Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana, announces that its popular online pre-seminary Greek course will now be offered in a more flexible way so that students can study at their own pace and according to their own schedule.  The seminary began to make pre-seminary Biblical Greek available online in September 2008.  Previously the students registered for the three quarter program of studies according to the schedule of classes on campus, Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters.  Now students can begin their studies at any time by simply registering for the course.  They then have up to 120 days to complete each level of the course. Upon successful completion of the three levels, the students will have met the Biblical Greek requirements for entry into the seminary.

“Allowing students to begin their course of studies at any time will make it even more accessible for a greater number of people interested in learning to read the New Testament in the original Greek, especially if they are interested in coming to the seminary eventually,” said Dr. Douglas Rutt, dean for distance learning.

The Biblical Greek course is taught by Dr. John Nordling, eminently qualified as a professor of Greek.  Besides his seminary training, he has achieved a Master of Arts from Washington University, St. Louis, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  Dr. Nordling taught in the Department of Foreign Languages at Valparaiso University and the Department of Classics at Baylor University before coming to Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, in 2006. Rev. Mark Braden, former Greek instructor at the seminary, is the course tutor, who personally assists each student with questions, further explanation, grades quizzes and tests, and monitors progress through e-mail, the Internet and the phone.

“The response has been really incredible,”  commented Rev. William Johnson, who was responsible for preparing the course for online teaching.  “We’ve seen students who have invested the time in the course consistently doing well on the same benchmarks we use for our residential Greek students.”

Dr. Lawrence Rast, academic dean at the Fort Wayne seminary, observed: “Our purpose at Concordia Theological Seminary is to support the church by forming servants in Jesus Christ.  We are developing new approaches to accomplish that mission.  We hope that offering Biblical Greek online in this flexible way will make it possible for more people to identify and make use of their talents and gifts for serving in God’s kingdom as pastors and missionaries.”

The course is open to anyone, men and women, who have adequate academic preparation to do the course work and are planning on or considering church work, or who simply want to learn the read the New Testament in its original language.

An online demonstration is available at www.ctsfw.edu/greekdemo.  For more information contact Rev. William Johnson at (260) 452-3202 or william.johnson@ctsfw.edu.  To inquire about registering for the course contact Mrs. Barbara Wegman at (260) 452-2153 or registrar@ctsfw.edu.