Beeson Podcast, Episode 499 Todd Wilson June 2, 2020 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I�m Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host Kristen Padilla, and for the first time ever we�re coming to you not from Divinity Hall at Beeson, but from the safety of our homes as we shelter in place for the remainder of the Covid19 storm. We know that these have been some very difficult days for many listeners who are separated from loved ones and their families and their churches and their work places. We want you to know that we�re praying for you and we hope this podcast can play a small part in giving you courage and strength for this day. Today�s guest on the show is a dear friend and a board member at Beeson, who serves now as the president of the up and coming Center for Pastor Theologians, or CPT for short. He has been a friend of mine for years and I am excited about sharing him with all of you. Kristen, would you please introduce to us the Reverend Dr. Todd Wilson? >>Kristen Padilla: Hello, everyone. I�m glad to be with you. We have as our guest the Reverend Dr. Todd Wilson. He is co-Founder and President of the Center for Pastor Theologians, a ministry aimed at equipping pastors to be theologians for today�s complex world. He holds BA and MA degrees from Wheaton College and a PhD in New Testament from Cambridge University, and is currently completing an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He is the author of a book called �The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision,� which we�re going to ask him about today. And he is very importantly one of our Beeson advisory board members. And we have been very grateful for his support and encouragement. But perhaps even more important, he is married to Katie and they have seven children. So, welcome to the podcast, Todd. >>Todd Wilson: Thank you, Kristen. It is great to be with both you and Doug. Beeson has been a hugely special place to me, being able to serve on the advisory board and having been down there a number of times, both in that capacity and other things. So, it�s great to be on the podcast today. Doug, you mentioned our friendship that goes back a number of years. So grateful for you and for that friendship and you involvement with CPT as well. So, it�s great to be with both of you. >>Doug Sweeney: Great to have you. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, we always like to begin on a very personal level. Could you introduce yourself and tell us where you�re from, your faith journey? >>Todd Wilson: For sure. I was born and reared in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis. A suburb called Carmel. I grew up in a non Christian home and met Jesus in the corner booth of a McDonald�s, believe it or not, at the age of 16. My life was radically transformed through that encounter. I got to that corner booth and heard this gospel presentation from the father of the girl that I had a special interest in, in high school, who now believe it or not is my wife of 24 years. (laughs) It�s a great, powerful story about the grace of God in my own life. But anyway, so I came to Christ. Both my wife and I were students at Wheaton College, and it really was there at Wheaton College that I fell in love, not just with the life of the mind, but the Bible as well. I took Greek as an undergrad. I feel like that was a second conversion, studying ... learning about the riches of the New Testament. As I was finishing up at Wheaton my undergrad degree, I studied philosophy, but took Greek on the side. I thought to myself, how can I teach this book for a living? What can I do to (laughs) ... and I got some advice to keep pursuing education all the way through a PhD and then you can either pastor a church or teach in the academy. And so that�s more or less what I did. A key chapter in that journey was right after undergrad, before going back to grad school, I spent two years at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and was on staff ... John Piper was the pastor of the church at that time. And that was really, really significant, to see the model of the pastor theologian. Obviously stuff we�ll talk about on this podcast today. Seeing that in live time with one of America�s great pastor theologians. So, anyways ... my wife and I were married and, in fact, before we graduated college, between our junior and senior year, and went to Minneapolis, were there, back to graduate school over to the UK for a couple of years. And maybe just one or two things to say about my own journey and call to ministry ... When I was in England doing doctoral research it was interesting. I didn�t realize how much I loved research and writing and scholarship. I knew I liked the world of ideas, but I didn�t quite realize that I would geek out as much as I did sitting in a library for 16 hours a day reading journal articles and stuff. And I grappled with maybe God [inaudible 00:05:41] and is calling me to be a research scholar? And so I was starting to pursue that path, go into an academic teaching post, when God sort of out of nowhere intervened as I was finishing up my third year at Cambridge and a pastor I�d interned with in Wheaton, actually, both as an undergrad and as a grad student, a person by the name of Kent Hughes, who you both know. I think he�s done some things at Beeson over the years. But he reached out and there was a pastoral opening at [inaudible 00:06:13]. He said, �I don�t know what God�s will for your life is, but why don�t you pray about this pastoral opening?