If spiritual growth and Bible understanding are values that you desire there is nothing to compare spending nine months at the Anchor House.
Let’s just do the simple math to demonstrate this fact.
Suppose that the average Christian attends church as well as a Bible Study each week which would, generously, in the terms of content, come to two hours per week.
Compare that to at least 18 hours of Biblical content per week at the Anchor House.
In round numbers it would take the average church goer 25 years to gather the teaching and wisdom that an Anchor House student gets in in nine months. (Not to mention that which comes from private Bible study)
What this means is that for a nine-month investment an Anchor House student is way ahead of the game in having the tools and understanding to think and act Biblically.
Why head into the secular world with a thin understanding of the faith we proclaim to follow? Why not go into the future full armed with a deep comprehension of what one believes and why they believe it?
We don’t think there is a better investment of a young person’s time than to join the crew of young men and women who are getting prepared to be world changers.
One of the wonderful opportunities for Anchor House students is to be able to rub shoulders with the various guest teachers who spend a week pouring out their wisdom. Our guest lecturers live in the Anchor House and eat meals with our students. Often we find students peppering the teachers with questions or joining them on the hunt for good coffee. In fact on the rare occasion when a guest is staying off campus it is not unusual for the invite to go out to join them in their digs (as they did recently with Keith and Debbie Hamilton)
In a few weeks we will be welcoming a new crew of students on board at the Anchor House and our team is busy preparing for another year of adventure, growth and service.
If you are reading this short blog and thinking to yourself that maybe you should jump in and be part of this adventure…there is still time as we have a handful of open spaces left.
And yes, it may be a last-minute decision that you sense God is prompting to you to make…but in that case, it may be one of the best last-minute decisions that you will ever make.
Just download the application and shoot it to us via email and we will hold one of those slots for you until you get the rest of the stuff to us.
We don’t have a marketing budget or promotional team. We don’t take out ads or run around the country banging our drum.
But via positive word of mouth from past students, friends who have come to visit and even our guest lecturers, it appears that we are now on the map for those looking to have a powerful, unique experience of being drenched in Scripture, challenged to think, be trained and exposed to new places and new people with whom you will do life together.
In other words, we are filling up fast for the 2024-25 school year.
So, wander through this website.
Find us on the map.
Watch our classes and Below Deck podcasts on You Tube.
And if you like what you see and want to come on board, please hurry…this next year is about to sail without you.
Learning the Bible is great! Plowing deep into theology, apologetics and philosophical issues can be fascinating. But none of this brain food makes a difference unless it is put to use.
That’s why at the Anchor House part of the experience is learning how to integrate what we are learning with practical service within and outside of the community of faith.
It starts by finding a slot of service that seems of interest to you.
Some our students find that working with children is their sweet spot. Others love the looney world of Middle School students or the emotional roller coaster ride of High Schoolers. Some find that their acumen in sports, technology or music is where they seem to flourish.
Whatever the area of ministry which fascinates them, the Anchor House our skilled mentors help students work out what God has worked in…which might mean you end up running the Magician’s Dinner at a camp for kids in grades 3-5.
Some of it comes from sitting under the teaching of a great thinker or communicator.
Some comes from our own desire to dig deeper, to explore and understand.
Some comes from getting our fingers burnt or toes stepped on.
And some of it comes simply in being in the close company of others.
Life at the Anchor House is a community affair. It is discovering others who have had uniquely different upbringings, who put little value on some of the things we may value and who shrug their shoulders at things we find exciting. It is laughing, weeping and rejoicing with others who only a few months previous were total strangers but now seem to be family.
It is learning how to interact with the guy who is a grouch before getting his morning breakfast and the girl who leaves her wet towels all over the place.
It is learning new songs or instruments, sharing new adventures and making lifelong friends.
It is developing a kneejerk reaction to pray for a struggling friend.
It is the joy of growing and learning how to be a better friend, believer and servant of Christs.
Join our band of brothers and sisters for an education that will change your life.
We don’t want to grow our discipleship training experience…at least numerically.
When was the last time you heard a discipleship training school say that? Well, not growing past 40 learners is part of the intentional design of the Anchor House.
Here are some of the reasons why.
We don’t want to have our crew lost in the crowd.
The Anchor has lots of training, but it is also a community, a family and a band of brothers and sisters. At a smaller number the relationships go deeper and richer.
We value that.
We want our crew to be useful and to get their hands dirty in ministry.
Because on top of daily studies, each Anchor House student is being mentored in an area of ministry which they chose, a smaller crew means that the experience has a high touch value that can only come when the apprentice is handed the tools of that particular ministry and invited to try it themselves.
We want to have wide arms and a small footprint.
Kauai is a small place. Things happen here mostly by relationship. With a mobile number of crewmates we can quickly build relational bridges with local residents while not becoming a massive mob when we show up at a local beach or at our local restaurant for a slice of Hula Pie.
We want our gang to have a chance to interact personally with our teaching staff.
The Anchor House pool of talented speakers and teachers covers the gamut. Got questions about the Bible and science? Where else would you get a chance to sit at the same lunch table with a renown Christian astrophysicist and personally ply them with questions. Where else could you find yourself playing your instrument next to one of the best-known worship leaders in the world or lounging in the sun and picking the brain of a brilliant author, inspiring thought leader or daring missionary?
