College of Ministry Graduate Team

Education:                  B.A. Houghton College, 2002 M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary, 2005 Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary, 2011 Contact: Email: joshua.ziefle@northwestu.edu Phone: 425.889.5211

Joshua R. Ziefle is Dean of the College of Ministry at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington. Originally from New Jersey, he completed a BA in History from Houghton College before matriculating in the MDiv program at Princeton Theological Seminary. His academic interests in religious history culminated in a PhD in American Church History from Princeton Seminary.  During his doctoral studies he served for six years as the youth pastor of Nassau Christian Center (A/G).

Dr. Ziefle has taught numerous courses in the College of Ministry and the Department of History. During his time at Northwest, he has been blessed to help educate numerous young ministers and church leaders. Dr. Ziefle is also Director of the Center for Calling and Theological Formation (www.northwestu.edu/cctf), overseeing both a yearly Youth Forum and a theology program for high school students called the Summer Journey. He is an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God and serves as an appointed presbyter for the Northwest Ministry Network. Together with Don Ross, Dr. Ziefle is the author of the recently published A Tale of Two Churches: Why Being Both Missional & Pentecostal Matters (2018).

Associate Professor of New Testament and Chair of Graduate Studies – Dr. JP O’Connor

Education:                  Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary B.A. Northwest University Contact: Email: jp.oconnor@northwestu.edu

JP O’Connor is the Associate Professor of New Testament at Northwest University. He is an alum of NU, where he completed his BA in Biblical Literature. After serving for several years at a church plant in Lakewood Washington he went on to earn his MDiv. and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has taught religion and theology courses at Princeton Theological Seminary, the College of New Jersey, and, through funding from the Louisville Institute, at North Central University (Minneapolis, MN). His research and teaching interests include morality and ethics within the literary milieu of Second Temple Judaism. His published dissertation, The Moral Life according to Mark (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2022) considers the moral nature of the first life of Jesus in contrast to a longstanding scholarly consensus about Mark and “ethics.” His second book, The Last Shall Be First: Judgment according to Mark (forthcoming with Baylor University Press) considers the rhetoric of judgment in Mark’s Gospel and its interplay with justice for “the little ones.”

To see more of his publications, please visit his faculty website HERE.