Written by Dr. Charles Zimmerman Wednesday, 23 November 2011 00:00

Where have they gone & where are they now?  

I still cannot believe it but I am the longest tenured faculty member at Biblical.  It only seems like yesterday when I was the youngest faculty member, regularly mistaken for being a student (that never happens any more).  

I thought that for my blog entries, I would contact former faculty members and provide an update on what they have been doing since they left Biblical and how they spend their time these days. 

The first installment is Bob ("Doc") Newman because as expected he was the first to respond – within hours of my sending the email.  I had déjà vu of seeing the test results back in my mailbox before my next class ended. 

What years did you teach at Biblical? 

I was the youngest of the original faculty, so I began teaching in the fall of 1971.  I retired after the 2005-2006 school year, so thirty-five years in all. 

What have you been doing since then? 

At retirement, I moved in to the Charlottesville, Virginia area (North Garden, about 10 miles south).  I live in the in-law apartment in the home owned by my younger brother, Jim and his wife Anne. 

I joined Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Charlottesville, where there is a strong outreach to students, faculty, staff and internationals at the University of Virginia.  I have been doing some Sunday School teaching there, helping with the international ministry, doing occasional outside speaking, helping some study groups at the Center for Christian Study (just off the grounds of UVA), and recently doing some ELS teaching. 

I have done some international travel and speaking.  I took a six-week trip to the South Pacific (Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand) in the fall of 2006 and taught two short courses at Malaysia Bible College; a trip to Russia in 2007, trips to Western Europe and China in 2008, to Taiwan and the Ukraine in 2009, to Costa Rica in 2010, and to Western Europe in 2011 (where I taught a short course at Tyndale Seminary in Amsterdam). 

I have been pretty busy putting my talks into PowerPoint with synchronized audio narration in mp3; about 225 of which have been posted on our IBRI website  www.IBRI.org    We have been excited that this website is getting a lot of international traffic, especially from China, Australia and Russia. 

Tell a favorite memory from your Biblical days

I have a lot of stories from the twenty-four years (1982-2006) that we had an unofficial dorm at Trinity House (my place at 115 S. Main Street, Hatfield).  One of our students nearly burnt the place down the first year trying to boil oil in a wok (he didn’t have a lot of cooking experience).  One meal we had a meatloaf made from Scrapple!  One resident (not a Biblical student) claimed he was one of the two witnesses of Revelation 11.  Another resident (he was a Biblical student) bilked some of our residents (including myself) out of about $750.  We had over one hundred different residents of Trinity House in its 24 years. 

Contact information: email, facebook, etc. 

E-MAIL: rcnewman@rcn.com; FACEBOOK: Robert Chapman Newman

TO THE READERS OF THIS BLOG: 

Please add a funny or serious story that you have that includes “Doc.”

Charles Zimmerman is the Thomas V. Taylor Professor of Practical Theology.  He also serves as Teaching Pastor at Calvary Church in Souderton.  He is married to Kim and they have two daughters, Ashley and Megan.  See alsohttp://biblical.edu/index.php/charles-zimmerman