The assignments for this course are:

Participation (10% of final grade): every week, students will collaborate on preparing questions for ministry practitioners.  These will be discussed during the first and subsequent class sessions.  Students who are taking the class asynchronously will email questions to Dr Stepp (pstepp@dallas.edu) each week in time for the class to discuss them prior to hosting the next guest minister.

Discussion Forums (20%) (addresses outcome 1): explain the features, implications, underlying rationales of various views on women’s roles in the church.

• Week 1, professors will assign a specific people / sources who have discussed our question (e.g., John Piper, Junia Project, Scot McKnight, Christians for Biblical Equality, Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, etc.) to students.
• With professor’s guidance, students will find a concise statement of their source’s views, read, summarize, and critique. DO NOT POST THIS IN THE DISCUSSION FORUMS; this is preliminary work for writing your posts.
• Before class begins week 3, students will post the following in the Discussion Forum:
  • Where they found their source’s views (web address, book or article reference.)
  • A neutral (non-critical) summary of the source’s views (150 words)
  • What was good, or what they liked; or what they agreed with and why.
  • What was bad, what they didn’t like; what they disagreed with and why.
  • What surprised them, and / or what they learned that they didn’t know before.
• In addition to their original set of posts, students will interact substantively with three other students’ posts.  Substantive interaction = more than “Me too” or “That’s dumb” or “That’s brilliant”.  Students must interact with at least ONE other student before class begins on week 4. Students must interact with two more students before the end of the class.  Students must make a total of six substantive comments, not counting their initial posts.

Summary of biblical teaching paper (20%) (see outcome 2): the ideal paper will summarize women’s leadership activity in the Old Testament (Deborah, Hulda, others) and the New Testament (Jesus’ ministry, Paul’s ministry, Acts, Paul’s letters.)  Can be an outline—just use consistent format, correct spelling, neat appearance.  Five pages +, single spaced.  THIS IS NOT A RESEARCH PAPER.  All references, including biblical, must be cited parenthetically.  Due by the beginning of class, week 4.

Exegetical presentation (30%) (see outcome 3): Students will be assigned specific New Testament passages and use Fee & Stuart’s model to explain and apply their assigned text.  Factors that will be assessed include:

• How well students explain the cultural backgrounds and possible situations in the life of the early church pertinent to the passage.
• How well the application balances the teaching of the assigned passage against other pertinent passages.
• How well students relate the text in context to parallel situations in today’s church.

Students who do not attend live (either face-to-face or via Zoom webconference) will need to record their presentations to YouTube and post a link for their presentation to a dedicated thread in the Discussion Forums on Moodle.

In an online poll on Moodle after the first week of the class, students will indicate how they plan to make their presentations: live face-to-face, live via webconference, or by recording uploaded to Youtube.

Students who do not make a live presentation must interact with each other in the Discussion Forum (in addition to the interaction under assignment #2.)  Students in this forum must interact with three other students in this forum before the end of the class.  Students must make a total of six substantive comments, not counting their initial posts.

Personal statement project (20%) (see outcome 4): before 11.59 p.m. CST, Monday, 2 November, students will turn in a project meeting outcome #4 (page 2, above).  This is a project that the students create themselves, not something found from another source.

Research or reflection papers will be acceptable, but creativity = at least 10% of the grade. The less text, the better; BE CREATIVE.  If students turn in a statement using visual arts—a sculpture, painting, website, etc., they can add a brief explanation.