The church to which I was a member, Faith Baptist Church in Sellersville, PA (
www.faithatsellersville.org ) used to operate what was called Faith Baptist Bible Institute (FBBI).
It was a non-accredited educational ministry of the church that met maybe once or twice every weekday evening. Enrollment was strictly voluntary, plus each student had to pay for his copies of the course notes as well as other textbook-related materials.
I registered as a student from its fall term in 1969 until its spring term in 1972.
FBBI's theology track divided its courses into the main divisions of theology, e.g., Christology, Peumatology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology. It also had a separate course on Missions & Evangelism and one on Ethics.
While I was enrolled at FBBI, it also offered a four-term course in Church History as well as a two-term course entitled "Analysis of Romans," and another one-term course entitled "Separation & Contemporary Religious Thought." Finally, it offered a one-term course called "Seminar" for which each student was required to write a full-scale, documented term paper on some Bible-related subject that had to be approved by the class's instructor.
During that time frame, Faith Baptist Church was pastored by the late David C. Auckland (1933-2002). He was a graduate of Faith Theological Seminary, Elkins Park, PA.
He was a strong advocate of having a church congregation being as educated as they could be, and this was evident in his love of expository preaching in which he'd usually always preach on a different book or Bible character in his Sunday AM, Sunday PM, and Wednesday PM services.
Although it's been over 40 years since I was a member of Faith Baptist Church, I still remember some of those wonderful messages he preached.
The faculty of FBBI included pastor Auckland as well as some of the associate pastors and one or two deacons. Having graduated from a Bible College myself, most all the classes in which I was enrolled were at least as rigorous as the ones I had in Bible college.
That fact alone was quite helpful to me because I'd only been born-again for only six years prior to enrolling in Bible college. Had I not had the six terms at FBBI, there's no telling how I would have survived Bible college for very long.
Pastor David Auckland resigned his pastorate at Faith BC sometime in the mid to late 1980's due to physical health reasons. He then moved to the Watertown, WI, area to assume an instructorship position at what then was called Maranatha Baptist Bible College (The college changed its name from "College" to "University" a couple years ago.)
While at Maranatha, he pastored Fellowship BC in Watertown, WI. Due to increasing physical health issues, he resigned as Fellowship's pastor in 1989, & as an instructor at Maranatha in 1998.
When pastor Auckland left Faith BC his son Paul, who was already an associate pastor at Faith BC, assumed the senior pastorate.
Apparently, FBBI no longer exists. I suppose that pastoring a relatively large church for that area's population, as well as being president of Faith Christian Academy, tends to take a lot of work--even with a staff of seven associate pastors.
If you do want to find out about the now-defunct FBBI, I guess the best thing to do would be to e-mail Faith BC at
mail@faithatsellersville.org
Should you wish to pursue teaching systematic theology to a church congregation, one resource I recommend would be Paul P. Enns
The Moody Handbook of Theology that Moody Bible Institute publishes (ISBN 0-8024-3428-2).