� And so my wife and I did. I�m obviously compressing a long story. And we felt very clearly the [inaudible 00:06:29] to pastoral ministry at that point. So, when we finished at Cambridge it was a bit of a sharp right turn. All the trajectory and momentum was scholarship and a junior academic teaching research position, all the rest of it, and the next thing you know the Associate Pastor of a large church in the Midwest and trying to figure out what to do with all these research passions and interests and this kind of scholarly bent that I had. Segueing into ... I can say this and then I can shut up on at least this answer. I was trying to really grapple with how do you serve as a pastor and also have these strong passions and vision for scholarship and for resourcing the church theologically? And as you two both know, and as the listeners will ... large suburban churches that have tons of programs and tons of things to do, that�s not exactly the most hospitable culture for serious theological reflection as a pastor. So, just kind of gesturing to the birthplace in many ways of the CPT was out of that existential conflict that I was experiencing as a new pastor and a freshly minted PhD. >>Doug Sweeney: That�s the perfect segue, Todd, for the main thing we wanted to talk about today, and that is your role in the CPT. We�ve mentioned already that you are the co-Founder and the President of the Center for Pastor Theologians, and that�s what we�re referring to by shorthand with �CPT.� And we want our listeners to learn all about it. We think it�s a wonderful organization. A few of us at Beeson are invested in it and of course we�ve already mentioned you�re invested at Beeson. We want our people to get excited about the work of the CPT. So, maybe we can begin by just asking you what is the CPT? What�s it all about? >>Todd Wilson: Sure. The CPT is a small nonprofit. It�s been around for about 13 or 14 years. Our mission is to equip pastors to be theologians for today�s complex world. Right? So, we are passionate about raising the banner for the pastor as a thought leader, you might put it that way � as a theologian. Not necessarily an academic. When we think of theology we often think of academic theology. We�re primarily thinking about the pastor as a thought leader, someone who knows the will, the way, the works of God and can shepherd God�s people into all of that wisdom. That�s what we mean by the pastor theologian sort of at its core. And so what we do as an organization, in essence, is we try to network and equip, resource, and then platform, if you will, pastor theologians. So, we�ve gathered together a network of about 100 PhD�d pastors from all around the country that represents 24 different protestant denominations, and they meet together on a regular basis, on an annual basis, for fellowship and cultivating friendship and learning from one another, and sharpening each other through the research they�re doing, the writing they�re doing, the preaching, the pastoral care, and ministry, and how theology intersects and interfaces with all of that. Then we build platforms for them through the different programs that we have in offering, so our resource hub of our website, or our podcast, or our conference, or some of the book projects we do. As a way of helping them leverage their gifts for the benefit, not just of their local church, their own particular congregation, though that�s obviously the frontline and incredibly important, but for the broader church � for God�s people � beyond the four walls of their local congregation. Part of it has been this network of PhD pastors. We call them Ecclesial Theologians, but we are expanding that to enfold more folks that resonate with the vision of the pastor theologian. So, local church pastors who don�t necessarily have PhD�s and want to be about a theologically driven approach to ministry. Students ... we�re trying to, as it were, influence and capture the next generation. So, we have a student outreach that Beeson has been participating in this past year. And things like that. So, that�s really what the CPT is all about. You might say our mission is equipping pastors to be theologians for today�s complex world, our vision really is the renewal of the pastoral vocation. Craig Barnes, the president of Princeton Seminary, says the hardest thing about being a pastor today is figuring out what it means to be a pastor. And I think that�s exactly right. There�s probably not another vocation that suffers from as much of a lack of clarity about what that calling or vocation or job, if you will, is really all about as the pastor. And there are a lot of competing visions of what a pastor ought to be and sort of archetypes of the pastoral calling and the pastoral persona or personality. And we�re trying to renew the vision of the pastor as a theologian. Ultimately, of course, for the renewal of the Church, and then the renewal of communities. Because the last thing I�ll state on this point is local churches are confronting in our late modern world stunning complexities, that I think we�re all aware of, right? Political complexities and sexuality issues and I mean, just all of the kind of political and non political forces � technology and all of the rest that�s in play. Congregants need to be equipped to know how to navigate the world and engage culture in a way that�s winsome and gospel-centered and helpful and fruitful. And so they need pastors to do that equipping so that communities can be reached and impacted in a way that�s really helpful and God honoring. So, that�s the broader vision, is the renewal of communities really all around the country and if God would give us the grace, all around the world, actually. >>Kristen Padilla: I wonder if you want to tease out a little bit more the vision of CPT as it relates to your book that you co-wrote that I mentioned, �The Pastor theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision?