English for Speakers of Other Languages
About Us
Welcome to our website, which we hope will help you to better serve our International population in the northern Virginia area. A few years ago, several directors of church based English as a Second Language (ESL) programs began meeting on a monthly basis to share challenges, exchange great ideas and to encourage one another in their ministries to a wide variety of immigrants coming through our doors for English classes. These directors eventually formed a network called CBESOL — Church-based English for Speakers of Other Languages.
Who are we? Leaders of 12 church-based ESOL programs from the network of CBESOL: Burke Community Church, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Cherrydale Baptist Church, Columbia Baptist Church, Faith Bible Church, Immanuel Bible Church, McLean Bible Church, McLean Presbyterian Church, Ox Hill Baptist Church, Reston Bible Church, The Falls Church, and Truro Church. As you can see we come from different denominational backgrounds and our programs are very diverse. Some programs are just beginning, some are well established. Some programs offer one small class of English conversation. Other programs have hundreds of students with multiple levels of instruction. We all use different materials. Perhaps one constant in our programs is that we all have volunteer teachers.
We are unified in our purpose to love the internationals brought to our doors. Leviticus 19:33, 34 states, "Don't mistreat any foreigners who live in your land. Instead, treat them as members of your own family and love them as much as you love yourself.” The CBESOL network sees the growing international communities in our area as wonderful opportunities to show the love of Christ. A real need for many is to learn English and we can minister to them by meeting this need.
We share. The CBESOL network has been highly successful in improving the quality of all our programs through simply sharing what has and hasn’t worked for each of us. We sit around a big table, have coffee and tackle one or two topics each month. We are informally structured but highly committed to a shared goal; each program seeks to provide high quality ESOL classes in an atmosphere of Christian love. Any church-based ministry representative is welcome to sit and discuss issues with us. We value your input and experiences and will try our best to help you in any way we can.
Currently we are posting our recommendations, tips, and lessons learned on this site in hopes that it may equip other church-based ESOL volunteers for effective ESOL teaching and International ministry. Our recommendations for texts and materials are solely based on our experience to date and should stand as opinion only. We neither seek nor accept any funding or sponsorship money from publishing companies. We pray that you will find our site useful. Please feel free to give us feedback on any aspect of this endeavor. We would love to hear from you and hear of your successes and challenges in your ESOL ministry! Contact us at info@cbesol.org.
Your CBESOL friends