Stories

My name is Dan Powers. I teach New Testament classes, and I’m also responsible for half of the theology classes as well. So I’m co-director of the Bible and Theology major, and I also oversee our degree completion program, which is called Advantage — the core class that students have to take for that.

I’ve been at NBC for a number of years and enjoy it very much. And so I’m currently teaching and working there still — along with a lot of involvement in my local church, Eastborough Church of the Nazarene in Colorado Springs.

One of the things I love about NBC is the fact that we are training people for ministry. As I’ve worked through my own doctorate, I enjoyed academic type of work, but what’s very rewarding about teaching at Nazarene Bible College is that we teach students to actually minister. And so, many times I’ll have students who will talk to me — it used to be in class, but now they’ll send me emails — and say, ”The things we talked about in class last week, I preached on this week,” or, “I taught Sunday school about that this week.” That’s just really rewarding to know that the things we are doing at Nazarene Bible College aren’t just things we think about in a theoretical way, but are actually something practical in a person’s ministerial life. That’s very rewarding, and I love that. That’s why I teach at Nazarene Bible College.

One of the interesting things is some of the relationships that take place outside of class. Even within an online venue, I have students that I’ve met (online), and while we’ve never met face-to-face, yet there are emails that go back and forth, and even periodically telephone calls that take place, where they'll share situations with me when things come up in their life. Sometimes they're very rewarding situations, but can also be challenging situations. Sometimes we'll pray together, we rejoice, and sometimes we shed some tears as we look through some of those situations and how they can deal with them, and I'll ask how I can be praying for them. These are very rewarding parts of being at Nazarene Bible College — once again because students are ministering, and I love being part of their ministry through that teaching aspect that I’m able to give to them, and that NBC brings them as well.