Throughout my training for the ministry, a number of friends and mentors who had served on foreign fields had recommended this Firm Foundations series put out by New Tribes as the clearest exposition of biblical fundamentals that money can buy and that I’d be hard pressed to find a better chronological study than it. By compacting the Word of God from Genesis to Acts 1 into fifty lessons, McIlwain succeeds in making the central message of the Bible crystal clear: that Jesus Christ, God’s promised Deliverer, successfully paid the sin penalty and opened  mankind’s pathway back to God. While the main texts for each lesson in this series come almost exclusively from just Genesis and Mark, the supporting texts come from the full counsel of God’s Word and are properly used throughout.

The 1991 edition that I used in my own context is certainly an outdated version, so perhaps the critiques I have against it have been fixed in later editions. My two main critiques deal with how the series failed in some ways to meet its stated purpose of being both contextualized and chronological. As published by New Tribes and as intended to lay a firm biblical foundation to unreached people groups, the series seemed to fail lesson-by-lesson by using illustrations carrying distinct Western flavors. Also, in supposedly being a chronological study of the Word, it failed almost immediately by dealing with Eve’s creation (Lesson 08) after the Fall (Lesson 07), not to mention the fact that it covered the Kings and Prophets in just one lesson before moving into the New Testament era. For these reasons, I was a bit disappointed with the lesson structures. Despite these drawbacks, however, I truly did love the series and am very glad that I used it in my own unique ministry.

My method of teaching through this course was to teach only the teachers and teaching assistants of four cell groups who would then go out and teach the lesson to their group members. I began each lesson with about 30 minutes of discussion about and prayer for each of the groups and their specific needs, then about one hour of a “Lesson for Teachers” where we would discuss the background knowledge a teacher must have before teaching this lesson (including potential questions that might creep up during their studies), and finally about 30 minutes of reading through the lesson itself. Before arriving, I expected each teacher and teaching assistant to have read through all the passages and class notes so that we could streamline our discussions and minimize unnecessary discussions, since their initial questions would already have been answered through their own study.

Because I had access only to this older edition, I had to work through the outdated conversation points, line by line, and essentially rewrite the whole book to fit my own context. Accordingly, I managed to condense the study down to 40 lessons that, in my opinion, emphasize the more important teaching points and remove the less important. I also removed many of McIlwain’s illustrations, as I noted, due to their outdated or Western feel. I now have forty lesson designed specifically for teachers in my context (translated no less!) and am very happy to have this available for future training sessions and for others who may need it.

The feedback I have gotten from my students after this first 40-week class have been extraordinary. While the central purpose of this study is to teach unbelievers about the Saving Plan of God, it’s also essential for “old believers” who have never worked through the implications of Old Testament history or the doctrines behind the salvation that they’ve enjoyed through faith. I found myself re-emphasizing the superiority of God’s Word, and I noticed a particularly strong growth in discernment among our class members, which has brought drastic changes to their lives. I can honestly thank this study for having matured the people this way, and I must admit that I too learned a great deal from the writing/editing/teaching process. Praise the Lord for that!

©2018 E.T.