CARONPORT — Students from Caronport’s Briercrest College and Seminary are preparing for a journey that blends language, culture, and calling, as they take part in the school’s first-ever semester-long Greek intensive program in Cyprus — designed to deepen their understanding of Scripture by encountering it in its original tongue.
Dr. Wes Olmstead, Henry Hildebrand Professor of the New Testament at Briercrest College, emphasized the significance of learning in a Greek-speaking environment.
"One of the non-negotiables as we began to plan this venture was that it be situated in a Greek-speaking context... to ensure that our students will have consistent interaction with native speakers in the early stages of their language learning," he said.
The program offers 15 academic credits across five courses running from September to December. Students can expect a structured and immersive routine blending classroom learning with real-world cultural engagement designed to build linguistic fluency and interpretive skill.
Throughout the week, students will share meals with their hosts — a couple who operates a small hotel in the Cypriot mountainside described by Olmstead as “our informal instructors.”
While weekdays are devoted to study, weekends will offer a well-earned break from the program’s academic rigour. Students will have an opportunity to witness the natural beauty of the Mediterranean, and will visit Roman-era ruins, monasteries, and Byzantine churches adorned with frescoes and scriptural inscriptions, Olmstead explained.
"Our students will read texts that are separated by hundreds of years and emerging from various contexts, which means that they will naturally come to see Greek as a continuous language and come to appreciate both its strong continuity and its historical development.”
In particular, students will read, hear, speak, and receive the Gospel of John in its original Greek.
“Being uprooted from contexts that are familiar to us often helps prepare us to think about the world differently,” Olmstead said, noting that students will be able to study unencumbered by the need to break down passages or memorize long vocabulary lists.
“While we can of course read the Bible with profit in our own language, it is a beautiful gift to be able to encounter these texts in the language in which they were written.”
As the semester unfolds, the hope is that students will return not only with stronger language skills, but with a deeper sense of personal, intellectual, and spiritual growth shaped by their time abroad.
“We think that this semester in Cyprus will be significant for our students in all sorts of ways, some of which we probably can’t anticipate,” he said. “But we do expect it to be formative for them: personally, as they face the most intense academic challenge they have encountered yet and learn to draw on resources they don’t yet know they have; intellectually, helping them mature toward being wise readers of the Scriptures; relationally, as they live and work in close quarters with each other and have regular encounters with Cypriot villagers; and spiritually, as they begin to read scriptural as well as classical texts in the language in which they were written and as they encounter resources for worship from the ancient Church.”
While Briercrest College has previously offered short-term study trips to destinations including Israel, Turkey, and Greece, this marks its first semester-length study-abroad program led by its faculty.
“I’m confident that there will be much for us to learn from Christians, and the long Christian tradition, in Cyprus,” Olmstead concluded.
To learn more about Briercrest College and Seminary, visit Briercrest.ca.
