Students don’t seem to mind doing homework for Linda Himes’ Precept Bible study classes.
Linda, now retired territorial Christian education director, has taught the class every week for 22 years at Central Territorial Headquarters (THQ).
“Students do their homework because they find they are digging into the treasure of Scripture,” Linda said. “Once they get into it, they can’t stop. Just about every week someone in class has that moment where they say, ‘This is amazing!’ That ‘spark’ is why I am still teaching.”
Her students are Salvationists, both soldiers and officers, but also employees and others. Classes average about 25 students per week. Linda teaches in-person for most of the year, but from January through March, while she and her husband, well-known musician William Himes, reside in Florida, she uses Zoom.
“Zoom allows me to go wherever I need to go. I don’t have to miss a class,” she said.
Classes are held at noon on Wednesdays in the THQ boardroom but because of technology now incorporate people throughout the nation, indeed the world.
The expansion correlates with Acts 1:8.
“While studying the book of Acts, we keep coming back to Acts 1:8 that says, ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ We have seen this class mirror that verse, as we started at THQ and moved into our local neighborhoods, to surrounding states and now to other countries. Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.”
The Precept method of study is designed to slow down readers so they can observe more of what the Bible says, Linda explained. Students use symbols and colors to mark pages, looking for things like names, repetitive words or spans of time.
They look at the “who, what, when, where and why” and apply it to Scripture. “Precept allows you to look more deeply at text,” Linda said. “And then you want to keep going. It’s not just reading anymore. Students will say, “Oh, I never saw that before.’”
Linda was introduced to The Salvation Army as a teenager by one of her high school teachers. By her early 20s, she was living in the Detroit area and teaching Sunday school at the Dearborn Heights Citadel, Mich., Corps.
“I liked my church family. I felt like I had a home,” she said. “But I knew there was something missing. I was unsettled.”
After attending Central Bible Leadership Institute (CBLI) in 1984, she had a revelation.
“From that moment my life changed,” Linda recalled. “Once I was saved, I developed a hunger for the Word. When I read it, it was alive. I wanted more and more.”
Back then she began a Bible study for teens in the home of David and Darlene Harvey (now lt. colonels), when David was the youth director at the Dearborn Heights Corps.
Linda was going through a spiritual struggle though, wondering if she should become an officer, when she met Kay Arthur, the founder of Precept, at a Sunday school conference.
“I told Kay, ‘When I hear you teach, it makes me want to study,’” Linda recalled.
Kay suggested that Linda work for Precept Ministries.
And two years later, in the late 1980s, Linda found herself working at Precept Ministries in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“There, they taught me how to do inductive Bible study and how to lead people,” she said. “But my heart was with The Salvation Army. My calling was with the Army.”
An invitation from Lt. Colonel Clarence Harvey, then Eastern Michigan divisional commander, brought Linda back to the Army and back to Detroit as Christian education director.
“I saw God opening a door. Now I had a platform and a ministry,” Linda said.
In the early 1990s, she became Christian education director at THQ.
“God continued to open doors for me,” she said. “I had promised Him when I moved from Tennessee, ‘If You open a door, God, I will go through it.’ I have watched Him opening doors all of these years. I have never had to call anyone.”
Linda feels that teaching is her mission.
“I know without a doubt that God has called me to teach,” she said. “I feel it is an honor, a privilege and a responsibility. I take it very seriously. I have told Him I will stay on this path. It gives me joy, helping my students see truth, make connections and get those ‘Ah-ha’ moments.”
