TESTIMONIALS

A Word from Dick Woodward
Founder of the Mini Bible College Program
Given at the 7th Annual Faith Bible College Banquet

     The Rev. Dick Woodward presented a special message for our 7th Annual Faith Bible College Banquet. This was read by his son, Dean, pastor of Grace Bible Church, to the banquet attendees. The following is a transcript of Dick's message which he has given permission for us to duplicate.

     It gives me great joy to welcome you to this banquet tonight. I regret that I cannot be there with you in body, but be assured that I am very much with you in my spirit and in the Spirit that energizes your wonderful ministry.

     Hap Struthers, the co-founder of your ministry, was a professor when I was a freshman at the Christian University I attended in 1949. That means he is a whole lot older than I am --and I am a dinosaur! It also brings me joy to be represented tonight by my oldest biological son, who is also a great pastor. I have been mentoring him for 43 years.

     The most important man I met in my lifetime was John Dunlap, the founding pastor of the church in which you are meeting tonight, because he introduced me to Christ and mentored me in the ministry for thirty years. The second most important man I have met in my lifetime is a man named Dois Rosser. I welcome him and his wife Shirley tonight. God used Dois to make it possible for me to fulfill a magnificant obsession God gave me when I attended a Bible College in 1952. For two years I attended and then graduated from Biola Bible College [BIOLA University] where I had Dr. J. Vernon McGee as my Bible professor.

     When I heard Dr. McGee survey the Bible emphasizing the devotional and practical applications of the Word of God and the Word of God into people. Through meeting Dois, that vision had become what we call, "The Mini Bible College" or the miracle of getting the whole world into the whole Word of God in 24 languages in countries all over this world.

     I believe in Bible College education! They used to say that a Seminary degree made it possible for a man to receive a call to a church, but a Bible College education made it possible for the same man to keep that church.

     A man named Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse put Bible College education in perspective when he wrote that his degrees from great American and European universities were the showcase in which he exhibited the diamond he received when he attended Biola Bible College for two years. That diamond was the Word of God he was taught at Biola. Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators made similar statements regarding the impact the two years he attended Biola had on his life and ministry. It is not known by most people that Billy Graham attended a Bible College in Florida before he attended Wheaton Bible College. That is where Billy received the biblical education that God mightily blessed throughout the decades of his amazing ministry as the greatest evangelist in the world.

     I'm sharing this with you tonight to say that I believe in the ministry of Faith Bible College. I believe in what you are doing! You are not only a Bible College. You are making it possible for people to receive the kind of biblical education I received 52 years ago without leaving their jobs and moving their families to another location. I pray that Faith Bible College will impact lives with the Word of God the way the lives and ministries of people like Donald Barnhouse, Dawson Trotman, and Billy Graham were impacted and the world was impacted through them.

     May God richly bless the ministry of Faith Bible College.

Presented Thursday evening, March 4, 2004 at the Tabernacle Church of Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia. (Faith Bible College was founded by Drs. Hap Struthers and Kennard Brackney).