� For some listening to you they might think, oh, pastor and theologian seem to be competing terms. And they may just not fully grasp what you�re trying to get at. So, I wonder if you could talk to us about the vision, especially as it�s played out in your book? >>Todd Wilson: For centuries ... there�s a variety of ways to get into this question about the book. But maybe to start this way, Kristen, that for centuries there�s been clarity about what it means to be a pastor, if you look back into the history of the Church. That the pastor was a theologian. And for centuries, in the history of the Church, if you were to say, �Get me a theologian!� Right? Where can I find a theologian? People would say, �Well, where are the prominent ministers? Let�s go talk to them.� They are theologians, as it were, by definition. That�s what a pastor is. Again, not necessarily an academic, right? That�s a later development. But who are wise to the ways of God and learned. But know how to connect the truth of God�s Word and the riches of the Christian tradition to the life and practice of a local congregation. So, that�s the kind of a-ha, I think, for all of us in the CPT world is, wow, this is just what it has meant historically for pastors in terms of their calling, is to be functional theologians. So, we wanted to ... my co-Author and the co-Founder of the CPT, and in many ways really that the one who had the idea at the outset for the CPT, Gerald Hiestand, to resurrect this ancient vision, right, the subtitle of the book ... to, again, waive the banner for a way of going about pastoral ministry. It�s very countercultural now, but is rooted in the history of the Church and the great sort of pastors were great theologians, and great theologians were pastors through so much of the history of the Church. I should give a shout out here to the Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Doug Sweeney, because I think Doug was actually responsible ... we can trace it all the way back, the stream all the way up, he was the one responsible for the genesis of the CPT, all be it unwittingly. My co-Founder and co-Author, Gerald Hiestand, was doing an MA in Church History at Trinity Divinity School when Doug was there, talking about, I think, Puritan theology or American ... the Puritan era in American Church history, I don�t know exactly what the class was, Doug, but Gerald came away absolutely mesmerized and fascinated by the interplay between the pastoral calling and theology before the advent of the seminary and the modern research university, back in Jonathan Edwards� day, for example. And he came away from that class and getting that perspective on Church history wondering A) what has happened to the Church and to theology? When these two things have gone their separate ways. And then B) how might we bring them back together? Is that even possible? That was the birth, really, of the CPT, was that idea and the book is an articulation of that vision � that these two things, the pastor and theology really belong together intimately connected. >>Doug Sweeney: Todd, I know for a lot of experience talking about this that a lot of our pastoral listeners, maybe even seminary student listeners, are going to hear this and they�re going to think, �Wow, that�s a tall order. Is Wilson saying that we all need to get PhD�s if we�re going to be good pastors? How does he think we should balance the demands of pastoral ministry?� We didn�t say a lot about this when we introduced you, but of course you�ve been a pastor for many years as well. You know how full the job description is. >>Todd Wilson: Yes. (laughs) >>Doug Sweeney: What do you say? What are you recommending? Should some of them get PhD�s? Should all of them think of themselves as theologians? And insofar as you want to approach that, how do they [inaudible 00:16:58] their schedules? >>Todd Wilson: Well, there�s a lot of questions there, Doug, and they�re all great questions. And if I miss one of them, remind me and let�s come back to it. But I think it�s really important to say that ... and to say real clearly from the CPT that you definitely don�t need a PhD to be a marvelous, faithful, local church pastor. Nor do you need a PhD to be a functional theologian for the church, a pastor theologian in that sense. The PhD is not some silver bullet or magic dust to make one a pastor theologian. And we can talk about the [winsome 00:17:41] or the value of the benefit of a PhD, but I just want to disabuse anybody of that idea. Sometimes we are viewed that way as sort of advocating that every pastor needs a PhD. That�s not at all the case. Of course, there have been for much of the history of the Church there were no PhD�s to be had. So, that�s definitely not the case. Should one pursue a PhD I think my advice here is you�ve got to work from your gut if I can put it this way. In other words, if it is not a passion of yours, if you are not passionate about learning and about learning lots of different things, and about studying really hard, and if you don�t have an aptitude, some level of aptitude with all of that, then I would sort of dissuade from doing a PhD. Spurgeon used to talk about the advice he would give to people that would ask about whether they should be going into the pastorate. He said, his advice was, if you can do anything else besides going to the pastorate go do that. Which I always felt was pretty good advice. (laughs) In other words, a way of sort of sifting your desires. I think particularly in our credentialed society there�s a lot of cache that comes with being a PhD, and with having Dr. before your name. It has a lot of practical utility. It opens a lot of doors and all the rest of it. And that is true. That�s just a fact of modern life and, again, our credentialed society. But that�s not a sufficient