Blog

A SALTY Multi-Course Feast

Posted on April 8, 2021

Hungering for more training after completing the Three-Year Certificate Program at the "WP" site, our first cohort of graduates embarked on SALT's newly launched Two-Year Diploma Program last month. We bring you feedback from one enthusiastic student Sister Lam at the conclusion of the first course, Bible Study Skills 1 (BSS1): "For any church teacher or preacher, BSS1 is not only an important but a fundamental subject. For if you lack knowledge of the truth, how can you teach it to others? If there is insufficient "nourishment," how can the flock grow to be healthy? Thank God for...

Keeping Pace with the Times

Posted on March 4, 2021

How can SALT stay fresh and relevant at this 25-year milestone? Pray with us as we revamp a number of courses in response to the changing needs of believers in East Asia. In mid-December last year, many students asked us for training to improve their preaching skills. This got us thinking about revising SALT's decades-old course, Homiletics. Some 30 plus years ago, preachers would have only had a primary or middle school education. They had minimal Bible knowledge, with no training in preaching skills or Bible study skills for sermon preparation. In...

In Our Eyes

Posted on February 2, 2021

"Throughout the twists and turns of the recently completed Three-Year Certificate Program, God opened my eyes and bolstered my confidence. Witnessing the first graduation ceremony at the WP training site, and seeing the joy of more than 20 graduates, brought such excitement and gratitude to my heart that words cannot express. Overcome by emotion, I could barely see through my tears. There is still a long way for us to go, so I keep urging myself: in the future, I must prepare each lesson even better, so that the students can...

New Work in the New Year

Posted on January 5, 2021

We ring in the new year with praise to God for the graduation of 20 students from our Three-Year Certificate Program at the WP training site in December 2020. With plans to open up another four to five sites, we anticipate graduating a total of a hundred or so students in the next few years. We rejoice over these developments especially during a global pandemic! To our delight, a number of graduates at WP desired further training in order to become more well-rounded, stronger disciplers. These fresh SALT grads had already earned BS and/or MS Bible...

The Lord has led me on the Journey

Posted on December 4, 2020

It's claimed by some that evangelism in East Asia is headed for a cold winter, but how true is this? No-one knows for sure, but after hearing the heartening and humbling feedback from our lead-trainers in the field, we beg to differ! When asked if they would continue serving with SALT in the face of ever-challenging conditions including tight controls and diminished resources, our teachers responded with a resounding, "Yes!" Philip, a seasoned SALT trainer for over 20 years, declared: "There is no doubt I will continue to serve. Circumstances may worsen, the risks...

Shattered Expectations

Posted on November 5, 2020

Ah-Shen was not new to training programs. She had been to several before and had grown weary of them . . . dry content and of little practical use for ministry. She stayed away from SALT training in her area until a friend convinced her that this training was different. Certain that our Three-Year Teaching Certificate Program would be as disappointing as all the others, Ah-Shen attended Practical Church Management with great reluctance and skepticism. But, oh, was she in for a wonderful surprise! Immediately at the end of the last class, she rushed forward to catch...

Autumn Again

Posted on October 5, 2020

As the Chinese saying goes, "Time flies: another autumn is upon us." Looking back on 2020 thus far with all the unprecedented hardships, we give thanks to God because it is solely by His grace that our ministry has continued to make progress. The raging coronavirus and its resulting economic turmoil have forced many ministries to grind to a halt. Not unscathed, SALT's East Asia training was suspended for more than four months, reopening bit by bit at the end of May. During the first half of the year, we taught...

Encountering God in History

Posted on September 4, 2020

Testimony by KK History is treasured in both eastern and western cultures. A famous emperor once claimed: "The past can be used as a mirror to discern the future rise and fall of dynasties." Lord Byron the 19th century British poet similarly remarked: "The past is the best prophet of the future." While teaching for the first time with SALT, I indeed gained a deeper understanding of the present by learning about the past as I conducted the Church History course at a local church during the past two quarters. Prior to the 1980s, the...

NT100 Revamp

Posted on August 8, 2020

The idea was first floated more than a year ago. The closer we looked at it, the more problems we noticed. Following a teaching experiment reflecting changes in our newer courses, the enthusiastic responses of our students convinced us it was past time to refresh one of our most popular foundational courses, NT Survey, 100 Steps (NT100). Though it has served us well for over 20 years, it is clearly outdated and not meeting the expectations and higher education levels of both pastors and believers in East Asia. Unlike all our recent...

Best of Both

Posted on July 8, 2020

How do we keep the best of both worlds? How can we retain the favorable features of traditional classroom teaching within a new delivery format? That is the challenge before us now as we evaluate the video course we had designed in order to comply with social-distancing regulations due to the pandemic. From participant feedback on the Chinese Church History 1 video course that was taught at a local church last quarter, we discovered that almost all respondents appreciated the flexibility in terms of time and place: students could view the lessons at their convenience,...