Academic Courses

About

In 2009, Tim began teaching “New Testament Theology” one semester per year at the Myanmar Institute of Theology (MIT) in Yangon, Myanmar, as an ongoing “Visiting Professor”. When he first began, he was the only faculty member with a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies, and one of very few (if any other) New Testament scholars in the entire country of 53 million people, of which there are about 3 million Christians. Today, while there are a few dozen Ph.D. holders among Christian professors nationwide, Tim has been filling a critical hole during this long period of working to raise the educational level of MIT faculty. Due to COVID, followed by the military coup and ongoing political instability in Myanmar, Tim was no longer able to teach at MIT in person. Instead, he soon began teaching New Testament Theology to MIT students online, which continues to this day. Separately, in 2022, he began traveling to Thailand two or three times annually to teach refugees at the Kawthoolei Hope Theological Seminary (KHTS), located just inside the Thai side of the Thai-Myanmar border, and to conduct faculty workshops for instructors from various refugee camps in the borderlands.

Over the past two decades, Tim has developed and taught several other academic courses. These include exegetical courses, which require the use of the Greek New Testament, including “Romans,” “Philippians,” “Hebrews, James, and 1 Peter.” He has also taught “Christian Spirituality” and “Critical Reasoning and the Bible” for Master of Divinity students in Myanmar and Thailand. In 2026, he will be developing a new course for Master of Theology students, entitled “Pastoral Priorities and Practices in Spiritual Formation.”