Overseas Council International: BethBC Represented in Egypt

The Overseas Council International held a conference in Egypt for all the theological seminaries in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region entitled, “Effective Online Theological Education.”

The Overseas Council is an interdenominational evangelical organization that equips Christian leaders by partnering with vital seminaries worldwide to advance God’s kingdom. Their latest conference was held in Egypt under the name “Effective Online Theological Education” with participants from nine different seminaries in the MENA region such as  Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria and Sudan. Bahjat Khader, BethBC’s Head of Online Diploma in Biblical Studies, and Gabriel Hanna, the Academic Dean Vice President, represented BethBC in the conference.

The conference discussed different topics such as insights into and strengths and weaknesses of online theological education in the MENA region, how to create a dynamic learning environment, and effective learning for local churches.

Bahjat Khader shared about our very own Online Biblical Studies Program. He shared about our strengths and weaknesses and how God is working through the program.

Bahjat was greatly impacted from the conference. He said that he, as a coordinator, learned how to develop our theological style and content, how to recruit students, how to deal with the surrounding environment, how to grow our own faculty to contribute more in the program, and how to evaluate our work and ministry.

Bahjat said: “Our online program is one of the best online theological education programs in the MENA region. Although it faces many challenges such as the need for more faculty members to teach and be part of the program, we also need to develop our registration program because for now we are still doing all the registration manually, and we need to reach out more to local students.”

Bahjat added: “The other seminaries were very surprised with how developed our program is. They loved the idea that we have our own production media team who makes very professional videos, and they also loved the way we follow up with our students so closely through WhatsApp every day.”

“The conference encouraged us a lot, knowing that we are on the right track. This gave us a push to go forward to take the program to better places. Now we have around 60 students in the online program that we are so proud of. Our future plans will be meeting face to face with them somewhere in Europe to encourage them and maybe have some workshops with them. Our next plan will be working on our accreditation and creating new ways of recruitment.”