reason to go get a PhD in terms of the time and the sacrifice and the financial resources and impact on family and all the rest of it. It needs to kind of emerge from your gut and your passions. I will say not just the passion for study, but I would say a passion for some area of theology or biblical studies or whatever the discipline is that has really caught your attention. It doesn�t need to be as narrowly worked out as a research proposal, but I�m saying if you don�t have something in your gut that you�re just passionate about learning more about I would dissuade one from getting a PhD. It�s just too taxing, too demanding. It requires too much of one, in terms of sacrifice, I think. And your energies can be better spent just being a self ... learning on your own and through the formal education that you may have already received. >>Doug Sweeney: Another related question that we sometimes get when we have conversations like this has to do with what the people in our congregations really need and really want. I think there�s a concern that if the CPT advances its mission too successfully too many pastors are going to be too heady to love people in normal kinds of ways and their sermons may become too distant or too high level to connect with people in the pews. Talk to us about that a little bit. >>Todd Wilson: Yes. Well, I would only want to affirm that that is a very real dilemma and challenge. I think that reflects the bifurcation of the divorce between theology, which in our modern world and contemporary ... in our ears is, we hear that as theology is an academic discipline that is in the academy. It�s done in the academy by professional scholars and academics. It�s an ivory tower exercise. Pastoring is something different. Pastoring is caring for people. Pastoring is shepherding, pastoring is being there at the bedside and the graveside and so on and so forth. So, think of these two concepts and categories as separate an the challenge is they are very different social locations, and the pastor who goes and gets a PhD and is, if you will, socialized in academic theology will leave that venue, that place, after two, three, four years of that kind of enculturation in the academic discipline and the socialization of all that � show up in a church and will speak in academic theology speak. It will be very hard not to do that. Let me give you one example. So, I spent three years in Cambridge doing a PhD studying Galatians. At one point I could have told you about everything that had been written on Galatians in the modern era, right? You know how this goes. You just are sinking and swimming in all of this academic research. Well, I finished that up. I landed College Church in Wheaton, I�m the Associate Pastor for Adult Discipleship, and so my first assignment is to teach the 120 person men�s bible study at 6AM on Friday mornings. But I�m a newly minted PhD in Galatians. So, I thought, I know what I�ll do, I�ll teach Galatians in reverse to this group of men at six in the morning because as everybody knows about Galatians, the epistolary post script 6:11-18 is the most significant part of Galatians and the hermeneutical key to the letter. And won�t they all be very interested to hear about all of this? You know? And maybe I�ll throw in some [inaudible 00:22:53] while I�m at it. I was so full of all of this academic stuff, it�s not very easy to translate that into the practicalities and the lived experience of the local church. So, just to affirm, Doug, that this sense that ordinary congregants have of this dichotomy or divorce is real. It is real. And so I think it�s incumbent upon, and here�s the advice to pastors who are pursuing this path, it�s incumbent upon us to show the relevance and the reality and the importance of substantive theological reflection for the everyday lives of ordinary people. So, that�s why we talk about the mission of the CPT as equipping pastors to engage today�s complex world. Congregants with no theological education or even formal education get that this is a complex world. Pastors who are theologically skilled and substantive, if they can help congregants navigate all of these difficult issues so that it can live more faithfully in today�s complex world, their congregants will appreciate them for that, and love them for that, and feel like they�re being well shepherded and cared for and fed from God�s Word. And that will make all the difference. Not pontificating, as an academic, but shepherding with substance and depth. >>Kristen Padilla: There are pastors that are listening to you and they�re thinking to themselves, �Well, I want to become a pastor theologian.� What do you say to them about next steps or what that would look like, or even how to get involved in the work of the CPT? >>Todd Wilson: Sure. You know, one of the ways we talk about the pastor theologian is that a pastor theologian is marked by a couple of things. One, they teach and share the riches of God�s Word to God�s people. So, they�re Bible people. They love the Bible. They dwell in scripture. And they speak it and pray it and sing it and preach it. That�s really the leading edge of what it means to be a pastor theologian. That�s one, that they�re Bible people. Two, that they are those who retrieve ... the way I like to put it is retrieve the treasures of the Christian tradition to re-apply them to the contemporary context. So, they understand that Christianity didn�t start 20 years ago, or even 200 years ago, but there�s a long centuries old conversation going on that we call the Christian faith with a vast wealth of resources that local church pastors can draw on to share with their congregants in terms of the worshipping life of the church, the theological reflection of the life of the church going