This past week Missionary-pastors D. Kleyn and R.Smit once again held their 7M pastors' training classes in the Metro Manila area. Rev. Smit is teaching a class in OT exegesis and Rev.Kleyn began a class in catechetics (how to teach catechism to the youth of the church).
What made this time unique is that for the first time the missionaries used videos of one of our own Seminary courses - videos that had been made with this very purpose in mind. Rev.Kleyn used and will be using videos of Prof.B.Gritters course on Catechetics taught just last Fall (2014) in our Seminary. Some thirty lectures were saved on a flash drive and sent to our missionaries in the Philippines through Prof. (emeritus) D.Engelsma who was just there for a special conference.
This was exciting for both the missionaries and for the faculty here, as we have been taping other classes with this in mind (Dogmatics, church history, church polity, etc.). Both missionaries testified to the great value of this for themselves and for the pastors being trained there. One of them made this comment by way of email as a follow-up:
I've looked forward to what happened on Tuesday for a long time: having lectures of a complete course from our Seminary courses used in a pastor's training setting, like 7M. It was indeed a thrill to witness what I regard as no little accomplishment and a significant cooperation between our seminary and our mission work in the Philippines, addressing a concrete need.
We thank the Lord that this modern technology can be used in this way. May we continue to pray for God's blessing on this kind of cooperation between our Seminary and our mission labors in distant lands.
Rev.Kleyn also sent along a couple of pictures of the class, for which we thank him.