Highlights from a dynamic A3 faculty presentation
A3 is blessed with a pool of gifted faculty. These dedicated leaders volunteer their time to build into the lives of A3 participants in the twelve countries where the core A3 program and the new training for marketplace leaders takes place.
Dave Shive is one of those gifted faculty. A 44-year ministry veteran, Dave currently serves as a regional missions mobilizer for Frontier Ventures, formerly known as the U.S. Center for World Missions. He recently taught an A3 session in a country that, for security reasons, we won’t identify by name. Our A3 Liaison (who also prefers to remain anonymous) worked with Dave at this session. He was very impressed with Dave’s teaching, as you can read in these excerpts from the Liaison’s report:
"Dave does an excellent series on missions. He starts by telling the participants that the Bible is fundamentally God’s story—a story that begins before the earth and the heavens were created. Dave then asks the question: “What was God doing before he created the world?” He cites several Scripture texts that include phrases like before the world was created and before the foundations of the earth were laid. From there, he asks, ‘What do we learn here that God was doing when these texts appear in Scripture?’ What we see, Dave points out, is that in the eternal Godhead, love existed eternally between the triune members (Father, Son and Spirit) before anything was made. They shared a resplendent glory, a glory as of the only Divine God.
“The persons of the Trinity expressed a desire to create, to display this love and glory on a wider platform, not just for creatures to enjoy, but as a demonstration of the unfathomable wisdom of God. This reveals that dramatic purpose and intentionality existed in the Godhead before anything was created. God, the hero of this biblical story was a person with a journey, a mission, a purpose, a wisdom, a glory to be shared and enjoyed and validated even though it was clear to the godhead that the highest creation on earth, humankind, would fall into ruin.
“Having established the purposeful, journeying mindset of God, and having demonstrated that God's creative acts in Genesis 1-2 were a direct result of his pre-creation activities, Dave then goes into Genesis chapters 1-3 to show how the failure of Adam and Eve set humanity on a collision course with God which is entirely imprisoning. He then moves on unpack the three cycles found in Genesis chapters 3–11: The Fall, The Flood, and the Tower of Babel. These three cycles each involved a sin, a judgment, and a genealogy. Dave concentrates much of his teaching on these pre-creation and creation texts and the defilement cycles of Genesis 3-11 before he gets into Abraham's call in Genesis 12:1-3. It is a fearfully good revelation that our God is a God on mission long before Genesis 12.
“Dave uses PowerPoint slides in his presentation; our participants were taking photos of every slide with their mobile phones for future study. They loved Dave’s teaching—and I did too. Dave is a gifted Bible teacher.”
A3 is so grateful that gifted Bible teachers like Dave Shive are willing to pour themselves into the lives of leaders who are themselves pouring their lives into the service of God. Thank you, Dave. And a heartfelt thanks to all of our A3 faculty.
Noel Becchetti
VP for Leader Development
More Information
- A3 Faculty
- A3 Curriculum
- Frontier Ventures
- About Dave Shive
- Contact Dave Shive
- Unmissions.net - Pray, Mobilize, Engage. Differently
