Worldview at the Abbey: Apprehend, Apply, Articulate Your Faith

At Worldview at the Abbey, we have nine months of discipleship and academics with students. In that time, we want them to take away three primary objectives:

1.     To apprehend their faith. When commonly thinking of the word apprehend, one thinks of taking hold of or arresting, but it also means to comprehend or understand. We want both for our students.

We teach using the Socratic method, which means that the classroom is driven by dialogue rather than only by lectures. Because of this, students have to prepared ahead of class in order to do well academically, which teaches initiative and responsibility for their studies. 

But taking hold of education is not where we stop. We also use classical literature for our reading, and our curriculum constantly revolves around examining the foundations of the concepts being dealt with, the biblical understanding of the subject, and the consequences of those foundations on modern society. This allows students to better evaluate and understand the worldview behind the art, media, and classrooms of our culture. 

2.     To apply their faith. If students grow in academic and intellectual knowledge but miss out on the practical difference that makes in their lives, we consider ourselves to have failed. Our students participate in formulating their own evangelism tools, synthesizing their own biblically correct zoo and museum tours (courtesy of Bill Jack), and participate in numerous hands-on leadership practicums such as a camping trip, rafting trip, and high ropes course where the concepts they are learning in class have the opportunity to be acted on in a real-life scenario.

On top of these, we require students to have a certain number of community involvement hours per week. We call it community involvement very intentionally because we don’t want students to segregate doing evangelism and being in an everyday community, but rather to go into the community and make friends with people who may not be believers. Doing this allows them to put a face and name with a different Worldview than their own, which brings in the element of compassion to what they are learning. 

3.     To articulate their faith. In this present culture, our safe areas in Christianity are shrinking, and we will increasingly be viewed as bigoted, judgmental, and close-minded. The vision of the Abbey is to train up leaders who not only apply the Christian faith to their lives, but can speak eloquently, persuasively, and coherently on what Christianity is, and the practical consequences it has on our lives.

It is vital that we stand out ground on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, but can we articulate why we do so in such a way that communicates care and love for those around us? We believe that Christianity has consequences not only for the future life but for this present one, and we want to train leaders who can stand, lead, and give a consistent defense of their faith in truth and grace.

As 2 Corinthians 10 reminds us, we wage a war against ideas and lofty arguments that set themselves up against the truth of God, and the whomever it is in the next generation who can speak well and give an answer to the questions of society will lead the culture – and that is what we’re teaching and training students to do at Worldview Academy’s Bridge Year. That is our vision, and we hope you will consider us in your future.