Todd Wilson - Becoming a Pastor Theologian: New Possibilities for Church Leadership

C ICERO ONCE REMARKED THAT EVERY PERSON is best when they stick to their own art. The advantage of a multiauthored volume is that each contributor can do this, and yet the end product is still able to encompass a wide range of expertise and skill. We are deeply grateful to each of the contributors for bringing the best of their art to bear on such an important question. The variegated perspectives, counsel and visions of the pastor theologian detailed by the contributors of this volume provide a composite picture that exceeds any one vision of a single author. To say that we could not have done this book without them is, of course, stating the obvious. But certainly we could not have done it well without the careful thought and talents of our contributors. We are truly grateful to each of them for an excellent volume.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to the Center for Pastor Theologiansthe organizer of the conference from which the papers that make up this volume are drawn. The Center has served as a catalyst for our work and a repository of wisdom and counsel on all things pastoral and theological. The leadership of the CenterJohn Yates, Michael LeFebvre, Jeremy Mann and John Ischdeserve our gratitude and bear a measure of responsibility for any blessing this book brings to the church.

Likewise, we are deeply grateful to Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, the local congregation where we minister. Calvary has graciously served as ground zero for the CPT and our vision for the pastor theologian. It has happily hosted numerous symposia, as well as the CPT Conference, with grace and hospitality. The good people at Calvary make serving them a joy.

We are thankful to IVP Academic for believing in the usefulness of this project, and especially to our editor, David McNutt, for his enthusiastic participation in the production of this book.

To our families and our wives we remain ever grateful. Their patient endurance in the midst of our already busy schedules is a gift that we do not take lightly. May the Lord pay them back tenfold (yea verily a hundred fold) what they have given to us!

Finally, it is a personal joy to dedicate this volume to the Center for Pastor Theologianss three Senior Theological Mentors: Scott Hafemann, Doug Sweeney and Paul House. Were grateful for their commitment to the CPTs mission, their contribution to its fellowships, and their friendship and encouragement to the two of us.

TODD WILSON AND
GERALD HIESTAND

I T WAS AN UNUSUALLY WARM EVENING in early November of 2015. The sanctuary of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, where we serve as pastors, began to fill with an admirable and diverse group of pastors, professors, students, non-profit executives, publishers and othersall eagerly gathered for the first-ever conference of the Center for Pastor Theologians. For the next two-and-a-half days, several hundred men and women enjoyed a rewarding feast of fellowship and conversation. While not everyone hailed from the same ecclesial background or theological tradition, they all shared a deep love and concern for the state of theology, the state of the church and the state of the pastorate.

You may know that pastors these days are going through something of an identity crisis. By and large, they dont know who they are or what theyre supposed to be doing. Behind the benign pastoral smiles and inspiring sermons and multi-million dollar building campaigns and ever-expanding ministry footprints, there lurks in the hearts and minds of many pastors confusion as to what a pastor is and what a pastor does. In the words of Princeton Seminary president Craig Barnes, the hardest thing about being a pastor today is simply confusion about what it means to be the pastor.

This may be why so many pastors resign their posts every year, or leave the ministry and never want to return, or make often-insane attempts to conceal their confusion and burnout with different forms of self-medication, from drinking to pornography to affairs to overeating to obsessing about money or power to complete emotional detachment from the lives of their peopleor from God himself.

What makes this crisis of identity among pastors especially tragic is that there used to be such clarity about the pastoral calling. For centuries, the church held out a clear and compelling vision of what a pastor is and what a pastor does. In short, a pastor is a theologian. But this ancient vision has been obscured by the separation of the roles of pastor and theologiana tragic division of labor that continues to bedevil the Christian ministry and the church.

This is why in 2006 we cofounded an organization devoted to putting the calling of the theologian back into the identity of the pastor. We first called it the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology. But that was way too geekyeven for usand it was clunky to communicate. So we changed it to the Center for Pastor Theologians. This is not, we admit, a very creative name. But its clear and its mission is compelling. We exist to resurrect this ancient vision of the pastor as a theologiannot as an end in itself, but for the renewal of theology and thus the renewal of the church in its ministry and mission to the world. Thats why we decided to host a conference on the theme of The Pastor Theologian: Identities and Possibilities.

We were so encouraged with the content of the presentations at this conference that we were eager to make them available to the wider public. The five chapters that make up part one were the plenary addresses at the conference, each of which approaches the theme of the pastor theologian from a slightly different yet complementary angle. The four chapters in part two present historical examples from leading pastor theologians like John Calvin and Thomas Boston. And part three contains six chapters that explore the all-important theme of the pastor theologian and Scripture.

While each of the contributors shares our enthusiasm for the vision of the pastor theologian, there is a wonderful diversity of perspectives and voices represented here. The authors come from a variety of different denominational and theological backgrounds, and we couldnt be more thankful for that. Its part of the very DNA of the Center for Pastor Theologians to carry on this conversation about the pastor theologian within the rich and wide stream of tradition C. S. Lewis (and Richard Baxter before him) called mere Christianity.