WHAT IS A STUDY CENTER?

The study center will be a home or a group of homes located geographically close to one another (in a rural setting in the Nashville, TN area).

It will be a place in which both Christian and non-Christian guests from the area, region, country, and from all over the world can come to live for a time, ask questions, discuss issues, and study in a distinctively community/family based context.

The goal of the center will be to create a safe environment of unhurried (yet not unlimited) time where guests can feel free to ask and seek honest answers to any and all of their honest questions concerning life, the world, and God.

A normal day at the study center might look like:

8:00 – 9:30 am – Breakfast
9:30 – 11:00 am – Work/Study
11:00 – 11:30 am – Tea Time (Break)
11:30am – 1:00pm – Work/Study
1:00 – 3:00pm – Lunch (This is a formal meal followed by a formal discussion)
3:00 – 4:30 pm – Work/Study
4:30 – 5:00pm – Tea Time (Break)
5:00 – 6:30pm – Work/Study
6:30 – 8:00pm – Supper
8:00pm – Free Time/Lecture/Movie Night, etc.

Within this structure, guests will work for half of the day and study for the other half. This will allow them the time to study and struggle through their questions, as well as time to integrate the things they are learning within the context of the life of the community (i.e. physical work, dialogue, and reflection).

Guests will stay at the center for varying periods of time. Some will come for a night, others for a week, and still others for a whole session (usually two to three months).

During their stay, the guests will eat their meals together with the staff, work and do chores together, enter into deep discussion with one another, and struggle through their life questions together.

Also during their stay, the staff members will meet with the guests individually on a regular basis. The goal of these sessions will be to mentor the guests by helping them choose a course of study to pursue (philosophy, art, science, theology, film, etc.), and teaching them how to think about all the aspects of God’s creation through the lens of a Biblical world and life view. In this, the staff can begin to help their guests struggle through their greater questions of reality and God and integrate what they are learning into their lives. The goal will not be to provide quick and easy answers to their difficult questions. Instead, the goal will be to help our guests learn how to think and be discerning, ask good questions, care for others and God’s creation, live in community, share the gospel message with others, and bring every area of their lives under the liberating Lordship of Christ.

Furthermore, there will be a number of activities and programs that will flow out of the basic structure of the study center. There will be a library where people can interact with and study a wide variety of topics and subjects from nature and art to science and philosophy.

There will be regular lectures and discussions on wide varieties of topics (open to the wider community), in which we will bring in speakers from all over the country. There will be movie nights where people can learn how to watch and discerningly discuss the cultural questions and worldviews raised through the medium of film. Plus, there will be regular newsletters to provide the broader community with a window of insight into the ongoing life of the center. Yet, it is important to realize that these activities and programs will not be the focus of the ministry.

Again, the focus will be to create a safe environment where students can feel free to ask and seek honest answers to any and all of their honest questions concerning life, the world, and God. Moreover, the study center will not be an institution. It will be a home. Therefore, the context of the center will really be a group of people inviting others to enter into their homes and lives in order to model the love of Christ.

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