This week the blog has been sponsored by Bible Immersion. This post has been written by Jordan Standridge the Director, Foundry Bible Immersion Program.
If you could spend Ten weeks of your life focusing only on God and His word would you do it? Ten weeks to change your life and to deepen your love for Christ? You can at the Foundry Bible Immersion in Washington D.C.
After serving as a college Pastor over the last few years I know that most young people between the ages of 18-25 could really use a program like this. I sure did.
I can still remember waking up in the middle of the night crying uncontrollably so often during my senior year of high school.
I was severely depressed, confused in life and had no clue how to make things better. Sports had become an idol, my parents were separated and I was living as if the whole world revolved around me.
I knew, though, that the answers I was looking for were in God’s word. So, after graduating from high school, I decided that I would give up my soccer scholarship and take a gap-year to study the Bible.
There weren’t very many options available, at least not for a solid, biblical gap-year program. The only one I knew about was in Abruzzo, Italy. I had grown up in Italy as a missionary kid and spoke Italian, so that’s what I decided to do.
A week before the school started, I attended a conference that would prove to be life-changing. The speaker was a man named John Macarthur, and he preached about the sovereignty of God in a way I hadn’t heard before. It was exactly what I needed.
I began the Bible school the next week. The goal of the school was simple: ten weeks to prepare young Italians for the rest of their Christian lives. We read the entire Bible, did street evangelism and learned theology from various missionaries and pastors throughout Italy.
The program had an incredible effect on my life. I learned that God is absolutely sovereign, that He is the center of the universe, and that He deserves all the glory. Above all, I realized that God needed to take over my entire life.
After attending the Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles, California I was hired as the College Pastor at Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, VA. It wasn’t long before I realized that there simply weren’t that many gap-year programs available around the world. Thus, a crazy idea was born: why not start that same program here in America?
So that’s exactly what I did. God has used the Foundry Bible Immersion in amazing ways during its three-year existence. Dozens of students have gone through the program and grown deeper in their knowledge of and love for the Lord.
The program is simple: ten weeks of complete Bible Immersion. Students are hosted by godly families from our church, read through the entire Bible in ten weeks, and evangelize on local college campuses. Furthermore, students serve in the church and the community, have meals with the elders and pastors of Immanuel, and experience daily teaching and discipleship from our pastoral staff in a classroom setting.
We have had students from all over the world. Some students come after graduating high school in a gap-year before beginning college. Others take a break in the middle of college in order to come to our program. And others still have come after graduating from college and before joining the work-force. Anybody between 18-25 is welcome to apply.
Perhaps one of the greatest ways God grows our students is through the friendships they make during the program. This program attracts like-minded students and fosters relationships which will last a lifetime.
My life was changed through a program just like this, and I sincerely believe that dedicating ten weeks of your life to complete Bible Immersion could prepare you for the rest of your life.
Please consider joining us September 10 – November 16, 2018, for this year’s Foundry Bible Immersion Program!
