Beeson Podcast, Episode #
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>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by my friend Joel Lawrence, the president of the Center for Pastor Theologians. Dr. Lawrence is a pastor who served a couple churches in his state of Minnesota. He's also a professor who's taught at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He's just delivered a marvelous commencement sermon for us here at Beeson Divinity School, and we're thrilled to have him on the program. So, thank you, Dr. Lawrence, for being with us. 
>>Lawrence:
Thanks, Doug. It's great to be here. I really appreciate it. 
>>Sweeney:
Let's start by introducing you to our podcast audience. Just tell us a little bit about who you are, how you came to faith in Christ, how you decided that the Lord was moving you into full -time ministry.
>>Lawrence:
Yeah, sure. I grew up in a in a pastor's home in San Jose, California, and then in Dallas, Texas, my dad became a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. So I grew up in a in a faith world, in a pastoring/academic world. But I always say faith didn't really come easily to me I never really rejected it as a child. But just it never really made sense to me as I was growing up, going through high school. When I went to college, I had a mentor there, a guy who was at that point in time with a group called Campus Crusade for Christ, called CRU.
>>Sweeney:
Yeah. And you went to a secular college. 
>>Lawrence:
I went to Texas A&M University. And this guy's name was Mark Hurt. He just kind of became a dear friend and a mentor, the kind of person that I could open up to about my doubts, about my struggles. My rebellion was never a pitch-to-faith kind of rebellion. It was just an internal, lots of questions, lots of grappling with the truth of the gospel and the reliability of the scriptures and all those kind of things. And Mark had a daughter born, an infant child. And on Saturday mornings, I would go over to Mark's house and his wife, Pam, and Mark and I would get in the van and we take his daughter out about a 30 minute drive out to this little small town outside of College Station, Texas, where we get kolaches. And we would just talk over kolaches. 
And in one of those one of those drives, I said to him, Mark, I just I'm still struggling. I don't know if I believe in this stuff. And he said to me, “Joel, you just need to go live like there is no God.” Which is a pretty bold thing to say to a sophomore in college, because that could have gone in a lot of different directions. But at that moment, I knew that I couldn't. And it wasn't that I couldn't because I didn't want to disappoint people or because I didn't want to disappoint my parents. 
It just connected me in to a faith that was there that I hadn't yet really understood or even recognized. And so I kind of marked my life from that point on into a process of faith seeking understanding. Now I had the faith, but all my questions didn't just magically disappear. But now I can ask them from within the frame of faith and explore who God was from within the frame of faith, but still have lots of questions about the things of God, the mystery of God. 
So I went through college then and went to seminary in Dallas where my dad was a professor. 
>>Sweeney:
Right after college? 
>>Lawrence:
Two years after, I was on a church staff for two years, got married during that time. And then Mindy and I went to DTS and I went there not sensing a deep a call to pastoral ministry or to a vocation, it was really more of intellectual exploration, continuing to do this faith-seeking understanding. And it was there I was in a history of doctrine class with a man named Dr. John Hannah. 
>>Sweeney:
Oh, he's a friend of mine. 
>>Lawrence:
He's a wonderful man. And that class was the second semester of my first year. And my wife will tell you, I changed in that class. I found a sense of vocation. I found a sense of direction in church history, in studying the history of the church. And that's really then what carried me through to grad school. 
>>Sweeney:
Can you give us just maybe 30 more seconds? I mean, this is the church historian in me wanting to know this. So how did that class do that for you? 
>>Lawrence:
So I think I found myself for the first time really understanding I'm connected to a much bigger thing. And the church has thought about a lot of the things I'm thinking about over centuries. And so it just connected me into that that questioning, exploring history of the church, the working out doctrines, the conversations that the church had over sometimes centuries to figure things out. And those questions are a vibrant part of the life of the church. 
And so I think seeing that the history of doctrine and how the church has thought these things through really connected me to my own soul, my own questioning. But again, it had been in the frame of faith, now it was in the frame of the church and the church's vital life of theology. 
>>Sweeney:
Yeah. If we can stay on this season of your life for just one more question. I've got certain kinds of listeners in mind when I ask this question. So you had that really significant experience as a sophomore in college. But by the time you were done with college, you were thinking not already yet that you had been called to pastoral ministry, but that you wanted to work at a church. So what was that? That's pretty fast. A lot of students who come to Beeson have similar stories. How did you figure out after that time in your sophomore year that you were that ready to serve a church? And then how did that turn into a sense that the Lord was moving you into pastoral ministry? 
