What Am I Doing?

One thing that I’m not doing is blogging here. I wish I were. I have some interesting ideas from time to time that I would love to get down in writing. But I have a few minutes on a Friday evening and I thought I might provide a snapshot of what’s going on that might interest some of any remaining readers.

Teaching. My primary work is in the classroom. This takes about 43 hours of my week, as I spend significant time preparing and grading for four classes. This semester I am teaching two sections of Old Testament Survey I, with a total of 135 students. While I’ve taught this for the past three years, I feel that there is much to improve and I take a little time each week to tweak the notes and powerpoints. Since most of these students are freshmen, I apply a little extra effort to help them make the transition to college, especially through rejecting weekly papers that are wrinkled, unstapled, or improperly formatted.

I am teaching New Testament Survey I (Gospels and Acts) for the first time in three years and I am loving it. But I did such a poor job the first time around that I am doing a major overhaul of the lectures. My fourth class is an upper-division Bible elective on the Psalms. This is my smallest course with 36 students, but it receives more attention than my other three classes combined. I have especially loved preparing for (and teaching) Psalms 16, 22, and 45. I am looking forward to teaching 69, 72, 80, and 110.

Photo Companion to the Bible. In theory, this receives more time than all other items on this list after teaching. For the last two years, I’ve been working with a terrific team in developing a verse-by-verse photo guide to the Bible. I am very excited about how useful and accessible this will be for Bible teachers and students. I am hoping to release the Gospels in a few months. But I’ve been saying that for a year now. The problem is that we keep creating and discovering new great content. Last week we were refining a possible reconstruction of the sign on the cross, with the help of an expert creator of ancient fonts. This week we ‘re working on some new coin photos. I think if I had four weeks to do nothing else, I could get version 1.0 out the door.

Turkey/Greece Trip. For many years I picked up groups at the airport in Israel and toured them around, largely unmindful of the work required to organize and prepare these groups in the States. Now I am getting a taste of that as I prepare to lead a TMU group to biblical sites for 17 days in late December and early January. A number of elements have me very excited about the trip. As I am able, I hope to spend some significant time reading and studying about the sites we ‘ll be visiting. Some of that will count towards my goal of reading 50 books this year.

Sunday School. For two and a half years now, I have co-taught an adult Sunday School class. We began with Genesis 1 and this weekend we are in Numbers 3. We usually study a chapter a week, and I do the preparation whether I teach or not. Though I could gain some precious hours if I didn’t have this commitment, the weekly study is one of the favorite things I do. And now I can truly say that I love Leviticus.

Family. Our family does not hang out every evening for 3-4 hours playing games and watching TV, but we do enjoy both serious and fun times together each week. We ‘ve been reading through a book series lately, memorizing Psalm 25, and are now preparing for a weekend trip to Yosemite. A few weeks ago I took the boys to the last Dodgers home game with Vin Scully’s farewell. Tomorrow we ‘ll do some clean-up in the yard.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I have not been writing a book, playing the piano, watching Cowboys games, or training for a marathon. Perhaps there will be time for those things later. For now I am thankful for some good opportunities to serve others and be blessed through it all.