Episode 010 – Let’s go to Bible College!

15 May 2021

Find this episode on your usual podcast player,  watch it on YouTube, or listen here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

 

T: Guess what B. It’s Saturday, and it’s Episode 10. And guess where we’re going to take these people today – in fact, you know.

B: I do know.

T: Where are we going?

B: We’re going to Bible College.

T: We’re going to Bible College! It’s time to waste years of your life! Let’s go to Bible College!

B: Come on board.

T: Yep, come on down to Bible College. Now, before we go to Bible College there’s a few things we want to point out, we have started negotiations, we’ve started conversations with others. We’re going to have guests on the show.

B: We are! Probably in the next few weeks. We can’t say exactly when, because we’ve still got to work out some timeframes, but we will be interviewing people. 

T: And one in particular, we’re going to have Anthony Venn Brown, former Great Big AOG – well not our Great Big AOG but A Great Big AOG pastor, who is now an advocate and ambassador for LGBTQI+ community around religion and other things as well.

B: Yes, and you may have remembered from maybe Episode 2 or 3, that Anthony came up. He used to preach against Star Wars.

T: And The Muppets.

B: The Muppets??

T: Did I mention that one?

B: No!

T: Yeah he actually said the Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog was a New Age ploy or tactic or whatever it was. So yep, the Muppets too.

B: Look, in fairness it possibly was, but that’s ok. That’s funny.

T: But he’s grown. Not Kermit, but Anthony Venn Brown, and so he’s quite an amazing guy so he’s going to come on and be interviewed. We’ve got some other people lined up as well, but we won’t mention them by name yet until we’ve secured the deal.

B: That’s right. It’s exciting times. 

T: One of the other things we wanted to ask people to do is remember to rate the podcast on your favourite platform and share the podcast. What we’d like you to do is if you’re involved in any Facebook groups or Reddit chats, or anything at all, post the link to our podcast in there and let people know that we exist, because we just want more people to listen because we’re narcissists.

B: Yes well, speak for yourself. 

T: Okay, and I’m a narcissist.

B: (laughs) no, we just want to share our journey. Maybe there is a bit of narcissism, who knows.

T: Possibly, but I also think it’s really good therapy. I mean, last week did my head in. 

B: Yeah, yeah, the therapy side of it – I was actually saying to my partner before I came tonight that it’s brought up more shit for me than it should have, or could have, or would have, or I could have even guessed.

T: Look, I really took over last week, so let’s start with you. Tell us all about your journey in Bible College, why you went and who was there.

B: Oh look, you had a right to take over last week, because it was about you.

T: Because it was called T leaves the Revival Centre.

B: That’s right, so in all fairness if it had been called B leaves the Revival Centre it wouldn’t have been true. 

T: And also, T leaves. 

B: Tea leaves! I like it.

T: Tell me about why you went to Bible College in the first place. Did you leave your job to go to Bible College, did you work part time?

B: Yes.

T: Okay, so tell me. It’s a big call right, to go study Jesus full time. It’s a big deal.

B: Absolutely, it was enormous, and it was a fairly significant financial sacrifice as well. I can’t remember how old I was to be honest, maybe 20-ish, maybe 21, so relatively new in the faith I guess, if you look at it that way. Actually no, I was about 22 or 23. 

T: Still relatively new to life.

B: Yes still relatively new to life. I went to one that was associated with a Great Big AOG.

T: It was run out of our Great Big AOG, wasn’t it.

B: It was. It was an annex. So it was a relatively new one. It was a bit of a hybrid model, they brought in quite a few different areas that they got teachers or preachers from, and it was quite eclectic. I’m sure we’ll compare as we go on through this episode, but for me the reason I went was it was the next step for me. I guess if I was to say I was groomed for that next step in leadership, that would probably be correct so I’ve said before that I was quite often recognised for leadership, people would say you should lead this or take this or that on, I quite often pushed back on it but I got to the point where I thought maybe this was the next step. There was a lot of professional pastors around our scene, they were people by and large that I looked up to.

T: They wore suits a lot too, didn’t they. Suits and ties.  

B: They were nice suits, too. 

T: Often, yes.

B: Yeah, some were a bit rubbish, but they were quite good, they were lovely people and quite often you would see their lives as successful, and that’s what I wanted. It was interesting, they all lived in the nice suburbs of the city.

T: I remember you said they lived in McMansions.

B: They did live in McMansions! They all looked the same.

T: You know what’s interesting as well, I think it shows the American influence that it’s Bible College. It’s not Bible University. I wish they would have called it that, because then I could have said to people I went to Bible University. We didn’t call it theological college, that was very British, instead it was Bible College.