>>Lawrence:
I never left the church. In all of my struggling, in all of my questioning, I always stayed connected to a community of faith. And I was a part of that, a church in College Station that was very important to me. This guy, Mark, was a part of that church as well, and some of the other pastors I got to know there, and they came alongside me as well. 
And so I think as things started to fall into place, working out my faith within the church was kind of a non-negotiable. It just was the way that it seemed like I was called to do it. So then I think as I journeyed through that, as I came to understand it more, then going to seminary, it was in seminary that I ... that's where I really sensed the calling to ongoing academic ministry. I'm not like a pure academician kind of a person, but with the sense of, I want to continue to do my own exploration, but also a realization that the evangelical church, and kind of my tradition of the evangelical church, and even more broadly, we don't, one, have the historical perspective to see the way that the church has wrestled with its questions. And two, we don't often create spaces for people to go deeply into theology and bring their questions with them and bring their concerns. And I think because of my experience, I wanted to be a part of helping other people do that. So my initial calling was to do academic ministry. 
>>Sweeney:
Did you go straight to Cambridge from Dallas? 
>>Lawrence:
Yeah. Straight out of DTS, right over to Cambridge. We left late September 2001, about two weeks after September 11th. We got on a plane and flew over to the UK, and over there for four years, and wonderful experience there. 
>>Sweeney:
Okay, one more question that's kind of autobiographical, and again, it's with certain kinds of listeners in mind here. And this will set up our Center for Pastor Theologians conversation, I think. So, from early on, you had ecclesial, churchly interests. You wanted to serve, and you were a pastor's kid, so you had a good feel for what that would be like. But you also had pretty strong kind of theological interests, academic interests. You really wanted to explore the faith that the Lord had given you. Did those two things in you coincide from the beginning? Was there a season in your life where you were trying to figure out how God wanted you to put those passions together in your life? Or how did that go? 
Because you wound up being a pastor for a while, a seminary professor for a while, and now you're president of the Center for Pastor Theologians. So how does the president of the Pastor Theologians look back on this season of his life and kind of sort out how God was sort of readying you for the kinds of ministry he gave you to do? 
>>Lawrence:
So there's a couple of pretty clear junctures along the way. One is when I started to really get curious about academic theology in a new way and thinking about going and doing a PhD, I had a conversation with my dad who had been a pastor, was now a professor at a seminary. And what he said to me was, he said, “Joel, it's great if you want to do academic theology. It's great if you want to go do a PhD. But your impact is always going to be as a pastor. What your students will remember is your pastoral care for them.” And I think that started to link those two things more deeply than I had realized before. And that comes a lot out of who my dad is as a Pastor who for many years pastored churches and then moved into the academy but also always was a pastor within that. So, I think his vocation kind of linked up with mine in some new ways. 
And then when we moved to Minnesota from the UK, I can remember it very clearly. I was driving down the street, Highway 96 in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, and drove by a church. We'd been visiting a couple of churches and I haven't had this happen too often in my life, but there is a very clear direction from God that that was the church that we were supposed to be at. And we obeyed that call. We went to that church. And after not too long, they invited me to become the teaching pastor of the church. 
>>Sweeney:
Well, how'd that go? 
>>Lawrence:
While I was at the seminary full time.
>>Sweeney:
You keep reminding me of St. Augustine with your faith-seeking understanding, and now you're being conscripted into pastoral ministry. 
>>Lawrence:
That's pretty good company. I'll take it. Yeah, but we went to that church, and after a couple years, the guy who had been the teaching pastor there moved on, and I had been doing some interim preaching, and they invited me to be the teaching pastor. It was a multi-site church, but had live preaching at both sites. And so there was a senior pastor, and then I was a teaching pastor of this site. 
And what happened then was the ministry in my classroom really started to change, because I could now talk from my lived experience as a pastor immediately. Like, I'm in staff meetings this week, and we're dealing with this at our church, and now how does theology matter in this question or in that question? And I think that was another place having had that call from God to be at that church, that calling to be a teaching pastor. And then how that started to impact my classroom, but then also in new ways living out, okay, this is what I believe theologically. 
And now I'm preaching and teaching every week with people who are in all walks of life. How do I really pastor them theologically. And that coincided with the work of the founding of the CPT, which came from a group of us that were in Cambridge together, kind of the seed group. The idea, told the story multiple times, was one of our colleagues, Gerald Heastand, was in one of your classes, and he had this vision of theology for the church. So a number of those things kind of coincided. And it was right as I was stepping into that role at the church that the CPT came on online. And Todd and Gerald, the co-founders, invited me to come and be a part of that first group. 
