The courses available from BEI are selected to provide a practical education for ministry.
It is recommended that the courses be taken sequentially.
Contact us to provide detailed information, if you have previously taken other ministerial courses or have ministerial experience, so that we can determine possible exemptions and develop a curriculum that applies to your requirements.
Tips to successfully complete your program
Believe that you can do it
- You may have been successful in school before or you may not have. Generally, the lack of success in school is not due to inabilities but lack of motivation. People who believe that they cannot do it are not motivated and fail. People who are motivated apply themselves and will succeed in school. Make sure you keep your motivation and don’t get discouraged for lack of self-discipline. If you follow these tips you will succeed.
- Pray before each session of study and count on the Lord’s help. If you want to work in the ministry, these courses will be very useful and give you a good background. This should be a good to start and will keep you motivated.
- In our approach, we have not placed importance on memorization but on understanding. If you can think, you can do it. Retention of information will take care of itself and you will remember what you need when you will use the material again in the future.
- Break you work in small sections. Focus on completing each section and you will not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of your task.
Failing to plan is planning to fail
- Set a schedule with day, time and a place for when and where to study. Use a calendar for this.
- Determine how many pages you can study per hour or at a seating and develop a detailed schedule with target dates. Indicate the page you will reach for each date.
- Plan short sessions of no more than one hour. You will learn more by studying regularly for short sessions. If you want to study longer than that, take at least 10 minute breaks.
- Keep track of your progress on your schedule. This will help you to see that you are progressing and keep you motivated. It will also show when you slip. Then it is time to revise your plan for a more realistic schedule. Do not over-schedule yourself. It will only produce negative results.
During your study time allow no distractions
- Unplug the phone and focus on what you are studying.
- As you read, work on the required Summary-Notes. It is a course requirement in the program because it helps you to keep focussed on what you are reading, and shows us your work and understanding on the topic you are studying. This will also greatly help you to remember what you study because you are using both your visual and kinesthetic memory, and you are immediately applying what you study in developing sentences. Finally, as you correct and review your summary you will again reinforce your learning process.
- It is more efficient if you enter your summary in a computer while you are studying. Enter the information quickly; you can clean up your grammar later as you review it.
- Once completed, you can send your summary by email to us. You can use MsWord (.doc), WordPerfect (.wpd) or generic format (.rtf).
Retention of the Learned Material
- The information in the courses in this curriculum has been selected for its practical application to the ministry. For this reason, to get the greatest benefit from the courses you are taking, you will want to retain what you have learned.
- Retention involves long-term memory, and it is easily achieved by reviewing the learned material at fixed time interval. You can do this by quickly going through the textbook and the summary you have produced. There have been studies to determine the most effective time intervals. You could schedule on a calendar to review the material studied after one week, then after one month, six months, one year, etc. This will lock the information in your memory. Reviews don’t need to take a long time but they can be extremely effective. When you review, ask yourself questions about the major headings and see what you can remember. Then check it up in the textbook and your summary.