B: That’s a good point. It probably suited that theatre of Pentecostalism. So for me it was something that I did. I gave up my job. I was a full time tradesperson so it was giving up secure, reasonably well paid work, and leaping – I was always told just jump off the cliff, have faith. And I did, and I got into debt.

(laughter)

B: It was all pay up front fees, in Australia at the time you couldn’t get HECs, which were Higher Education Contribution Scheme.

T: There was no Oz study?

B: Well it was interesting, we got Oz study, I think we were the first – maybe 93/94 I think it was. Definitely not 95, there was another timepoint in my life, something happened in 95 so I know it was before that.

T: Because you were at Bible College with my now ex-wife, who was then my girlfriend.

B: Yes, that’s right.

T: So I knew about this Bible College.

B: Yeah so look, it wasn’t huge. There was a few people that went part time but a lot of people went full time. There was maybe 15 or 20 that were full time, maybe another dozen or so that were part time. Most of the people we knew reasonably well. Most people were from Great Big AOG. There were a few people who came from the outside.

T: Lesser-known AOG.

B: Lesser-known AOG, and I think there was one or two not even from AOG, so it would have been quite confronting for them I would imagine. However, it was an AOG Bible College, but it wasn’t overly AOG because it had a bit of an eclectic mix of teachers there. Certainly there was a couple of them that were completely contrary to each other. There was one that was definitely in that space considered quite liberal and progressive.

T: But wasn’t really, was he?

B: But if you compared it, absolutely.

T: Relative to what was going on in Great Big AOG he was liberal and progressive, but outside of that he was like there’s no evolution, he was still hardcore. Looking back now.

B: Well looking back now, definitely, but he was quite controversial in that space. And I really took to him.

T: I think your whole cohort did, because I can remember my then girlfriend talking about what was going on when she came home, and you guys were all gushing about this one lecturer, this one teacher.

B: The bit that made it I guess feel and taste progressive was he wasn’t saying this is truth and this is not. What he was saying was this is truth, but you know, there’s another version of that truth. It was a little bit post modern in that there was definitely one definitive truth in that Jesus was God, Trinity, all that sort of stuff.

T: Salvation by faith, Reformation, yada yada.

B: But there was lots of other stuff around the way you could interpret the Bible. He talked about context of the Bible, something you didn’t usually hear because 

T: Because it was God’s word and you could take the verses out of context, doesn’t matter it’s still God’s word.

B: Absolutely. So he spoke a lot about context. There was another guy there who used to be a professional muso, he was another one of the teachers there and even though he was relatively conservative, his style allowed you to question and he would never shut you down.

T: Was he attending Great Big AOG, both these guys or were they from other churches?

B: One was attending Great Big AOG, one wasn’t. One had just come back into Great Big AOG after spending a lot of time in the Baptist space and other churches that weren’t Pentecostal, but had come back into the Pentecostal space and had grown up there in his faith in his earlier years. So I felt in that way I was fortunate that I was exposed to that, and I guess from what we’ve spoken about before, that was quite different from your experience.

T: Yes again, you tell this story that sounds really nice. I wish I had lived your life. Before Great Big AOG started their own Bible College, there was another Bible College which in our city was pretty much the AOG place that you went. It was in a less affluent suburb, so the clientele of the church that auspiced it and the people that went there – it was a different breed. This one was very much about here’s what other people say, and here’s the truth. We’re looking at salvation, here’s what this denomination says, and here’s the truth. Speaking in tongues, here’s what this group said, and here’s the truth. So we were definitely not given what sounds to me that you were given a little bit of flexibility around what you chose to believe, except on really nonessential issues. I mean other denominations would say this is essential, but things like Calvinism vs Armenianism, which is the idea of are you predestined to be saved, or do you have free will. We’d had debates around that and it was all very exciting, but the core tenets of AOG doctrine, nope. There was no presentation of opposing views other than, and here’s the wrong views. Things like, speaking in tongues – initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, there it is and here’s the wrong views. So it was very very different to that. We had subjects like Creation vs Evolution which I can tell you from the start, Creation wins that battle. We had people from Christian science – not Christian Scientists, but scientists that were Christian, coming in and telling us all about why as a scientist I completely reject evolution, creation is a true story. So mine was very different from yours, but I joined for different reasons. I joined Bible College because I wanted to know. That’s what it really came down to.

B: You were a seeker of the truth.

