My professor was Gilha Lee. He is originally from South Korea, but he studied in the U.S. and has been living there for more than 10 years. For this course, we went through the books of the New Testament one by one, and we used the book Introducing the New Testament by Mark Allan Powell. However, we did not follow the arrangement of the books as they appear in the New Testament. We went through the Gospels, but we started not with Matthew, but with Mark because, according to scholars, Mark is the oldest Gospel, and Matthew and Luke might have copied from Mark alongside another missing source.

Mark is the shortest Gospel but also feels the most raw compared to the others. The reason it is considered to be a source for Matthew and Luke is that you will often find stories from Mark in Matthew and Luke, but stories that exist only in Matthew or only in Luke cannot be found in Mark. There are also other parameters that scholars consider, but Mark is kind of special in that way.

After discussing Mark, we moved on to Matthew and Luke. They are both well-written Gospels and seem to draw stories from Mark while also using another source that is now missing. I just learned from this class that Acts was actually written by the same person who wrote Luke. That was a really interesting realization for me because these two books form a narrative of what happened during the time of Jesus and after his death. It is basically a two-volume book series.

John is a very different book from the other Gospels, but equally interesting. It talks about theology that none of the other Gospels discuss in the same way. Its theology is comparable to that of the other Johannine books, which is perhaps why we also have 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.

After going through the Gospels, we talked about the epistles of Paul. It was quite revealing for me to learn that there are only seven undisputed Pauline letters, while the rest are disputed. Some of the other books might have been written by followers of Paul but named after him after he died. Books such as Hebrews have unknown authors, and Revelation is a book of hope.

This was a really interesting class, and I loved my professor. We had exams almost every three weeks.

This is a course that is close to my heart and passion because I do worship leading back in the Philippines, so it was a really interesting class for me. My professor for this class was Rachel Miller Jacobs. She is also the program head for the MA in Christian Formation, so I knew I would be working with her a lot.

This course had tons of resources to read, and we also had weekly assignments. What I love about this course is that we learned concepts and applied them through the assignments.

Four things became clear to me after taking this course. First is the direction of speech during worship. It is really important for the worship leader to be clear about the direction of the prayer. Second is scripture. It is very important that worship be scripture-based, since for some people the only time they hear scripture is during worship services. Because of that, it is important that they experience scripture during worship.

The third thing that stuck with me is the use of ritual actions and visual installations during worship. It is very important to be aware and intentional in using visual elements in worship. As a worship leader, it is important to ask yourself whether those visual installations speak to people of all ages, including children and adults, and to people with disabilities.

The fourth thing that I learned from this class is the idea of a worship diet, looking at worship as a whole. How do we evaluate our worship? What is the overall experience of those attending the service, and are there any changes that need to be made to address the gaps?

This course was very inspirational for me. It encouraged me to be more creative and to think more intentionally about worship. In this course, we were required to lead two chapel services, and the second chapel service felt like the culmination of all our learning.

This was one of the most intense courses I had. Intense, not because it was hard, but because I really felt challenged to think more deeply. My professor for this course was Jamie Pitts, and he is a great teacher. You can really tell he is an expert in this field, and he shared his expertise well in class.

We used his book Love Seeking Justice at the beginning of the course to introduce us to the process of doing theology. What was interesting for me is that the book started with the Holy Spirit. I loved how it emphasized that our interpretation of the Bible should begin with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

For the next six weeks of the class, we spent time creating our research papers. We worked on them section by section. For my paper, I chose to work on the Mennonite World Conference Shared Convictions and focused on the theology of mutual accountability. It became a little difficult for me because there is no actual “Mutual Accountability Theology,” so even in the Bible and theological dictionaries, it was hard to find direct resources.

Still, I was able to write the paper using many of the materials Jamie shared with me. There was a lot of reading involved to develop the narrative I wanted. In the end, I am still not fully satisfied with my research because it raised more questions than it answered, but that is what doing theology really means.