Since the first services started in the tents, Pastor Harold Williams and the pioneer missionaries formed small groups with the purpose of studying the Word of God. These groups used to get together after the services, and the lessons were taught behind the tent or in any other place where they could gather the whole group. They had only the Bible to train their assistant pastors, so they could help at the same tent. In this rather informal and improvise way the IBQ (Foursquare Bible Institute) was started.

Years later they felt the need to organize the area of teaching specifically for the formation of ministry and make it official. Then, in 7th January 1957, the IBQ (Foursquare Bible Institute) was officially founded. Initially Its name was "Instituto Foursquare Gospel". It was one of the first departments to be organized in the brazilian Foursquare Gospel Church and its first director was missionary Doris Stuart.

At the beginning the course lasted for only one year. In the first class, over forty students graduated. Soon its name was changed to "Instituto Bíblico Quadrangular" (Foursquare Bible Institute". Its directors throughout the years were:

Missionary Dorothy Marguerith Halley was the one who stayed the longest in that position, from 1961 to 1984, when she retired. She passed away in Los Angeles, in July 2002.

Initially, the IBQ (Foursquare Bible Institute) was in the church headquarters premises, and its director was also the National Director of Christian Education. In order to fulfil the calling for evangelism, during its first ten years the church left aside the training of new pastors. However, the older missionaries maintained Bible Schools for new pastors in cities where access to the IBQ, located in the capital of Sao Paulo, was not easy, due to the distance. The curriculum of the course was gradually increased, and the former course, which lasted for one year, was increased in length up to two, and later on to three years.

Graduation of the 1960 Class

Three women, who dedicated their lives to teaching, played an important role in maintaining this work. They were missionaries Dorothy Marguerite Halley, Louise Lynne Aerll and Lucille Marie Johnson; three highly trained ladies from the U.S.A. who were sent to Brazil specifically to work within the educational field. Later, they were helped by teacher Haydee Guimarães, missionary Luella Jane Faulkner, missionaries Gary Scot Royer and Leslie Royer, and pastors Carlos Alberto Bezerra, Cairo Marques and Sueli de Jesus Cajeron.

IBQ.'s work was not easy. Most of the people who were willing to study would rarely accept to leave their local churches in order to work in the missionary field. Their desire was to finish their studies and remain as Sunday School teachers, or helping their pastors. Only few received and accepted the calling to "go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” – Mark 16:15. For this reason the local Bible School for new pastors were never completely abolished.

Missionary Louise Lynne Aerl and the teacher Haydee Guimarães, both ministers at the Foursquare and teachers at ITQ. (Foursquare Theological Institute), carried out the job of setting a schedule and going from city to city in order to teach for a specific period of time. They went to São José dos Campos and other places by invitation of the local Superintendent. Some of this works became, later on, permanent courses, with the creation of a local IBQ (Foursquare Bible Institute) in each of those places.

Graduation of 1962 class

During the first decade, a huge number of people came from different states to enrol at IBQ Sao Paulo, since this was the only foursquare school in Brazil until 1964. For the pastors it was a hard task to manage the many who came from South, North and Northeast to enrol the course. Very often it happened that people who had been sent to Sao Paulo and sponsored by their local churches would, a few years later, change their minds and abandon the aim of returning to work at their former church. Regarding this, the local IBQ`s helped keeping the local new pastors who had a real calling. It was from 1965 on that this reality begun to slowly change.

In July 1965, an IBQ (Foursquare Bible Institute) was opened in the city of Curitiba, Paraná. Its first director was pastor Joel Villon. From 1965 to 1983, a basic one-year course was the only one existent in that unit. In 1984 it was increased in length up to three years, becoming a Regular Theology Course. By December 1999, 2918 people had enrolled the Paraná Institute, of which 1260 remained until graduation. Nowadays, this institute has four extensions and in 1999 alone it had 412 students and 80 teachers in activity.

In 1980, another IBQ was created in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Its first director was pastor Luis Evangelista Peixoto. Then, in 1982, the IBQ was brought to Rio de Janeiro, having as its first director pastor Paulo Brito, who was later a missionary in Paraguay. In 1986, pastor Marco Antônio Teixeira Lapa started a basic ITQ at the church in the South area of Sao Paulo, in Campo Limpo.

Many of the leaders who studied at I.T.Q. are now in charge of important positions in the National Council, State Councils and Local Offices, and not few are spread all over the national territory as pastors. It has been almost half a century of history.

In 1968, missionary Gary Royer created the Foursquare Correspondence School. His aim was to raise interest for the Word of God in the ordinary members of churches, so that they would grow strongly based on the Gospel. Some of the pastors, however, saw this correspondence course as a practical and efficient way to form new pastors, and soon the National Assembly approved that to become a church pastor it was compulsory to take the Correspondence School course.

The ITQ - Foursquare Theological Institute - came to be because of the reforms in the year of 1987, when the National Coordination of Institutes was created. Pastor Cairo Marques was given the position of National Coordinator of institutes that existed at the time, that started to be called Foursquare Theological Institutes (ITQ) and a new plan was set in order to disseminate Bible teaching by creating schools, especially in the most remote regions.

Before this Coordination was created, whoever was in charge of the ITQ at Praça Olavo Bilac in Sao Paulo was also in charge of the department of Christian Education in the Foursquare Church. The last person to perform this double function was pastor Cairo Marques. When he was nominated as National Coordinator of the ITQs, he gave up his position of Director of the church headquarters Theological Institute and handed it in to pastor José Francisco de Oliveira.

Since then that institute lost its importance as the National Institute and became just the ITQ of Centre-West bound of São Paulo city. Pastor Marques left the National Coordination when he moved to the USA. Today he is the superintendent pastor of the Brazilian churches in Boston.

ITQs were created in several cities of Brazil. In 1992, the CND (National Council of Directors) created the National Department of Education, and nominated as its director pastor Guaraci Batista da Silveira. With that the National Coordination for the ITQs, MQCC and the Foursquare Correspondence School were under this new department’s jurisdiction, and it remained so until the statute reforms created specific offices for each department or group in 1999.