T: Very much so – and lucky I went there, because that’s where it was. But a thirst for knowledge, remembering I’d come out of the Revival Centre which had told me all this stuff to be true – I mean they were wrong so what is true. I went there to find that out. The whole idea of becoming a professional pastor and all that, that didn’t creep in until later. It certainly did creep in later, but that wasn’t my intention for going there. And so when you guys started going to that Bible College I was like ooh, wish I’d gone there, because it sounded like you guys were having a much better and free-er time.

B: Yeah, look if I was to say that you were allowed to pick your own truth, that wouldn’t be accurate. There was definitely a preferred truth you were steered towards, as a whole, for that Bible College.

T: So what would they be? Things like the divinity of Christ, trinity, salvation by faith.

B: All that sort of stuff. You had a whole subject on the Holy Spirit 

T: Of course you did, you’re Pentecostals

B: and speaking in tongues and all that sort of stuff, so they were non negotiables. I mean, you would hear quite often – not within the Bible College but within the scene – that if someone didn’t speak in tongues they just weren’t spiritual and didn’t have the Holy Spirit, which was just bizarre. Even back then I used to think that’s just weird.

T: I came from the Revival Centre. That wasn’t weird at all, that’s the way it was, brother.

B: Well, you know, you did have the truth. So I think there was definitely a truth, and it wasn’t that liberal space where you could walk away and go I will think and act completely differently, you had to be anchored.

T: Of course, and if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in there to be honest. So tell me what a day in Great Big AOG’s Bible College looked like. You’d arrive in the morning

B: It was a while ago.

T: Baptising? What would you do?

B: We’d start by preaching…

T: You did start by preaching!

B: We did – chapel. You were taking turns in chapel, and it was all about learning the craft. It wasn’t just about indoctrinating each other, it was about learning the craft of how do you lead praise and worship and …

T: Were you allowed to lead? Remember we talked about not being allowed to lead the slow songs?

B: No, we could do it, it was student lead.

T: Because it was a safe container.

B: That’s right, it was. So you would do that, someone would deliver a message, and again it was shared amongst the students.

T: You’re using Christianese – did you hear yourself? Someone would deliver a message. For our non Christian listeners, what do you mean?

B: They would preach.

T: From the bible.

B: It was about 15 minutes you were given, and it was to preach a message of hope and love and usually judgement.

T: Sounds about right – hope and love, and fucking condemnation.

B: Pretty much! It was, there was a lot of guilt. And there would be lots of classes broken up. A little bit like going to university

T: Except that you didn’t quite think for yourself. 

B: You didn’t think for yourself.

T: Not quite like university.

B: No, no that’s right. 

T: It was Bible College.

B: It wasn’t that independent. There was lots of different classes, there was also prayer meetings as part of the…

T: Oh really, you had practice prayer meetings?

B:  Yeah, I can’t even remember.

T: Pentecostal prayer meetings, you remember, they were loud affairs. None of this Anglican silence, mediative mystical shit. No, it was JESUS COME DOWN NOW.

B: And that wasn’t me. I remember getting pulled up a couple of times with people going are you actually leading this prayer meeting today? 

T: Because you weren’t loud enough.

B: I wasn’t loud enough.  A slight side note, I got involved in a church much later that actually used times of meditation and contemplation as their prayer, and I connected with that so much better. It was what was missing for me back then, but there’d be lots of that very structured – you felt like you were being immersed. Because ours was embedded within a church as an annex, we had a lot of access to the ministers who were on full time staff there, you’d have lunch with them, you’d play table tennis with them – they all loved table tennis.

T: That was the big thing they did at lunch time wasn’t it, they’d all come down. I would imagine if you didn’t – if you were one of those younger pastors and you didn’t play table tennis, I reckon that would be a career ending move.

B: Oh you’d probably go to hell, too. But to this day I have not played a couple of table tennis players better than some of those pastors.

T: They were really good were they? 

B: Oh they were brilliant.

T: They did nothing all day but play table tennis. It’s like working for Google.

B: That’s right! It was like an early Google when you think about it. They probably had slides into their offices.

T: What do you mean by early Google? You mean they know everything about you and control you with the information they…anyway.

B: I like that. How about you? A day in the life of yours?

T: Yeah, very similar, started off with chapel. We used to go four half days a week. Ours started off with no accreditation, then it got TAFE level, Tertiary and Further Education, and then later it got degree level. So when I started it was nothing. You used to have to pay $40 a week, and they let us go on a payment plan. So it’s funny you talk about ending up in debt and financial sacrifice – I had nothing, so it was never a financial sacrifice, and I lived by faith, brother. And largely that was mum paying the fees. That’s how I lived by faith.

B: Oh, is your mum’s name Faith.

