Open Learning: An opportunity for development

Major Emma Knights (William Booth College) talks to Salvationist about the courses that are helping people grow and develop.

What is Open Learning?

Open Learning is the name for The Salvation Army’s correspondence courses. We offer dozens of full distance-learning courses at starter, foundation and award level, as well as bitesize courses for people wanting to try something and see if they like it. The courses are suitable for anyone aged 18 and over and cover all sorts of topics. They’ve been written by active and retired officers with decades of experience, and there are no deadlines, so you can work at your own pace.

How is Open Learning helping people?

The courses are great for employed spiritual leaders wanting to develop themselves. Other corps members are also using our preaching, leading worship and pastoral care foundation courses to help keep their corps going while they’re unofficered, and it’s been suggested that these could be used to follow on from Growing Leaders. One thing about all our courses is that there’s always a space that asks how the course is relevant to you.

So these courses could help people further their ministry?

Yes! Out of the 13 cadets who started training at William Booth College this year, 8 studied with Open Learning first. It’s really lovely to see the progression that’s possible.

Are all the courses related to ministry and leadership?

No, we also have courses that offer in-depth looks at Bible topics. For example, we have a new course on the Book of Revelation, which is written by a real expert. We recently introduced a couple of new courses too. One of them looks at human worth and another looks at grief and bereavement, which is a more reflective study. We try to see where the need is and what demands need to be met at a corps level.

What course would you recommend everyone take?

I really recommend the Is This Your Life? course. It’s a chance to have a look at the stories of Abraham, Moses, Hannah, Elijah and Jonah and challenge yourself on how you read and apply these stories to your life.

I also recommend Women in the Story of God’s People, because some of us shy away from topics like this. The course looks at Eve, Hagar, Ruth, Mary, Martha and – somebody people often skip over – Dorcas.

We’ve just introduced An Introduction to Christian Spiritual Formation, which I would also recommend. It looks at how you’re developing your spiritual life. What does this look like for you? What does the Bible say about it? What might help you as you develop your spiritual life?

Do you have a personal favourite course?

My favourite course is Exploring Christian Heritage. It looks at people who have had an influence on Christian life throughout the ages – the English Mystics, the Beguines, Julian of Norwich, Evelyn Underhill – and some of the monastic traditions we can learn from today. I’m a Julian geek!