Concerning The Remnant Bible Academy Instructors
On Credentials, Calling, and the Courage to Say Neither Was the Point
Let us be plain from the outset, because plainness is a form of respect: David Fore and James Burch hold no seminary diploma, no divinity degree, no denominational ordination paper signed by a board of men who never met us. We do not have one. We are not pursuing one. And we are not sorry.
Since the release of the First Edition of The Remnant Bible Study Course, and now through the labor of completing the Second and Final Edition, we have heard the same objection raised in different tones by different people: how can men without “official” theological credentials be trusted to handle the Word of God rightly? It is a fair question, asked plainly, and it deserves a plain answer rather than a defensive one.
Here it is. The academy does not manufacture the ability to rightly divide the Word of truth. It can sharpen it, discipline it, and give it vocabulary — and where that has happened for others, we do not dismiss it. But the academy has never been the source of it, and Scripture never says it is. The apostles who turned the first-century world upside down were, in the language of their accusers, “unlearned and ignorant men” — and the accusation was true by the standard of their accusers, and irrelevant by the standard that mattered. Peter did not carry a seminary transcript into the upper room. He carried the Holy Spirit.
We say this not to disparage formal theological education — plenty of faithful, sound men and women have been shaped well by it, and we are the better for having studied under some of them. We say it to reject, without apology, the assumption that formal education is the only valid path to Biblical competence, and that its absence disqualifies a man from teaching what he has been given to teach.
Our formation did not happen in a lecture hall, and it did not happen in isolation either. It happened under the direct, personal mentorship of pastors, scholars, and theologians — men who are themselves credentialed, accomplished, and academically decorated, and who nonetheless recognized something in the work we were building worth investing their time in. From them we learned exegetical rigor. We learned to weigh a text before we ever preached it. We learned the difference between what a passage says and what we would like it to say. That is not a lesser education. It is simply a different room.
And underneath all of it — the mentorship, the years of study, the countless hours spent testing every conclusion against the whole counsel of Scripture rather than a proof-text or a preference — has been the unglamorous, unrelenting work of the Holy Spirit, who was promised to lead believers into all truth and who has never once required a transcript to do it.
We understand what we are up against in saying this. We live in a culture — inside the church as much as outside it — that has quietly equated credentials with authority, and authority with truth. That equation is not in the Bible. It is borrowed from the academy itself, and it has been imported into the Church so thoroughly that questioning it now sounds radical. We are questioning it anyway. God’s wisdom was not created by university systems and it is not bound by them. It does not report to an accreditation board.
So we will not perform an apology we do not feel, and we will not manufacture false humility about a calling we did not choose for ourselves. What we will do is stand behind the only credential Scripture has ever actually asked for: the fruit. Every course we build, every lesson we write, every hour we spend in study before we ever put a word in front of a student, will be judged rightly by what it produces in the life of the person who sits under it — a deepened faith, a sharpened discernment, a hunger for the text that did not exist before, a life visibly, measurably changed. That is the only diploma we have ever wanted, and it is the only one that has ever mattered.
Our mission has not changed and will not: to teach the Word without compromise, to uphold the full inerrancy and authority of Scripture, and to equip every believer who comes through The Remnant Bible Academy to know the Bible and its Author for themselves — not because a committee certified us to say so, but because the Lord who called us to this work has never once asked us to wait for one.
With that said plainly and without apology, we would still rather you not simply take our word for it. Meet your instructors. Below are the two men behind The Remnant Bible Academy — click on either image to read the fuller story of the calling, the road, and the conviction that brought us here.
David Fore
Founder, Instructor
James Burch
Co-Founder, Instructor