Enterprising Rural Families: Making It Work

Enterprising Rural Families (ERFTM) is an international course for the rural family in business. ERFTM teaches a process of finding success, resilience and satisfaction for rural families engaged in enterprises; including agriculture. Instructors from the United States, Canada and Australia have teamed together to offer this course that focuses on the three main components of a family business: individuals, the family unit and the business enterprise. This course also allows families in business to increase their awareness of cultural differences and similarities and improve their understanding of global issues. The course consists of written presentations, online chat sessions, threaded discussions, readings, videos, case studies and individual projects. Using these mechanisms, the online interaction provides rural families with both the tools and skills to resolve immediate family business issues and build a profitable business for the future.Consumer/Household Economics, Farm Management,

Future Views of the Past: Models of the Development of the Early Church

Models of historiography often drive the theological understanding of persons and periods in Christian history. This article evaluates eight different models of the early church period and then suggests a model that is appropriate for use in a Seventh-day Adventist Seminary. The first three models evaluated are general views of the early church by Irenaeus of Lyon, Walter Bauer and Martin Luther. Models four through eight are views found within Seventh-day Adventism, though some of them are not unique to Adventism. The ninth model, proposed by the author, is expressed colloquially for the sake of simplicity and memorability: The good guys are the bad guys/The bad guys are the good guys. The lessons of history must be learned from actual people with their successes and failures. There was no golden age when exemplars thought and acted in perfect virtue. History was lived by very human people