Camping, attending live music and theater performances, and keeping up with his yellow lab Bayley keeps Dr. Lamp pretty busy when he's away from campus. Although Dr. Lamp has owned and shown basset hounds in the past, his wife, Monica, picked their last 2 dogs, a chocolate lab and now Bayley. “At least the labs have legs, which makes walks quicker,” he quips.
When he's on campus, he's teaching widely throughout the College of Theology and Ministry. He teaches Biblical Greek and Hermeneutics to undergraduates, Biblical Greek to Masters students, and seminars in New Testament Theology and Spirit Hermeneutics to Ph.D. students, as well as the occasional course in the Environmental Science program. His current research and publishing efforts explore the intersection between theology and ecology. For this, he collaborates with such organizations as the Ecological Hermeneutics section with the Society of Biblical Literature and the Society for Pentecostal Studies. More recently he has branched out into Bob Dylan Studies and teaches a course on the Bible and Bob Dylan to undergraduates.
Dr. Lamp was born in South Dakota, but has lived in Tulsa from age 10. He completed his B.S. at the University of Oklahoma in Norman (1983), graduated seminary at ORU (1990), received his Ph.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago (1995), and completed a M.S. in Environmental Science from Oklahoma State University in Tulsa (2013).
He has served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church for 8 years and in the Free Methodist Church for 1 year. Before joining the ORU faculty full-time in 2000, he taught as an adjunct for 3 years while pastoring in Spiro, Oklahoma. "I enjoy developing relationships with my students," Dr. Lamp commented. “I think the bond between faculty and students is closer at ORU than at most other universities. I keep in touch with many of my students for years after they graduate. It's fun to see where God is taking them in their lives.”
He has been a member of St. Antony Antiochian Orthodox Church since 2016, a church that has had a long history with ORU.
Dr. Lamp is married to wife Monica and enjoys spending time with her and their four grandchildren.