Living and teaching in Merauke, Papua, Indonesia, the researcher discovered a problem not only with his own teaching methods, but with the methodology used by other faculty at the Bible school where he taught. When the student could not answer simple questions from the Bible, the obvious question became, "Why could they not answer these "simple" questions?" Some faculty presumed it was because the students were not intelligent enough to understand what they were teaching. The researcher was not convinced that this was the case for these students or theological education students in general. This began a journey to discover how Papuan theological education students learn. Using qualitative inquiry, this Grounded Theory (GT) study pursued how Papuan's studying at the Roesler Memorial Bible School and Nohon Bible School learn. In order to do this, the director of each school, four faculty members, and 32 students were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the current pedagogical methods in use and what changes could be made to make it more useful. The main theory to emerge from this study's data is that theological education on the south coast of Papua has the most impact on students in theological education through the process of relating, sharing, remembering, and acting. Broken into its constituent parts, the way Papuan theological education students learn is, they: (1) relate to the teacher and each other in a holistic manner, (2) share what they learn with others, (3) remember what they learned, and (4) act on and practice what they learned. Additionally, the findings indicated that while the students may be functionally literate, they are highly oral reliant. Recommendations for additional research include: (1) how could less formal theological education help Papuan theological education students, (2) would the findings of this dissertation be applicable in other tribal groups, and (3) how does distance learning effect styles of learning. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]