What is “Big Books” referring to?
The term “big books” refers to the hard bound multiple volume sets of books a student at SOULS West is trained to sell after learning how to sell the individual magabooks.
A SOULS West big booker is trained how to present the following sets of big books:
My Bible Friends--A five volume set for the preschool-aged child that uses bright colorful pictures with rhythm and repetition to bring the Bible alive.
Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories--A set of books taking true stories and bringing out moral and character building lessons for children.
Bible Stories--This set of ten volumes has 411 stories covering almost every tellable story from Genesis to Revelation and brings out practical and spiritual lessons for children.
Bible Reference Library--This is many times referred to as the adult set. It is composed of Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, The Great Controversy, and Bible Readings for the Home. These five books cover earth’s history from creation down to Christ’s second coming. Bible Readings for the Home answers thousands of the most commonly asked questions about the Bible and what it teaches.
Why is Big Books such an important part of the SOULS West program?
The most important aspect of winning souls for Christ is knowing how to gain a person’s decision for Him. Asking for a person to make spiritual decisions and allow God to make changes in his or her life is as important to winning souls as it is difficult.
While selling magabooks, a student learns to ask people to make decisions that are typically in the twenty to forty dollar range. In the Big Books Practicum, the numbers move up to the two hundred to one thousand dollar range. Developing the skills to show people their need of Christ and the importance of having Christ-centered material in their homes prepares the SOULS West student for Bible Work. In the Bible Work Practicum, a SOULS West student will be asking a person to give their heart and life to Christ. Often times the student discovers that the person they are studying with would much more readily give them a thousand dollars for books than allow God to change the way they live their lives.
Whether or not to give yourself wholly to God is the biggest decision that any person will ever make. The lessons learned by the student in presenting Christ and asking for decisions while presenting truth-filled literature become priceless as they labor with people to give their lives wholly to God.
Winter Big Book Practicum
First-year students attending SOULS West spend Winter Quarter (January, February, and the beginning of March) in the Big Book Practicum. Unlike a magabook program, the students must each have their own car and are far more independent. Students spend their first two weeks together in intensive training and work. For the third week they go out by twos and sometimes threes. The time students are together is called “group” week, and the time they are out by twos or threes is called “field” week. Aside from the first two weeks of the program the remaining weeks alternate between group and field weeks.
A leader in the Big Book Practicum works with each student for a least one full day per week during both the field and group weeks. It is during this time that the student receives encouragement and direction on how to improve their skills in reaching out to people and sharing what they have with the community.
Since Big Book Practicum students have far less direct supervision from their leaders than they would in a Magabook Program, they must also start to develop the important skills of time management and self-motivation. This process of increasing independence and responsibility is ultimately preparing students for leadership and Bible work roles during their time at SOULS West, while involved in summer programs, and their life work after graduation.
Where do students live during the Big Book Practicum?
During group weeks, students are usually housed in a central location like a church or academy where there are ample facilities to prepare food, have separate bathrooms for men and women, and have plenty of room for the men and women to occupy separate housing quarters.
During field weeks, students are grouped by twos and occasionally threes and placed in the home of a church member near where they will be working. Men and women students are never placed in the same house.
Why does each student need his or her own car for Big Books?
It is necessary for each student to have his or her own car during Big Books because even though students will have a partner they are living and working with, there are occasions when contacts have asked a student to come back to show them books at a specific time, and a student’s partner will have a contact in another area ask them to come back at the exact same time. It would be impossible to reach one of the contacts if the partners were sharing a car.