Fr Nguyen Hai Tinh SJ, Formation Delegate of the Vietnamese Jesuit Province, has started a series of online video lectures on theology designed for catechists, theology students and anybody interested in theology. Each episode lasts no more than 10 minutes and uses humour and animation to capture viewers’ attention.
The videos, which are posted weekly on Jesuit Communications Vietnam’s YouTube channel, offer easy-to-understand explanations in Vietnamese on subjects related to dogmatic theology such as, Introduction to Theology, Revelation of Faith, Scripture Tradition and Magisterium, Trinity, Christology and Eschatology.
Fr Tinh currently teaches theology at St Joseph Jesuit Scholasticate and at the Catholic Institute of Vietnam of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam. He has a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, with a specialisation in dogmatic theology from the Gregorian University in Rome.
The Vietnamese priest has constantly sought out effective ways of teaching theology. He found that there are many videos online teaching a wide variety of subjects but it seemed to him that there was nothing on theology. This inspired him to start the online video lectures.
There are about 57 million active social media users in Vietnam and 71 per cent of those who access the Internet every day watch videos on a daily basis. Since it was launched, Fr Tinh’s videos have been watched more than 8,000 times.
In this interview, he talks with Jesuit Communications Vietnam about the process of developing each episode and how social media has helped him in his work of evangelisation.