That’s why 40 on board is the limit.
We hope you are one of them. We are filling up fast for the 24-25 school year. Pray about it and if God gives you the nudge, send in your application soon.
Whether you are considering a gap year, not quite sure exactly what you want to do at this stage in your life or simply eager to drink deep of Spiritual wisdom before you launch, we would invite you to consider a few reasons the Anchor House might be just what you are looking for.
1. The Opportunity For A Firm Foundation of Faith
The world is not a particularly friendly place for someone who wants to spend their life trudging behind Christ. There will be a lot of people who will contest your faith on many levels. A year at the Anchor House will give you the tools to offer well thought out and rational answers which are Biblical and intellectually sound to those who may challenge the integrity of what you have put your trust in.
You will hear from and spend time with some of the most respected and gifted men and women in today’s Christian world.
2. The Chance To Be A World Changer
The Anchor house is a place for those who want to put what they believe into action. It is a place that will give you the tools to handle the Word of God with confidence and stoke your imagination to explore what skills, gifts and abilities the Creator has built into you for the purpose of living out His love and life through you to help change the world.
3. To Have The Adventure Of A Lifetime
The location of the Anchor house on one of the most beautiful and varied places on earth will give you a chance to explore and experience wondrous things for the first time. From the marvels under the ocean to the breathtaking vistas of the Na Pali Coast or the Waimea Canyon, the jewels of God’s creation are right at your fingertips.
Layered on to the beauty of nature is the opportunity to experience new cultures, new food and a cadence of life unique to the islands.
4. To Make Amazing Friendships
The Anchor House is a small school experience with only 40 spots for students so making friends is easy and getting lost in the crowd next to impossible. Your fellow students will come from all walks of life and backgrounds and by getting to know them it will make your life richer.
5. You Will Come Home With The Ability To Be Useful
One of the unique things about being part of the Anchor House crew is that you will have personal mentoring, much like an internship in a specific area of ministry of your choosing led by local experts in that area of service. Wherever you end up in life you will have a resume of experience doing ministry that will help bless the community of faith that you are part of.
In 1992 I found myself huddled with my family in our dark, humid garage as a class 5 hurricane tore through our Kauai island home.
Photo of Rick Bundschuh, Director of Anchor House School of the Bible.
When the eye of the storm passed overhead we scurried out of our hiding place during those few minutes of calm to survey the damage.
Just up the block there was a home sitting atop of another. There was debris and wild destruction all around but mercifully no one was injured.
Except for a few scrapes, one home in the neighborhood seemed virtually untouched; it was the home made entirely of cinder block that even a monster hurricane couldn’t hope to move…and it became the refuge for many as the winds reappeared.
As a father, a veteran youth worker and a Pastor I often feel as if I am back in the swirling wind and banging sounds of a hurricane. Not a physical one that wants to tear apart a dwelling, but a cultural one that wants to tear apart the soul.
Those winds seem to blow the strongest against young men and women of college age who are still in the midst of constructing their lives and it seems as if the footings and materials which once would hold our young people firm in the faith have either collapsed or are in need of fortification.
Many of us sent our kids to Christian schools or colleges hoping that the foundation would be reinforced there. But to our dismay, we noticed even many of those places of influence are now being tattered as they try to hold fast to a Biblical worldview and more than a few have suffered fatal spiritual damage.
But this isn’t the first cultural hurricane that I’ve been through. I was in the fury of another cultural storm way back in the mid 1960s.
I came of age when the social fabric of those who had built successful lives after the second world war was being torn apart by their own children who now played around with drugs, free love and sang about world peace.
As Southern Californian surf kid I was in the epicenter of these changes and challenges but fortunately I became a Christian at the beginning of what is now christened as “the Jesus Movement” and while Woodstock was happening I somehow ended up at a one year Bible School (Capernwray) in the United Kingdom.
It was a pivotal moment for a young man still under construction.
There I rubbed shoulders with men and women who, unbeknownst to me, were among the brilliant lights and intellectual heavy hitters in the Christian world; F.F. Bruce, Dr. Alan Redpath, Stuart and Jill Briscoe, Major Ian Thomas, Corrie Ten Boom and others who helped add support and structure to my rather immature faith.
Thinking long and hard about the present torrent pounding against the Christian faith which we hope has been imprinted on our children, it seems to me as if we (both in a church context and a family context) need not to rail against the wind but offer a stronger defense to it by way of deep, polite, thoughtful conversations which are geared not to tell our young people what to think but rather help them learn how to think. We ought not hide in our basements but ignite the light that offers illumination of well thought out Biblical teaching and sound reasoning. We should stop wagging our fingers and start telling better stories paired with more authentic Christian lives if we want to melt the cultural storm and reinforce the hearts and minds of our young adults.
Rather than moan and wring our hands about the madness around us, our little church community decided to try and do something about it.
We would create a one-year experience of intense, challenging and adventurous Bible exploration to help add to the spiritual cement of young people before they launch in a career or head off to college. Each week we would bring to our school one of a huge variety of devout, brilliant Christian teachers and thinkers to imprint sound Biblical truth and intellectual reasoning into our students. We are calling it The Anchor House because it is meant to offer that which will hold fast during a storm.
The Anchor House opens in September of 2022 and will accommodate 40 students. For more information please go to http://www.anchorhousekauai.com
Anchor House Kauai 