About the Institute

Our Purpose

The purpose of the Study To Serve Institute is to:

  • teach believers to love God’s Word as found in the Scriptures,
  • equip believers to ‘rightly divide the Word of Truth’
  • equip believers with tools to adequately and wisely study and understand the Scriptures,
  • enable believers to return to the basic tenets of the Scriptures,
  • present the simple truth of the Scriptures,
  • separate the truth of Scripture from 2 000 years of church tradition,
  • encourage believers to love Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind and strength,
  • challenge believers to love their neighbour as themselves.

We live in times where the gospel has lost a great deal of its power, where the church has lost its focus in the community. We live in times where many say that the church has become irrelevant, and we now live in a postchristian era! Now, whatever we may think about these statements, it is a given fact that the gospel will NEVER lose its power. Perhaps what we need is to take a step back and take stock of who Jesus actually is, what He has called us as believers to do in this world, and then to follow HIM!

Our Desire for You

1. Simple Faith

In this 21st century, we live with 2 000 years of church tradition that seeks to dictate how and what we must believe about God and the church. Hundreds of denominations and branches of the church all promote their own particular brand of the truth of God. We are faced with the overwhelming and impossible task of trying to decide:

Just Who Is Correct? Who Holds the Truth?

The natural desire of man is to institutionalize everything, with the result that most church groupings – whether Evangelical, Liberal, Catholic, Pentecostal or Charismatic – have often turned the Gospel into a set of‘ requirements for freedom’, rules for grace’, ‘principles for life’, and in fact have just succeeded in trapping Christians in a whirlpool of Legalism and Phariseeism or, sadly in recent years, Subjective Experientialism and Christianised humanism.

Many Christians simply want to live their lives honouring God, making a difference in their community, and enjoying the promised blessing that is theirs in God, but in the local church feel as if they have become bound by all of the regulations, expectations and requirements expected of them. Their reaction to this? Leave the church! Sadly, with no other viable alternatives, this move often means that many also leave their relationship with God behind.

Here at the Study To Serve Institute we believe in Simple Faith! We believe that, if all of the traditions, rules and requirements of the modern church movement are stripped away, and we simply return to Scripture and learn to live as Jesus taught, then our lives can be blessed and victorious, just as Jesus promised.

2. Simple Ministry

We also desire to help you learn how to assist others to love Jesus as well. Once again, in Jesus’ own words, our mandate is to ‘Go and make disciples of all nations…’ (Matthew 28:19 – part of the Great Commission). The problem faced by countless Christians today is that they are introduced to Jesus, but are never discipled! As soon as they show any interest in local church ministry and involvement, they are thrown head first into ministry, frequently without any effective training, and most often without any discipleship or ‘spiritual maturity’ training and mentoring.

We believe that it is only as we grow in the faith and in our love of Jesus that we are then equipped andempowered by Him (through the Power of His Holy Spirit living in us) to do the works of ministry! Once again,we believe that this process of maturing and seeking His face and will for our lives leads to Simple Ministry!

We are all called to full – time service! However, our understanding of full – time calling is immensely different from any traditional understanding of service. We believe that your full – time calling may be as an accountant, a plumber, a housewife, a sales executive, or to whatever calling God has equipped and gifted you with. In that gifting, all that God desires is that you live for Him, and, as Jesus has loved and accepted you, so you, too, must love and accept those you meet and interact with. All of this is possible simply by learning to love others as Jesus has loved you!

Our ministry material seeks to equip and empower you to show others the love that Jesus has shown you, to ‘…prepare you for works of service …’ (Ephesians 4:12). We in no way seek to advocate that you leave your local church! We believe that God is active and continues to bless and work through the local church. However, we do challenge you to ‘strip away the baggage’ and seek a relationship with the true Saviour as He is revealed in Scripture.

Note!

The Institute stands firmly on the relevance and importance of God’s written Word – as found in the Scriptures that we call the Bible – to be God’s full and final word to us in all matters of life and godliness. We reject the spurious notion of a so-called ‘new move of God’ as taught by the recent ‘apostles and prophets’ movement, sometimes referred to as the NAR, together with their multitude of false teaching regarding the necessity of signs and wonders, inner healing, deliverance, so-called prophetic words, and numerous other false teachings and doctrines attached to this false ideology that masquerades as Christian faith!