to understand what the passage says and how it links with other sections of the bible that also talk about similar topics. Knowing what the context is allows us then to pull apart the passage into its individual sections of text that flow together to express an idea or concept. Having done that, you will be able to understand exactly what the passage is trying to say, after which you can develop further understanding of the passage and how it is relevant to yourself and others and from there begin to teach others.

The passage that we were learning to do all this was Hebrews 12:18-25. And it was exceptionally hard, which makes me believe that it is a BLT tradition to choose the hardest possible passages for it's studies. Which in turn makes things easier when you read simpler passages or passages with more context. It was a really challenging camp that really expanded my knowledge and changed the way I read the bible. To know how the OT and the NT have such intricate links. It even resurfaced the thoughts I onced had about considering entering full-time ministry one day, and had heaps of questions answered to help me consider whether it was the thing for me.

But the greatest thing about this BLT was the men's and women's workshops in which the guys and the girls were seperated into different workshops to talk about the differences and all sorts of gender related stuff.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed BLT and hope that I can go to BLT+ and next year's BLT as well.