Stories

My name is Thomas King. I am a professor of Old Testament at Nazarene Bible College. That is my current ministry. I’ve been there for 25 years and have just loved every opportunity that it has afforded me.

My wife and I were praying as I finished my doctoral program. We were looking for where the Lord would have me serve in ministry. We were prompted to pray for the Lord to place us in a location where we could contribute to the work of preparing students for ministry: specifically, those who had felt the call to ministry and wanted to pursue that. We wanted to be a part of that. So we began to pray that way, and that’s exactly what happened. Within a few weeks, we were introduced to Nazarene Bible College.

I didn’t grow up in the Nazarene Church. We became Nazarenes later in life. So we were introduced to the Bible college very shortly after that, and it was an answer to our prayer. We had been looking for a place. We had been prompted to pray for a place where we could help with the process of preparing those who are fulfilling their call to ministry.

One of my favorite aspects of teaching at Nazarene Bible College is watching the students as they engage in Bible classes, especially when they discover new insights, when they find new concepts, new ideas, especially in the biblical text. So many of us, if we’ve been raised in the church — I remember when I went to Bible college myself, I went to a different Bible college — I had grown up in the church, and so I just felt like, well, I know everything in the Bible, I’ve read it all my life, been to Sunday school and so forth, and so when I get to Bible college, they’ll just reinforce all the things I already know.

And of course, when I went there, I suddenly realized I know nothing about the Bible, and I had all these new insights. And that’s what excites me about being on this side of teaching now, is watching students get excited as they discover things they had never seen before in the biblical text as we look a little closer and a little deeper in things — to see the lights go on and to see them get excited about the message of God that they’re beginning to see in a new way as they study the scriptures.