And it was really a lot of ways through that that my vocation started to shift from full-time in the academy to sensing God was calling me now to move to a church. And I did that a couple years later and was pastor of a church for eight years following that. 
>>Sweeney:
That is a perfect segue to the conversation I want to have for the next few minutes about the Center for Pastor Theologians. People who listen to our podcast already know that I care a lot about the Center for Pastor Theologians and I've been involved for a long time. We've started referring pretty quickly to the CPT, and some people listening to us now might not know what the CPT is, though probably right now they're figuring it out. 
Let me just ask you as the president of the Center for Pastor Theologians, the CPT, what is it? I think once you tell us what it is, everybody's gonna know how the Lord prepared you to lead it, but what's the vision, what's your sense of mission and purpose, what are you trying to do? 
>>Lawrence:
So the mission of CPT is forming pastor theologians to shepherd the church in our complex world. What we mean by that is we're convicted, we're convinced that the pastoral office is a theological office. 
Pastors are the theologians of the church. And we've lost that vision for the pastorate and for lots of reasons. And we can kind of go back and explore historically what happened there. But particularly in American evangelicalism, we've lost that vision of the pastor as the theologian of the church. And what I mean by that is not pastors who hide away in their studies and read Aquinas and the Latin all day. 
We want pastors who are shepherds of their congregations, but they're shepherds of their congregations from an identity as a theologian of the church who is called and equipped and gifted to lead the church into a deeper knowledge of who God is, to lead the church into the mysteries of God, to lead the church as a worshiping community, to worship God rightly, to resist some of the trends towards kind of a negative pragmatism of just churches about what works to get the successful criteria that we want. 
Two, the church is a theological body. It's formed by God. It's as theologians of the Reformation say, it's a creature of the word. It's a product of God's work. And if it's that, then there is a sociology to it, but it's a theology that's underneath all of it. 
And so if pastors don't have that vision and understand their identity as theologians, then the church is going to be off the mark on what it's called to be. And so the driving passion to CPT is encourage pastors, largely through connectedness, in relational communities with each other to live out this vision of the pastor theologian.
>>Sweeney: 
Oh, wonderful. What a privilege to serve as the leader of that organization. 
>>Lawrence:
It's a huge honor. It's a huge honor. It truly is. Yeah.
>>Sweeney:
So the kinds of people who listen to our podcast are kind of seminary students and prospective seminary students who are wondering about Beeson and seminary and wonder what the Lord's doing. Pastors, many of whom are alumni of Beeson, but not all. People who were in the trenches of pastoral ministry trying to stay sharp. And then some lay people as well who love their pastors and are serious disciples and have a connection to Beeson. One way or another we have a big thriving lay academy program here. 
So I'm telling you that to set up this question. How can people of those three sorts, the seminary students or prospective students, the people in pastoral ministry currently, and even people in their churches who aren't pastors themselves but love their pastors, how can they get kind of connected in to the ministry of the CPT, and what do you want them to be thinking about, what do you want them to be sensing from the Lord, feeling about the significance of the ministry of the CPT for them?
>>Lawrence:
So I think for the students, I would say, one, if it's prospective students, encourage them to come to Beeson. 
>>Sweeney:
Oh, wow. And I didn't even tell you to say that. 
>>Lawrence:
You didn't. But I love what's happening here. I'm such a fan of you. I'm such a fan of your faculty, the model that you have here. So I said this to your faculty a little bit ago. As I travel around, people ask me about seminaries I strongly encourage them to look at Beeson because I think Beeson's just it's one of the best things going right now. So students come here ... if this vision of the CPT is capturing to you - you're gonna find a lot of it here at Beeson. Your influence, your faculty understands this. I think that's hugely important. You know, current students, I don't know how many are in the student fellowship group that there is here. 
>>Sweeney:
It's usually almost 15 every time. 
>>Lawrence:
Yeah, so encourage them if they have the opportunity to be a part of that. We've established these fellowship groups at various seminaries. As students are in their formal theological education, they catch a vision. of the pastorate as pastor theologians, so that maybe as they're thinking about what comes after seminary, if it's going right into a church, then they're thinking in this vein of how to be a pastor. Or if they're thinking about further education, by all means do that, but do it in service of the church. That's a stewardship of education for the sake of the church. 
I think for local pastors, pastors who are part of the Beeson alumni community, obviously you can go to our website pastortheologians.com. We have resources there. We have a conference. We'd love to get people connected. But I think more broadly, the CPT doesn't have the corner on the pastor theologian. This is a movement. This is something that is a reclamation project from the history of the church. So what I'd say is explore what is your operative understanding of your identity as a pastor? 