back centuries. So, that�s I think another thing that pastors can do without earning PhD�s is to learn about the rich tradition of the Church and find creative and faithful ways to re-apply those things. And then thirdly, and maybe this is ... I don�t want to say most important, but is the cutting edge of what it means to be a pastor theologian, is this: to help your people think Christianly not just about Christian things but about everything. So, to help pastor theologians and their churches, to help your congregants think from a Christian perspective, not just about small groups or worship or evangelism or missions, but about the whole range of issues that we confront in our lives today. From immigration to racism to evolutionary biology and economics and all the rest of it. Think of it from a Christian perspective, that is from a theological perspective. That really marks, I think, the pastor theologian and that person�s work in a local church. And that�s something I think any pastor can do and pastors should do to be faithful in shepherding their people. How can folks connect with the work of the CPT? Yeah, I think you could start by just tapping into and benefitting from some of the resources we try to make available. You could visit us at www.pastortheologians.com. Our website has some regular blog postings, thought pieces from our network of pastors where you see modeled this engagement of theological reflection, life and ministry of the church. We also have a podcast where we drop an episode every Monday. I think that would be a real encouragement to those that are listening to tune in to that. We also host a conference every year in October where we try to bring together topnotch theologians as well as pastors to do some of what we call ecclesial theology and model it and put it in play through our conferences. Two other things, Kristen. One is if you�re a student we have student theologian fellowships. We have one going in Beeson that Doug has been involved with. We�re very thankful for that. But we�ve got nine others on nine seminary campuses around the country. And we�re going to start another five next academic year. So, those ... if you�re a student at one of those seminaries you could get online and see if we�ve got one that�s going to be meeting on your campus and check that out. Then lastly we have local theologian fellowships that meet in cities around the country from Boston to Minneapolis to LA, and if you�re in one of those cities you could check us out there as well. >>Doug Sweeney: I can offer personal testimony that our students have really enjoyed the student fellowship at Beeson this year. They�re really excited about it. >>Todd Wilson: That�s great. >>Doug Sweeney: Todd, we want to conclude just by hearing, again, from your heart about your own experience, particularly during the covid season. I know, as your friend, this is a season of transition for you. You�ve recently moved. Just any words of encouragement, edification for our listeners based on what the Lord�s been teaching you these days? >>Todd Wilson: Yeah, sure. Well, I so appreciate the question, Doug. We have just moved. We moved, in fact, from Chicago where we�ve been for 15 years back to our hometown. Both my wife and I�s hometown of Carmel, a northern suburb of Indianapolis. Actually, we live in Indianapolis proper, but ... and we moved the day before the country went on lockdown. So, it was quite a surreal experience. The next thing I know we have all seven children in the home on lockdown and doing homeschooling and all the rest of it. It�s been a wild experience, as I�m sure your listeners appreciate. I will say this, though. Katie and I, my wife Katie and I have been ... can I put it this way without sounding insensitive? But we�ve been very grateful for the gift of the lockdown. Not grateful for all the impacts of covid19 on the economy and people�s health and all the rest of it � our hearts go out to the country and to so many people who have been suffering so massively because of this. But wow, Doug, we have been able to slow down as a family in amazing ways. And linger, for example, at the dinner table. And just talk. With all seven of our kids. Our oldest is home from college and wouldn�t have otherwise been, and hanging out and they�ve got no one else to play with, so they�re all interacting with each other, and Katie and I have ... and I don�t want to paint it so it�s all been warm and fuzzy in our house, there have been plenty of bumps and tensions and things. But we�ve been very grateful for how our kids are flourishing and connecting with one another, and how we�re able to just slow down as parents and as a family, and enjoy them. So, if there�s any encouragement to the listeners it�s without, again, minimizing the significant and costly impacts of covid19, just to say to practice gratitude in the midst of this. There are ... I think God is giving us the grace of this gift of, if you will, a forced sabbatical for all of us and for our families and there�s a lot to be enjoyed there. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful words of [inaudible 00:30:56] theological wisdom with which to conclude our interview. You have been listening to the Reverend Dr. Todd Wilson, co-Founder and President of the Center for Pastor Theologians. We commend it to you warmly. We�re involved in it at Beeson and think the world of it. We�re very grateful to Dr. Wilson for being with us today. And we want to thank all of you for listening as well. May God bless you as you shelter in place, keep you safe and sound. We are praying for you here at Beeson. We love you a lot. Thanks for being with us. Goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You�ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.