The Revised and More Realistic "Priorities of a New Professor"

Well, I've officially survived my first year of teaching at BCM! About a year or so ago I wrote a post entitled "Priorities of a New Bible Professor" where I focused on my academic writing priorities. Let's just say it was a bit too ambitious, by far! Teaching always has to be the first priority before writing (and "teaching" includes "availability to my students").

Nevertheless, I did get some accomplished. I began working on my second book (slowly!), submitted two articles to journals for consideration, presented a paper at the 2015 "Bible Faculty Summit" (more on that later) which is in the process of being revised to submit to a third journal. Also, I did make a bit of progress on working through Oscar Cullmann's Christology of the New Testament in German.

Surprisingly, the summer was way busier than I thought it would be. Having said that, I laid the groundwork for two more articles--we'll see if anything becomes of them!

Most of us profs will never be D. A. Carson or Andreas Kostenberger as far as publishing goes (I doubt I'll ever get a publishing sabbatical), but that's ok! What's important is continuing to be a beyond-competent teacher who's always open to my students while at the same time trying to make an occasional contribution to scholarship.

So, for the next year, what are my priorities? #1 is creating three new classes from scratch--General Epistles and Intro to NT Exegesis for the Fall, and NT Intro for the Spring (really excited about those!) while not slacking off on my Hebrew, which I'll be teaching again in a year.

My #2 priority is a particular article on Hebrews. #3 is making significant progress both on my book on Revelation and the book my father and I are co-writing on Bible translation.

#4 is an article on the last chapter of John that I've done significant research for, and perhaps another article on the Greek imperative.

Finally, not really a separate priority, but rather an ongoing one, is to keep my German up, and continue working through Cullmann's Christology.

One more very important priority that will be ongoing: I've been asked to develop a Bible study on 1 Peter for Sunday School at my church, Falls Baptist. Christian academics should be serving the church with their writing, as well!

As far as reading, this Fall I really hope to tackle both Constantine Campbell's new Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for Reading the New Testament and Daniel Block's For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship; the first book, which I've heard great things about, will be important for my intro to exegesis class, while the latter may just be all-around important.

Once again, teaching is a blast, and I'm grateful for the opportunity! [and the students here have been awesome]