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Bible College of the Florida Keys A Curriculum for Life

About BCFK

A Curriculum for Life

The Bible College of the Florida Keys is tuition-free, non-denominational, and privately funded by the founder — receiving no money or benefits from the government. It is built for Keys residents who want serious theological education woven into real discipleship — not distance learning alone.

40
Courses in the Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies
438K+
Pages of required reading
~1,000
Pages of original writing
16,000+
Quiz questions across the curriculum

One Course Is a Worthy Start

The catalog is deep on purpose. You do not have to finish it. Take one or two courses because the reading is worth doing. The bachelor's degree is there if you want it; it is not the price of admission to a single class.

Pause When Life Happens

Storms, work, family, and the cost of living in the Keys are not abstract. Students may pause a course three times with instructor approval — eight weeks each — without failing. A fourth pause needs an administrator. The calendar moves forward; Monday–Sunday weeks stay intact.

Tuition-Free, Privately Funded

Students can earn a full Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies without charge. The college has been privately funded by the founder since 2016 and receives no money or benefits from the government.

Keys Residents & Real Discipleship

Admissions is open to Florida Keys residents because formation happens in community — life-on-life mentoring, worship, and accountability alongside study, not through distance learning alone.

Public-Domain Library

Every required and supplemental text is in the public domain. BCFK's custom library and LMS deliver Augustine, Calvin, Plato, and the Reformers directly — without paywalls or textbook fees.

Primary Sources, Not Summaries

Students read seminal works in full — not modern abridgments. Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Kant are encountered firsthand, cultivating the habit of inquiry serious scholarship demands.

Non-Denominational by Design

Read the greatest Christian authors in history, engage them honestly, and come to your own conclusions. The curriculum spans Western theology, philosophy, and church history from the fathers through the Reformation — no single party line imposed.

Custom LMS & Assessment

Over 16,000 quiz questions, reading schedules, and research milestones live in BCFK's own platform — built for this catalog from the ground up, not borrowed from generic software.

Language Study

Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English philology equip students to read Scripture and theological classics in context — from the Pentateuch through the Reformation sources.

Original Research & SBL Citations

Each student writes nearly 1,000 pages of original research — exegetical, historical, and doctrinal — documented in Society of Biblical Literature style, the standard of theological scholarship.

Academic Integrity

Accreditation & Academic Standards

BCFK is not accredited by a regional or national accrediting agency. We state this plainly, because prospective students deserve clarity about what accreditation does — and does not — guarantee.

In American higher education, accreditation is chiefly an administrative credential. It certifies that an institution satisfies the financial, governance, and curricular reporting requirements of an accrediting body — requirements that carry substantial institutional cost, commonly passed to students through tuition and fees. Students pursuing theological education can easily exceed $100,000 in combined costs over the course of graduate and post-graduate study; undergraduate pathways carry significant expense as well, though the six-figure threshold is more commonly reached later in one's academic career.

Credentialing of this sort does not, by itself, establish the depth of reading, linguistic competence, or original scholarship appropriate to serious study of Scripture and theology. Accredited programs often compress reading lists, simplify assessment, and shape curricula toward credit-hour formulas, transferability, and federal aid eligibility — rather than toward the fullest possible intellectual and spiritual formation.

Independence from the accreditation apparatus frees BCFK to raise its standards rather than lower them. Our students encounter more than 438,000 pages of required reading across 600+ volumes, undertake study in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English, complete over 16,000 quiz questions, and produce nearly 1,000 pages of original research documented in Society of Biblical Literature citation style. That reading is what this tuition-free bachelor's degree requires.

We do not offer accreditation as a product. We offer an education. The Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies at BCFK is designed for men and women who desire knowledge of God, his Word, and his church, and who will read the sources at the length the curriculum requires.

Original Research & SBL Citations

Over the course of the program, each student writes nearly 1,000 pages of original research — exegetical papers, doctrinal essays, historical analyses, and capstone work.

