study . live . teach
For the past two years I’ve held an official position at the evangelical seminary (~associate professor) in Slovakia. This has been a good arrangement as it has helped me feel more a part of the faculty and it allows for my publishing activity to contribute to the seminary’s accreditation. Financially, however, it has proved to be a challenge for us and I have decided to go back to volunteer status until we can increase our regular financial support levels.
[Read more…]I’ve found that our web site is a good way to keep people informed about our ministry. It’s also a good medium for my classes at the seminary, so I have pages dedicated to each of the classes that I teach complete with recordings of my lectures. More than ever, however, visitors are coming to our site to read the articles I’ve written on creation and science.
[Read more…]For the fifth year in a row I attended the annual conferences of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society for Biblical Literature. These are professional conferences where theologians present research they are currently working on. With more than 10,000 theologians attending from all over the world, it’s a good opportunity to get feedback before (or after) publishing an article or book. This year I presented one paper and organized a group on the Pentateuch.
[Read more…]It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a spontaneous road trip like the one in college where we just up and went to the beach for the weekend (from Urbana, IL to Wilmington, NC!). This August I took a semi-spontaneous road trip of similar length and duration to help Peter Malik move his family from Dortmund, Germany to Banská Bystrica. Peter will be joining our faculty at the seminary as we say farewell to one of our professors.
[Read more…]The Cirkev Bratská in Slovakia (the denomination we work most closely with) has made church planting its number one priority. The denomination estimates that over the next ten years we will need more than twenty new pastors if we want to reach our church planting goals. But where will those pastors come from? Many of them will be young, bi-vocational pastors with no formal theological education. How will they find time for theological education while juggling ministry, job and family?
[Read more…]In October of this year our seminary commemorated its 25th year with a celebration event at the university. Alumni, representatives from our founding denominations, former professors and current faculty and students got together to thank God for his work in establishing this important ministry for the Slovak church.
[Read more…]For the past few years I’ve been attending the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature. These are huge conferences (about 2,000 and 10,000 theologians respectively) where I have the chance to catch up with what’s happening in the world of academia and also present my own research. This year I presented a paper on my interpretation of the Jacob narrative, explaining why I think he never ‘let go and let God.’
[Read more…]My calling is not so much to “teach at a seminary” as it is to help the church better read and apply the teaching of Scriptures to every day life. So I’m glad whenever I get the chance to teach or preach in the local church. Even better are opportunities to help pastors hone their Scripture reading and preaching skills. I recently had the opportunity to lead a preaching seminary for about 15 Slovak pastors or teachers.
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