With a grant from the Mellon Foundation of North Carolina, I started a 3-year program with just 6 international students. By the time the program ended in 2004, we had 10 members, of which 2 were selected to be co-tutors as we began PT2 (2004-2007).
One day, Stephen Choi wrote and asked about PT for CBC. We began with two preliminary courses, Project Philosophy (PP) in 2005 and Project Philosophical Theology (PPT) in 2006. Once we felt that the time was ripe, we began training for 22 PT Tutor candidates in 2007 and by Jan 2008, we were ready to launch PT-Asia with 9 tutors and almost 40 participants.
The
goal of PT is to serve as a devotional exercise in the disciple of
thinking things through as we read the Bible - so that we can boldly
proclaim the gospel with confidence borne of disciplined labors of the
mind. The goal is not to 'master' the Bible but to get a bird's
eye-view of the scriptures, recognize our biases and prejudices built
up over time, and rebuild a stronger foundation of our faith. There is
no competition with others.
PT is also an opportunity to learn about how the Word of God can be understood in engagement with the sciences, with archaeology, with economics, with other disciplines of human inquiry. We are in the process of establishing an Apologetics Resource Center (ARC) and a future PT Tutor Training Facility in New York. We also plan to organize study tours to Israel, Turkey and Syria.
How do I know if PT is right for me? If you feel you can achieve the same disciplined study of the Bible on your own, you do not need PT. But if PT can encourage you towards a sustained devotional study to complete the entire Bible in 3 years, investing about 60-90 minutes of your 24 hours a day, every day, then PT may be right for you. You enter into a theological safe space, where you are free to ask questions and examine your own process of reasoning as you learn the art and science of biblical interpretation.
How did the idea of PT in Australia begin? By 2005, ex-CBC members Patrick Lum Kok Hoong and Kooilan Richardson began to ask about ACT's ministries. A year after, the question arose about a possible PT-Australia. By 2007, we worked at offering a series of lectures as an ACT-Melbourne Conference, which took place from Feb. 27-Mar. 2 this year. The response to PT-Oz, as we call it, was very strong, and five churches are now committed to sponsoring PT in Melbourne. Training of tutors will start soon to prepare for a Jan. ‘09 launch. Inquiries from Sydney and Brisbane have been received also.
Our goal is to establish 12 major centers for a Global PT (New York, Buenos Aires, London or Paris, Cairo, Cape Town, Bangalore, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Melbourne/Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo, San Francisco). No deadline is set because it is a discipleship program - this means that the support of local Christian leadership is essential. Please pray for wisdom to know when to expand and when to cut back, and that we will find our security and significance in God's love for us. This means that our effort is not to gain God's favor, but because we already have God's favor, we are empowered to be generous in our vision for the gospel. We are currently raising funds to set up a fully interactive website to make this dream a reality. My associate in New York, Gene Yuan, is working on a web-based PT resource that anyone from anywhere in the world can draw from. If anyone is interested in helping us to finance this project, please contact me at actron@mac.com.
God bless,
Ron Choong
Project Timothy Class in Malaysia
Note: Those interested to join Project Timothy, please contact CBC Church Office for more information.