ACTS: Coming Down ... Going Out

The ACTS of the APOSTLES tracks the expansion of new churches from Jerusalem (religious capital) to Rome (political capital), and from being a small Jewish sect to a global community. Ten lessons enable the teaching of this crucial history book.

Rev. Bill Smallman (D.Miss. from TEDS, MA, M.Div., BS) left an engineering career in aerospace design to follow God's call to world missions. After a brief ministry as the founding pastor of a new church near Chicago, he and Doris served with Baptist Mid-Missions in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, 1970-1979 for ministries of seminary teaching, church planting and establishing TEE for distance education seminary. He led the seminary through a process of nationalization to come under Brazilian administration. During two furloughs Bill completed an M.A. in Communications/Cross-Cultural Ministries (Wheaton 1980). He was then invited into the administration of BMM and was Candidate Administrator for 24 years along with teaching modular courses in several Baptist seminaries and colleges. Ongoing studies led to the Doctor of Missiology degree from Trinity International University (1985). Bill established an online continuing education program for BMM missionaries, the LIFT Program, for Life-long Improvement Field Training. By his retirement in 2009 he had ministered in 27 nations and had also been a vice-president of the mission for some years. Bill and Doris met in college where they shared a calling to world missions, and then graduated and married. Their two children were born while Bill was in seminary, both now actively serving the Lord. Publications include Able to Teach Others Also (WCL/Mandate 2001) on the nationalizing of global ministry training, after co-editing Missions in a New Millennium with Dr. Ed Glenny (Kregel 2000) and writing two of its chapters, along with numerous periodical articles and book reviews. A Missions Toolkit for Churches came out in 2015 (through Baptist Mid-Missions), as well as books of classnotes in Major World Religions and Major Church Movements and its companion Timeline available on Amazon.Com. As Dr. Bill continued teaching Missology he published a textbook on Missiologia in Portuguese for Brazilian churches and missions in 2016. His adventures in becoming bicultural began with an exciting summer in Colombia during university studies and grew through processes of becoming Brazilian, and then developing a global mindset in teaching Biculturalism, Training National Leaders, Cultural Anthropology, and related missions subjects.