Students document their research using the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) citation style — the standard across biblical studies, theology, and church history. SBL unifies references to Scripture, ancient texts, patristic writings, and modern scholarship in one consistent format, preparing graduates to read, write, and publish in the guild of serious theological inquiry.

Founder

Dr. David Glenn Bailey

Dr. Bailey founded BCFK after fifteen months of daily doctoral research at Liberty University, where he designed and tested an organic leadership training program for house church planting in the Florida Keys. That conviction — rigorous scholarship woven into mentor-led, life-on-life formation — shapes every aspect of the college.

Doctoral dissertation: Organic Leadership Training: A Training and Assessment Program for Potential House Church Leaders (Liberty University, 2023).

Dissertation Abstract

This action research thesis project engaged non-professionally trained Christians who worked through the early stages of Christian leadership development and house church planting. The project utilized a six-week training program in which participants hosted a prayer meeting, chose a confession, led a Bible study, designed an outreach ministry, hosted a worship meeting, and drafted future house church resolutions and a community rule. The participants engaged in a weekly targeted spiritual discipline to foster spiritual formation. Data were collected through journaling, entrance and exit questionnaires, activity guides, post-activity questionnaires, and participant-observations. The research indicates that organic leadership training inspires confidence in emergent leaders and is valuable in developing leadership competencies. The research also indicates that Christian leaders in the early stages of their development benefit from a small, personal environment like a home and support and encouragement provided by an experienced leader. The program was designed with participant experimentation in mind illuminating unique solutions to house church planting challenges. This approach also fostered greater self-awareness of the participant's leadership style. In conclusion, organic leadership training combined with the simple ecclesiastical environment of the home offers an excellent strategy for competency development, leadership assessment, and low-cost, low-risk church planting.

The research

House Church Planting & the Research Behind BCFK

The Bible College of the Florida Keys extends the findings of Dr. Bailey's doctoral research into a full program of theological education. Where the dissertation tested a six-week organic leadership training model among emergent house church leaders in Marathon, BCFK applies the same convictions — mentor-apprentice discipleship, experiential formation, primary-source scholarship, and the home as ecclesiastical environment — across a forty-course bachelor's curriculum.

The place

Why the Keys, and why the American church is thinning.

The Keys

A challenging place like the Florida Keys, with a high cost of living and barrier to entry, requires ecclesiastical creativity for local churches to remain solvent and is an ideal location for a house church network.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

The declining church

Few churches today place the appropriate level of priority on discipleship or organic leadership training because it is difficult, time-consuming, and believed not necessary for the sustainability of their church or organization. However, this lack of emphasis on the internal training of future Christian leaders is resulting in a significant decline in the American church.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

The model

How the early church trained leaders, and how Christ trained the Twelve.

The early church

The early church experienced rapid expansion through reliance on organic leadership training utilizing the house church model as its ecclesiastical methodology.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

Christ's method

The fundamental components of His organic leadership training model are experiential learning through a mentor-apprentice relationship, modeling proper leadership behavior to His disciples in organic situations and environments, encouraging challenging leadership ventures resulting in potential failure and growth, modeling and encouraging engagement in the spiritual disciplines, and all of this being done in the context of a religious community that was life-on-life and resulted in daily interactions.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

The findings

What a six-week study in Marathon showed about simple rooms and the home.

Simple rooms

An important implication of the study is that a small, straightforward environment makes leadership training easier. Complex leadership environments can overload emergent leaders with the pursuit of developing unnecessary leadership competencies. A simple environment allows the trainer or educator to target specific competencies better.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

The home

Finally, there is synergy between organic leadership training and the house church model, which makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The holistic nature of the home reinforces many of the concepts found in organic leadership training, aligns with the qualifications of an elder written by Paul, and provides a comfortable environment for the emergent leader.
D. G. Bailey Organic Leadership Training (2023)

BCFK exists to close the gap this research identified: competent leadership formation for the Keys, without the overhead of corporate church structures or the debt of conventional credentialing — and with academic rigor that prepares graduates not merely to administer a house church, but to think, write, and teach from the full breadth of the Christian intellectual tradition.

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