We hope that the following explanations will give you a better understanding of the nature and limitations of the resources you find on ALBERITH.
The audience that is ALBERITH's business is the lay-pastors, preachers and teachers in the world-wide church of Jesus Christ. In particular, we think of the hundred of thousands of faithful men and women who preach and teach in small remote cities and towns in non-Western worlds where resources—infrastructural as well as educational—are scarce and/or often beyond their means/ease to acquire. We have, therefore, made the following assumptions about them in considering the scope and depth of our resources.
1. They have a career of their own. And with family and other mundane obligations, time is limited for study and preparation.
2. They are capable of depth and hard-thinking, and will give themselves to discipline and hard-work in learning and preparing for the responsibility of preaching and teaching the Word to their congregations.
3. They will vary widely in the levels of their own academic attainment, as well as in their congregations' educational and social needs and capabilities.
Out of these assumptions we have sought to make all the articles written specifically for ALBERITH to be as easy on the reading as possible without, at the same time, sacrificing depth and quality. All articles commissioned for ALBERITH should be accessible to any person with a high-school education. At the same time we have not hesitated to present articles sourced from scholarly journals that may be of relevance and interest to those able and desirous of working through them.
All the articles commissioned for ALBERITH and, therefore, open to editing by us, are presented in such a way that concepts and words that we feel may be unfamiliar to lay persons are tagged in the articles; clicking on them will open a glossary on the right-hand column. This way you will never find yourself struggling to understand a word, a person, or a concept that may be new to you. Additionally, we are all different in the way we learn. ALBERITH takes the psychology of learning seriously. Some of us learn quickly and are able to remember every detail of a subject only after a single exposure to the subject. Others (like the founder) cannot even recall what the key words mean despite half a dozen readings. The use of a parallel panel where you can open a glossary and retrieve a summary of the subject quickly without losing sight of what you are presently reading is a feature unique to ALBERITH. We hope those of you who are already familiar with such concepts or words will not find this patronizing; we are our brothers' keepers and we feel obliged to fend for those who have not had the opportunities to become acquainted with them.
Our main aim on this site is the faithful preaching of the Word in churches that depend heavily on laypersons. It is with this goal that the articles are written. While theologically-trained persons and seminary students are welcome to this site (and we hope they find the resources here useful), they should keep in mind the limitations in the goal we have set for ourselves.
All these also explain why the design of our pages are minimalist. Our design is rather driven by efficient access to the resources and effective learning, not sazz.
©Alberith, 2019