The Center for Pastor Theologians Journal
The Center for Pastor Theologians Journal (formerly the Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology) is published bi-annually by the Center for Pastor Theologians. The essays contained within the CPTJ are drawn from the papers presented at the Center’s theological symposia for pastors. As such, each volume of the CPTJ focuses on a single theological theme relevant to ministry and the life of the church. Spanning a wide ministry context (rural, urban, small church, mega church) and the breadth of evangelical denominational affiliations (Baptist, Anglican, Wesleyan, Reformed, Lutheran, Independent, etc.), the majority of our contributors are evangelical theologians and scholars whose primary vocation is pastoral ministry. It is our aim that the CPTJ models robust ecclesial theology — theology that is born out of a parish context and driven by parish questions and concerns.
Views of the contributors are their own, and not necessarily endorsed by the editorial staff or the Center. The CPTJ does not accept essay contributions outside the Center’s four pastoral fellowships.
Print editions of the CPTJ are available for purchase at GlossaHouse and on Amazon. Free digital downloads of CPTJ essays are available below. Indexing available in Christian Periodical Index, owned by the Association of Christian Librarians and produced by EBSCOHost.
Current Volume
Essays on a theology of the word
Volume 12.1 | 2025
The notion of God’s Word remaining God’s Word alerts us to the subtle, and not so subtle, ways that humans take God’s Word and seek to control it for our own purposes. This can happen when an Elmer Gantry-like charlatan blatantly abuses God’s Word for personal profit or when a theological vision places God’s Word under human reason and reads it through cultural commitments. It can also happen through a mistaken understanding of how God sends God’s Word. One of the dangers for evangelical preaching is that it can fall prey to trusting in methods and interpretive expertise, subtly making the interpreter the master of the text. There is a danger that the evangelical emphasis on the objective text, which we strongly affirm, can become the means of making interpreters the initiating agent in an engagement with God’s Word. But God’s Word is always God’s; we must be very attentive to the temptation to use God’s Word for our own programs and projects.
Preachers are not merely to be a speakers. To be a preacher is also to be a hearer. It is easy for preachers to imagine ourselves on one side of the pulpit with God while the congregation is on the other side. Thinking this, we imagine that we and God are the proclaimers of God’s Word while the congregants are the hearers of God’s Word—God and I speak, the congregation listens.
But preaching is an event of the church’s silence. This means that the preacher, even in the act of preaching, is a hearer. Yes, the preacher speaks, but that speech is caught up in the act of God’s self-proclamation, which means that even as a communicator the preacher is primarily a listener. Of course, the preacher proclaims the Word of God, the preacher is a herald. But a herald is one who has heard the Word and proclaims it as one who is under that Word as a hearer and receiver. And this does not merely mean that the preacher hears the Word in the study on Tuesday; the preacher, when preaching, is a hearer.
One of the primary tasks of the Pastor Theologian is to form their congregations to also be hearers of the Word. As those who are among the congregation, the Pastor Theologian as hearer of the Word is called to shepherd the church in her hearing of God’s Word. This formation takes place as the preacher intentionally calls the congregation to expect to be met by God in his Word—not merely to expect to learn about God or even to hear from God, but rather to meet God as God meets with his gathered church in the preaching of the Word.
To do this, Pastor Theologians must regularly communicate what is happening when the church gathers to hear the Word. This is not simply didactic instruction in which the preacher is the speaker of the sermon. It is that, but it is more than that, and we need to train our congregations to understand this. When the church gathers, we come under the Living Word of God, who meets us in our communion with God and each other. This training can occur through theological education, through the way we invoke God’s presence, through inviting our people to come expecting to meet with God. The Pastor Theologian is a servant called to form the theological imagination of God’s people by helping the church to see that we, as preachers, are mere instruments in God’s self-communication, who join with all the saints in hearing the Word of God preached.