T: Ironically of course, living by faith – dad had a job and was paying for everything, but that’s how I lived by faith. But we’d have chapel and the songs, you’d get on a roster and it was your turn to preach. It was a drag a lot of the time, to be honest. They’d get AOG and similar denomination people coming in, but largely it was AOG, whether lecturers or students, we were largely all AOG. But it was all those sort of satellite AOGs. Some of them were quite big, in fact the one that was auspicing this was comparable to Great Big AOG in terms of size. But people would come from all round, from overseas, from other AOGs outside of Australia. I remember I made really good friends with this guy from Kenya who was just hilarious, but he was involved with the Uniting church. He was Presbyterian back in his home country and came to the Uniting church, and the Uniting church for us was ooh they were super liberal, yet he was more fundamentalist than any of us, he was from Africa which as we know still to this day there’s a lot of harsh fundamentalism going on over there. But yes met some guys and girls from around the world, we had a library and it was great. I had a really good time some of the time, but when I started challenging, especially towards the end. By that time they’d got degree status, and I wanted my degree so I was hanging in there to the end so I could finish my degree – which by the way I don’t put on my Linked In page. It’s like I just don’t have an under grad as far as Linked In, even though I’ve got four post grad degrees. I just don’t mention it. 

B: Did you use some of the subjects for credits though, in your university degree? 

T: Um, no. but what I did was I ended up going to a secular university – you’re going to laugh at this, so much for not talking about it, I actually did a graduate diploma with a research component on the Revival Centre. So I took my Bible College background – when I applied I didn’t get in so I went and saw the lecturers and the student managers and explained to them what I wanted to do, and they let me in to this secular university, and they said we don’t want you to come in and just look for our rubber stamp on what you think you know, we want you to really research. So I did. Ironically, four years of Bible College pretty much came tumbling down in one year, because they made me do some subjects.

B: You were doing free thinking.

T: I was doing hermeneutics, church history, some other things, some sociology of religion and it was just like, oh, turns out this was all shit, and it all came tumbling down. 

B: See I got some credits from Bible College towards my secular degree.

T: What subjects did you get credits for in your secular degree? Angels and demons?

B: No I actually can’t remember.

T: Counselling?

B: We did anthropology as a subject as well.

T: Yeah, yours had a much higher level than ours. You didn’t do Creation vs Evolution. 

B: We didn’t. Some of ours were through the Australian College of Theology, which is Anglican based. So it was interesting, here were are, an AOG Bible College doing some Anglican Bible College subjects. That was different accreditation so yes it was two or three subjects I got credits for, so it wasn’t all wasted. But also for me it helped me because I wasn’t a great student in high school, it helped me set some positive patterns for studying as I went, I decided to go back to university in my 20s to qualify in the area I work in now. So it wasn’t wasted for me, and I wasn’t there as long as you, I was only there a bit over a year. I said I was going to take leave and was going to come back – I think I had intention to come back, but then I went and got married. 

T: I think what it did for me was it gave me a very strong valuing of the written word. 

B: Yep.

T: And I’d started – this is going to sound really cliché – but I’d started a love affair with books and study, and even though a lot of it was as the French would say, garbage, when I later on in my third year, I started visiting other Bible College libraries, and I started reading Luther and Calvin, and some of these reformers, which wasn’t on the syllabus. I started writing these papers and arguing stuff, and that was at the AOG bible college. I think too, in the same way you’re saying, it did good things for you, it did the same for me. It gave me that basic love books, love of reading, but also helped me to learn to write. So when I went to the secular university, I did ok because of my time there.

B: Did you fee when you were part of it that you were superior to others in the church you went to because you were studying this stuff full time and you were immersed in it?

T: To be honest, no, I think I thought it was a superior path, but that didn’t make me more superior. 

B: Yeah.

T: I thought people had different journeys, but I did think everyone should be on this path. That’s true, and anyone that wasn’t it was well what are you doing with your life. But it didn’t come back into a sort of I’m better than you because I go to bible college. What about you? Say yes.

B: No, similar to you, I felt like I was on the path I was meant to be on, because I needed to professionalise myself as a minister, but I think I probably felt more enlightened. I felt like I had access to more truth – I wasn’t just going to church on Sunday and youth group on the weekend, I was immersed in this stuff full time. But I think you also got treated differently by the full time pastors and leaders because you were at Bible College, there was a bit more entrusted in you.

T: Yeah you were like interns, or apprentices, you were seen like that weren’t you.

B: You were expected to soak it up like a sponge, the stuff that you had learned there, and practice it.

