Walking Where Paul Walked: Students Bring Scripture to Life in Greece

By Lydia Chapman

Senior Reporter

At 3 a.m. in Athens, a group of students boarded a plane half-awake and half-delirious, unaware their journey home would not be simple.

After days of filming at ancient ruins across Greece, their return involved missed connections, blizzard warnings in Chicago, a two-and-a-half-hour wait for luggage and a last-minute charter bus that carried them overnight back to campus. By the time they arrived at 8 a.m. Monday after break, exhaustion threatened to define the experience.

Instead, what lingers most is not the blizzard, but Corinth.

Over spring break, students from the history, religion and film departments traveled to Greece as part of a faculty-led academic research experience, or FLARE, an interdisciplinary course combining research, theology and filmmaking. After weeks of classroom preparation, the group traveled to retrace the Apostle Paul’s journeys through Philippi, Thessalonica and Corinth while producing a documentary exploring Paul’s message of a “world turned upside down,” challenging Roman ideas of peace and security.

The project began long before passports were stamped.

During the first half of the semester, history and religion majors were divided into research teams, each assigned one of the three cities. They studied political structures, religious practices, geography and Paul’s letters, compiling research logs that shaped the documentary’s script. Professors synthesized the material into a cohesive narrative while film students prepared to translate scholarship into visual storytelling.

Kamryn Sanderfer, a film major who served as associate producer and director for the project, said the opportunity felt personal long before departure.

“I had been praying for an opportunity like this for years,” she said. “Everything about the trip:  the documentary, Greece and studying Paul, was exactly what I wanted to do.”

Once in Greece, the coursework took physical form.

“You hear about things like the Acropolis,” said Laura Hohman, associate professor of history. “But when you actually go, the pillars are just towering over you.”

Standing among the ruins shifted learning from abstraction to experience. Thessalonica, their first stop, was not the grandest site they visited, but it marked the first time students walked streets once built by Greeks and Romans. What had lived in textbooks suddenly had texture.

History major Emma Grace Hicks described the moment as surreal: seeing artifacts she had studied since middle school displayed in museums not as stock images, but as preserved pottery and architecture from centuries before Christ. Even geography surprised the group; Greece proved hillier and more compact than expected, its cities closer together yet layered with ruins.

For religion major Jeremiah Carlton, the impact was deeply personal.

“It becomes so much more real when you’re there,” he said. “Standing where these events happened makes it feel almost as if it’s being spoken directly to you.”

In Philippi, students visited the traditional site of Lydia’s baptism. In Corinth, they stood where Paul once addressed a divided early church. After studying Paul’s rebuke of social hierarchy within the Lord’s Supper, the group shared communion together, turning classroom discussion into lived practice.

During one prayer, as they broke bread, the wind picked up.

For some, it was simply weather. For others, it became a moment they say they will never forget.

Collaboration between majors proved essential. History students contextualized the Greco-Roman world, including politics, the Pax Romana and cultural values shaping daily life. Religion students analyzed Paul’s theology and letters. Film students transformed research into narrative, managing equipment, sound, lighting and the unpredictability of filming in crowded archaeological sites.

Filming presented challenges no classroom could replicate. Locations had to be scouted quickly, often surrounded by tourists and harsh midday sunlight. At several sites, students waited for crowds to clear while holding cameras and audio equipment in strong coastal winds, sometimes capturing only minutes of usable footage before moving again.

“We would get off the bus, scout for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and then immediately start shooting,” Sanderfer said. “There were always unexpected things happening around us, but we had to use what we had in the moment.”

At times, professors themselves stepped into unfamiliar territory. Memorizing scripts on buses and delivering lines on camera required vulnerability. Meanwhile, students took ownership of their disciplines, coaching peers through research methods or coordinating production logistics on what increasingly felt like a professional set.

“It was like a legitimate production,” Hicks said. “Watching film work on the ground after we’d been buried in books all semester was incredible.”

As filming progressed, the scale of the project became clearer.

“Hearing everything we had studied while standing in the actual places where it happened, and knowing we were capturing that so other people could experience it too, it felt bigger than a class project,” Sanderfer said.

Beyond academics, the group grew close.

Many students had known each other only as classmates before the trip. By the end, they were sharing meals family-style, debating theology on bus rides, hiking difficult terrain together and laughing through exhaustion. Even travel setbacks became bonding stories.

“There was a lot of grace for everyone,” Hicks said of the chaotic journey home. “We were so tired everything became funny.”

Carlton said the experience broke down academic boundaries.

“It can be easy on campus to stay in your department,” he said. “Doing something like this is eye-opening. I’ve made friends I probably just walked past before.”

Sanderfer said friendships formed quickly despite students coming from different academic backgrounds.

“It wasn’t like one department stayed separate,” she said. “We all blended naturally. We were exhausted together, learning together and laughing constantly.”

Visiting the ruins also carried a sobering lesson, Hohman said. The grand empires that once defined the Mediterranean world now stand in fragments. Temples, marketplaces and civic centers have crumbled, reinforcing the historical context behind Paul’s message about where lasting peace is found.

“These incredibly complex ancient societies are just completely gone,” she said. “It reminds us that kingdoms rise and fall.”

Yet Greece was not only ancient history. Students encountered modern life alongside ruins: city sounds, protests in Thessalonica, Orthodox churches, stray cats weaving through narrow streets and long dinners featuring bread dipped in tzatziki. Centuries often felt compressed into a single afternoon.

The experience demanded endurance through long hikes, packed filming schedules and constant movement. For some students, it clarified vocational goals. For others, it deepened faith.

“It stopped feeling like a school trip pretty early,” Carlton said. “Once we were walking through the city and seeing people living their everyday lives in a place so biblically rich, it became personal.”

When asked what the trip offered that a classroom could not, answers consistently returned to the presence of being there.

Walking the terrain, Paul walked. Taking communion in Corinth. Visiting Philippi. Seeing the Olympic stadium gave context to Paul’s “running the race” metaphor. Watching film students frame shots beneath the Mediterranean sun. Sharing Scripture readings each morning before heading out.

The documentary will eventually present a polished account of Paul’s message to a Greco-Roman world searching for peace. The students’ own experience, however, unfolded in unscripted moments like conversations on buses, shared meals and long days navigating unfamiliar terrain together.

They left campus as separate majors and returned as collaborators and, in many ways, a family.

Even after missed flights and overnight bus rides, students said they would encourage others to participate in a trip like this.

Long after the footage is edited and grades are posted, what remains is the memory of standing among ancient ruins, then carrying those moments home through a snowstorm.

“We are editing the footage now, and the premiere date is set for the fall,” said Seth Conley, professor of film and television.