My Year in Review (2024)

Highlights from My Year

As the year draws to a close, I have been thinking about how much has happened in my life over the past 12 months (e.g., on a family level, we sent our oldest off to college for the first time). So here is my year in review professionally, with some highlights and memorable moments.

Northern Seminary

We welcomed several new colleagues and staff persons to Northern Seminary, including our new president, Dr. Joy Moore and my new NT colleague Dr. Matt Bates. So excited about the future of Northern and humbled to serve alongside these amazing colleagues.

One of my teaching highlights was a doctoral course which met in Portland, and we got a chance to engage with Tim Mackie and Renjy Abraham from the Bible Project.

At commencement (June 2024), I was officially appointed to the Julius R. Mantey chair of New Testament at Northern Seminary, an incredible honor!

Another memorable class experience—this MA class met in my home in Portland, Oregon. This was a course on the exegesis and theology of 1 Corinthians. We laughed, we cried, we ate like kings and queens, all around stellar.

Scholarship

It was also a big year for books for me. Strange Religion released in February 2024.

We kicked off the New Word Biblical Themes series from Zondervan in April 2024 with my volume on Galatians. (4) new volumes will be released in 2025!

The State of Pauline Studies came out in October. This was a massive undertaking, I am thankful for my co-editors for sharing the labor, and also for the contributors lending their expertise. Love this resource, I was just using it yesterday!

Sabbatical

This year I had my first Sabbatical ever, after fifteen years of full-time teaching. It was so nice to take a breather and “downshift” after a very busy last few years at Northern. I got to work on a few new projects, which I will be sharing about in the coming months.

Other Stuff

I travelled for several enjoyable speaking engagements at Pepperdine University, Samford University, Asbury Seminary, Multnomah University, Westmont College, and a few churches.

One of the biggest highlights was a retreat for preaching pastors (Mt. Angel Abbey, Oregon) where we talked about how to teach and preach through Galatians. Amazing group of pastors.

This is the New Living Translation Committee at our yearly meeting (I call it “Bible camp”). We spent all day discussing exegetical and translation matters, and we had wonderful times of worship in the morning, and social activities and family time in the evenings. A dream come true!

2024 was a great year, not perfect, but it’s nice to look back and see God’s hand of care and blessing. It’s easy to remember the bad stuff, and it’s easy to forget the good stuff. I hope you get a chance to remember God’s faithfulness and provision with thanksgiving as you reflect on your 2024.