T: You know, some of the people I went to Bible College with, some of them have stayed in the AOG Pentecostal scene, and some haven’t. One in particular is doing his PhD at a secular university, after having done his law degree. Another person that I was hanging around with is now a magistrate in a state court in one of the states of Australia. That person did the same thing, the Bible College thing then went off and did other university degrees. So there was a lot of very smart people there, and there was a lot of people with a lot of potential. Without sounding too narcissistic, we’ve done ok too. We’ve stepped out and we’ve got decent careers, families. Ok, there’s some broken marriages in there.

B: There’s a divorce behind us, but that’s ok.

T: That’s another episode.

B: Yes I think it needs to be. 

T: We certainly took what they gave us at that point, but why did you stop? Because you didn’t finish.

B: No I didn’t finish. For me it was very much I didn’t like living in poverty.

T: See I didn’t mind because it was all I’d known for all these years.

B: I wasn’t a big fan of it, I was also getting married the next year – it had been suggested that many people had continued to go to Bible College while they got married and I said well I wasn’t prepared to do that so I’d take a year’s break.

T: How did that get received?

B: Not well, no.

T: Because that doesn’t show a lot of Pentecostal faith, brother.

B: No. And there’s plenty of other stories where I got judged for not having the Pentecostal faith, brother, I can tell you that. But it wasn’t received well, and for me it was probably the beginning of the end of leaving. Not leaving the whole church, I’ve spoken about this before, but going to another Baptist church where it was a very different scene and it definitely didn’t have that fundamentalist flavour, and I was heavily judged for that. But that probably happened six or eight months after I left the Bible College.

T: So leaving the Bible College was actually a first step out of Great Big AOG. 

B: Yeah it was. I don’t know if the two were that closely associated but maybe they were.

T: Were you married by then?

B: By the time I left?

T: Left Great Big AOG.

B: I left around the same time, yeah. Maybe we left just after we got married actually.

T: Yes because the pastor of Great Big AOG married you. Or one of the pastors.

B: So I think we rode that out, we knew we were on the way out, we’d been looking at other places – I think we even went to other places with you at that time.

T: Oh really?

B: Yes.

T: But that’s because you were a spiritual oncer and a pew warmer.

B: I was conflicted in a lot I was doing, in leaving too, because I was oh you can’t leave. And I’d spoken to people – there was a few people I’d said look it’s just not sitting with me well. There wasn’t many people that really received that well, but there were some, some had already moved on and gone, it wasn’t leaving a cult like you leaving the Revival Centre but for me it was leaving and trying to find somewhere that I fit, that I wasn’t being told what I had to do, who I had to be, because as much as I did do that for a while, and accepted it and tried to be steered along, it just didn’t sit well with me.

T: See, I graduated from Bible College with a degree, but they actually accelerated me because it was a three year programme and I’d been there for four years. I’d come and go, I’d do a subject then I’d disappear for a while, then I’d come back and do three subjects, that kind of thing. So they actually accelerated my programme in the end. It’s not that they cut corners but they just hurried me out of there. By that stage I was getting quite bitter about the whole AOG experience, because by the time I’d left the Bible College I had already left Great Big AOG and was attending Baptist Churches, Churches of Christ, and was starting to dabble in what I call the evangelical left in the city where we were, so it was very much a focus on the poor and a focus on acceptance and being authentic, yet at the same time very much authentically evangelical. 

B: Yes.

T: Still salvation by faith, all the things the Pentecostals were about too, just not so much about tongues and loud music.

B: you were on your way out.

T: Oh totally. That’s why I listened to Oasis. 

B: That’s right, yes.  

T: Have you heard that album? It’s a good album. 

B: It’s a fantastic album. Well, here we are, at the end again.

T: At the end of Bible College! That went so much quicker that time.

B: That was accelerated more than your course.

T: It was indeed. Hope you enjoyed it.

B: Yes, we left out lots of details obviously, there’s lots more stories in there. I don’t remember all of them. I don’t think I was traumatised by it, but I think my memory is getting quite ordinary to be honest. But after we talk about some of these things I go home and think I should have said this and that, and I remember this, it prompts me.

T: We’ll just record it again another day. We’ll just record a part 2. No to be honest I don’t think I want to. Fuck Bible College.

B: Nah, we’re done. We’ve left, we graduated and I just threw my cap in the air.

T: I didn’t go to university to talk about fucking Bible College. All right, very good B, that was lovely.

B: It was good. That rounds out Episode 10. What a lovely round number.

T: So please share this. Don’t forget to throw it on your social media groups and all that kind of thing. Get it out, that’d be great.

B: Get it out there. See you next week.

T: Ciao everyone.