Welcome to Porterbrook Austin
Porterbrook Austin is a rich theological training program that helps Christians learn how to serve Jesus and his people better — whether they are church leaders, church planters, or simply Christians wanting to deepen their theological understanding and become more mission-focused. The programs are flexible and have been designed to be integrated with your whole Christian life in whatever context you’re serving.
At it’s core, Porterbrook Austin is a two-year church-based theological training program with a supported self-study structure with others who are training in a similar field, church or geographic affiliation. It is biblical, practical, relational, contextual, accessible, flexible and affordable. The supported self-study structure consists of a 9-week self-study schedule with quarterly seminars, online support and pairing you with a learning cohort team. Porterbrook is also designed to meet specific training needs that are less than the full two-year program. (Download a Sample of the Gospel Living course)
Who is it for?
Missionaries, church-planters, pastors, church leaders and all believers in Austin and Central Texas. Porterbrook Austin is ‘theology for everyone’.
Learning Philosophy
Let’s face it, we want to learn but where do we fit it in our schedule. Some of us are great at self-study and some of us, well, not so much. We believe the hybrid approach of a supported learning community is the solution. In this approach, your learning will be done through self-study that is supported by quarterly seminars (a Week 0 Intro to prepare you for success and Week 9 Seminar where we share teaching, learnings & presentations), a learning cohort team, and an online community that is walking through it together. We believe this structure helps students keep on track, apply their learning to their context, and learn from other students who are applying the material to their church and context. The full program requires 25-30 pages of reading and 5 hours of study each week.
Porterbrook Flexibility: Focus Tracks
The beauty of Porterbrook is its flexibility to adapt to what you are preparing for and need out of it, while giving you a deep, rich theological education. In addition to the full two-year program, Porterbrook Austin is also offering different equipping tracks for people who want some training but can’t do the full program for a variety of reasons. We can help if your interested in:
- Apologetics & Evangelism - Relational & pre-suppositional apologetics and the gospel message, messenger & community based approach
- Bible, Doctrine & Life - Theology applied to life
- Biblical/Pastoral Counseling - The biblical process of change
- Leading a Missional Community - How to start, lead & multiply missional communities
- Local Missions Renewal - Renewing how we do local missions
- Church Planting - Theology & context-sensitive community-based missional practice
For Churches and Christian Organizations in Greater Austin
Soma Austin Community Church is the local organizing church for Porterbrook Austin and we are using the program to train and equip our Group Leaders, for Deacon & Elder training, Church-Planter Training and in our Internships. If you are interested in partnering with us in training & equipping your leaders we could help you to create local church-based Learning Cohorts of your own. Partner with Porterbrook.
Pricing
For Church Planters, Pastors & Missionaries, fees for the full two-year program are $480 per year, which includes workbooks, and learning support through the online community & seminars with light drinks and snacks. Plus there will be additional training opportunities through meetings with current church planters and pastors in Austin. Yep that’s $960 for a full two-year theological & practice training program for church planting. Partial scholarships are available. Fees will be dividing among the three quarters and due 10 days prior to the course start date.
If you need financial assistance, please email us with the program your interested in and we will work out an affordable rate. It’s called Theology for Everyone so we will make it happen.
