"At Bethany, the Word is not just taught as information but revealed through impartation.
We welcome and encourage the Holy Spirit to move on our campus and in our classrooms.
- Jack Picataggi, President
We welcome and encourage the Holy Spirit to move on our campus and in our classrooms.
- Jack Picataggi, President
About Us
A School CREATED for GOD Bethany Bible Training Center, formerly Pinecrest Bible Training Center, is a school created for God. It was founded in 1968 as a place where God could come and accomplish the purposes of His heart, and, like Bethany in the Bible, our desire is to be a habitation for God—both individually and corporately as a school. A School SET APART Bethany is place to come apart to build a life foundation of devotion to God. A school where students can separate themselves to God to learn His voice, study His Word and seek His heart—to allow Him to prepare their lives as a habitation for Him. A School of THE SPIRIT Bethany is a “School of the Spirit,” where training is not limited to classes or chapels, but where students are called to unreservedly surrender every area of their lives to the Holy Spirit for His training and transformation. A School of THE BIBLE Our classes are intended to impart the life-changing truth of God’s Word so that the Word will “become flesh”—lived out—in students’ lives. A School of MINISTRY We believe ministry flows out of relationship with God; that our first call is to minister to God, and that as we seek to grow in intimacy with Him, His desires will become our own, and we can then minister from His heart to a hurting and broken world. |
Vision & Statement of Faith
VISION
When Bethany was founded in 1968 as Pinecrest Bible Training Center, the Lord clearly revealed that He desired a place where He could be Lord; where He could move as He pleased when and through whom He desired, and where He would be given the preeminence and His manifest presence would be welcomed and acknowledged.
Bethany is dedicated to preparing men and women for God’s purposes in these last days, to glorify Him and to make Him known. Our heart’s cry is that Bethany will be a place for the Lord, that He might have a place and a people who are completely His.
PURPOSE
• to exalt and magnify Jesus Christ
• to cultivate an atmosphere of the abiding presence of God by allowing the Lord to come and have His way in the
midst of His people
• to bring each student into a closer love relationship with Jesus; to encourage students to build a life of devotion to the Lord in
worship, prayer, and Bible study, and to emphasize the development of a vital relationship and walk with Him as the most
important aspect of life
• to develop sensitive and mature end-time leaders who can hear the voice of God and who have a vision of God’s purpose in the
church and in the earth today
WE BELIEVE:
That the Bible is the inspired Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
There is one true and living God revealed in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Man was created in the image of God, but as a result of sin, is lost and powerless to save himself.
The Lord Jesus Christ is eternal deity and is the virgin-born Son of God who died upon a cross to bear mankind’s afflictions and punishment for sin, who arose bodily from the dead and ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father, and who will return to earth in power and glory.
Sin is cleansed only through personal repentance and faith in the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
Personal salvation is the result of regeneration by the Holy Spirit who baptizes the believer into the body of Christ.
Believers are to be baptized in the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4, and there is a moving and working of the Spirit in lives in these last days.
Jesus Christ will personally return to this earth and establish His kingdom on earth.
History
Since 1968, Bethany Bible Training Center, formerly Pinecrest Bible Training Center, has welcomed students from across the United States and around the world to come apart to be transformed by God. Founder Wade Taylor served as Pinecrest’s first President until 1996, when he was succeeded by his son, Dr. Ronald Taylor. Dr. Richard Forde then served as President from 2001-2006. In 2006, Jack Picataggi, former teacher and Academic Dean, was installed as Bethany’s current President. His wife, Joanne, serves as Dean. God placed a burning desire in the Picataggi’s hearts to co-labor with the Holy Spirit to raise up a prophetic people for the last days. When Jack was a student at Pinecrest in the 1970’s, God spoke to Jack and Joanne separately that they would pioneer a school of the Spirit. Years later, Samuel Howells, son of intercessor Rees Howells of the Bible College of Wales, prophesied that they would become leaders of a school for end-time anointed ones. In 2010, the Board of Directors voted to change the school’s name from Pinecrest—the name originally given to a state-run tuberculosis sanatorium and later assumed by an earlier Bible school operating on the property—to Bethany Bible Training Center to reflect the school’s vision and the cry in God’s heart for intimacy with His people. Our vision is the same as when we opened in 1968: that the Lord could have a place where He could come and be Lord and to prepare students to live in intimate fellowship with Him. We have retained Pinecrest Bible Training Center, Inc. as our corporation name, and are operating with Bethany Bible Training Center as our assumed name. |