Brake Bible School

Brake Bible School
legal form	non-profit registered association
founding	1959 in Kalkar
founder	John Parschauer, Ernest Klassen and Heinz Weber
Seat	Lemgo
motto	Entrust what you have heard to loyal people. 2 Timothy 2.2
main emphasis	Theological training, mission
Action space	Over 2,000 graduates worldwide
people	Matthias Rüther (headmaster), Eduard Adam (headmaster)
Website	www.bibelschule-brake.de

The teaching building of the Bible School Brake

The Evangelical Bible School Brake eV in Lemgo - Brake offers practical theological training with a qualification recognized in the free church area. With around 150 students, 9 teachers and 13 other employees, it is one of the larger evangelically- oriented training institutions in the German-speaking area and had around 1,800 graduates in the first 50 years since its foundation and over 2,000 in 2013, in more than 65 countries operate worldwide.

education

The training at the Brake Bible School extends over three years and includes three longer internships. The main focus of the biblical- conservative lessons are:

Knowledge of the Bible - a comprehensive overview of all the books in the Bible
Christian way of life ("school of life")
Practice orientation
"Heart for Mission "

The Bible School focuses on three areas: knowledge, essence, world mission. The specialty of the study program is the interpretation of all biblical books during the three-year training.

No state-recognized qualifications can be acquired at the Brake Bible School. The degree is only recognized by the European Evangelical Accreditation Association as equivalent to a " Bachelor of Theology (Level B)". The students of the Bible School are entitled to apply for student BAföG .

The graduates work as children and youth missionaries, as community leaders and workers, as preachers and teachers, and as missionaries in around 60 countries around the world. The school is a member of the network m .

history

The school was founded in 1959 by John Parschauer, Ernest Klassen and Heinz Weber, initially in "Haus Horst" in Kalkar on the Lower Rhine as a Bible and mission school with 42 students. In 1962, due to the rapidly increasing number of pupils, the company moved to the newly built school building in Brake. The first school year began here in the autumn of 1962 with 70 students. In 1965 the Bible School made 100 boarding places available to its students.

At the end of the 1960s, the Bible School began to cooperate with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Evangelikaler Missions (AEM), the Conference of Biblical Training Centers (KBA) as its founding member and the umbrella organization netzwerk-m , which brought the Bible school to a wider level. In 1978 the previous headmaster John Parschauer handed over the management of the school to Doyle Klaassen. From the mid-1980s, international recognition of Bible school qualifications was sought through cooperation with the European Evangelical Accreditation Association (EEAV), which was achieved in 1995. At the same time, the influx of Russian Germans to Germany increased. Since some Russian-German teachers were employed at the Brake Bible School, the Bible School quickly developed into a training center for the Russian-German communities in Westphalia and Lower Saxony.

Since 1977 the magazine "Braker Kompass" has been published regularly with a wide range of information from everyday Bible school life. Today the info letter takes over this function.

The previous graduates are grouped together in the “Association of Former Brakers” and publish their own circular.

principal

1959–1978: John Parschauer
1978-2007: Doyle Klaassen
since April 29, 2007: Matthias Rüther

Murdered Bible students in Yemen and public discussion about missionary work

On June 13, 2009, two interns at the Brake Bible School in Yemen were reported missing. Two days later it was announced that both students had been murdered. The perpetrators are unknown. These events sparked a discussion in Germany about Christian missions, especially in Islamic countries. The news magazine " Frontal 21 " broadcast an article on September 4, 2009 with the topic: "Dying for Jesus - Missioning as an adventure". In the moderation of the contribution, the Christian mission was put on the same level as Islamist extremism. The EKD and the Christian Media Association (KEP) , among others, criticized the presentation of the contribution. ZDF director Schächter defended the contribution. It was "only about questionable advertising for missions and the dangers" that missionaries bring themselves and others into. There can be no question of equating “convinced Christians with Islamic terrorists or suicide bombers”. The ZDF television council later only reprimanded the moderation as “unsuccessful”. The members of the television council did not want to criticize the entire program. Two months later, the ARD magazine Panorama took up the dispute between Frontal 21 and the EKD.

literature

Stephan Holthaus : God is loyal - the history of the Brake Bible School , CLV , Bielefeld 1995, ISBN 978-3-89397-353-8 .
Stephan Holthaus: Doyle Klaassen: A life in service for God , iota publications, Hammerbrücke 2007, ISBN 978-3-935707-46-6 .