And are there ways that you feel, and this is very common for pastors, that perhaps some of your identity has been taken over by maybe good things, but more of the pragmatic kind of things that can tend to drive our churches? And just pray for the Spirit to be at work in you, to make you the kind of theological leader of the church that you need to be and find peers, find people, and we could help get people connected if they want to reach out through our website.
And then for lay people I was having this conversation not too long ago. Someone was asking me as a layperson what can they do? I said one of the things you can do is, in a healthy way, in a good way, demand that your pastor be more of a theologian, if you're not getting that from your pastor.
>>Sweeney:
What a blessing that would be to your pastor, let alone to the whole church. 
>>Lawrence:
Because the church really does have a large say in how this goes. And it's one of the challenges pastors face is, if they want to live out this identity, but the church isn't amenable to it for whatever reason, then it can be a much easier thing just to kind of comport yourself to the desires of the people of the church. So if the people of the church are saying, we need more, we need deeper roots, we don't need somebody who's just going to come up and be a blowhard and use lots of big words and have no connection to our lives. The pastor is responsible to do that. But the church needs more today. We need deeper roots. 
And so I encourage lay people just to, again, healthily, but encourage your pastor towards this and encourage your peers, the people in the church. Why we need this? Why we need this vision of the church first, and then the pastor who can shepherd that vision. 
>>Sweeney:
So when this episode of the podcast drops, we're gonna tell people about your commencement sermon as well, and send them to it, ask them to watch it or listen to it. Can you give them a little teaser? What did you preach to the graduating students at Beeson Divinity School about today? 
>>Lawrence:
Yeah, really a blessing to be here. Again, thank you for the invitation. I encouraged the students to crucify their diploma. That was kind of the heart of this survey. 
>>Sweeney:
Oh, you're such a downer. 
>>Lawrence:
I know, right? This wonderful celebratory thing, and here I come talking about crucifixion. 
>>Sweeney:
Oh, but it was beautiful the way you talked about it. 
>>Lawrence:
My encouragement was out of 1 Corinthians 1, the foolishness of God, the weakness of God. And this biblical theme that we see, and we see it in Paul's ministry, we see it throughout the apostles' ministry, we see it in the call to take up the cross. God uses that which God crucifies. And it's vital for us. 
And what I wanted to communicate to the graduates today is the beauty of receiving this diploma, the symbol that it is, prayers and support, and all kinds of people that have brought them to this place. That's beautiful. There's also a danger in it that Paul warns us about in 1 Corinthians 1, the danger of relying upon our own wisdom, relying upon our own strength. And so I just wanted to encourage the students as they go from this place, as they go out into ministry, to bring their diploma, to offer it to God as a sacrifice, and to trust in the strength of God's weakness that guides us in life. 
>>Sweeney:
Thank you for speaking into our lives in that way. And listeners, I really encourage you to go check it out. We're about out of time. Dr. Lawrence, I do have a last question that I ask everybody. Our podcast listeners really do like to pray for what God's doing at Beeson, for the students at Beeson, the professors and so on. They like to pray for guests as well. If our listeners are gonna say a prayer or pray in a little bit of a regular way for Pastor Joel Lawrence, Dr. Joel Lawrence, President of the Center for Pastor Theologians, how should they pray for you? 
>>Lawrence:
I appreciate that. A couple things on a personal level. We've got four kids and three of them are in college and we're in that season of life-
>>Sweeney:
We have no money!
>>Lawrence:
There’s that piece ... but there's also the just shepherding our kids through this season. It's fun. It's scary as we're starting to see ... just wondering where they're going to end up and where life's gonna take them. Just appreciate prayers for our family if people would be so kind to do that. 
I think for the CPT, just pray for favor from the Lord to expand our ministry reach so that more and more pastors can be connected. And we're not trying to be some huge conglomerate, some big thing, but we are ... I think God has called the CPT to a very particular role in the life of the church in this moment to commend this vision of the pastor, but then to create these communities and structures where pastors can be strengthened over years. And God providing for us the right pastors to be connected in and all that we need in order to serve them. I would be very grateful for prayers for the CPT for that. 
>>Sweeney:
Okay, listeners, this has been the Reverend Dr. Joel Lawrence. He is the president of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He preached a wonderful sermon at our graduation ceremonies today. Please pray for him and his family as Joel and his wife Mindy even maybe are beginning to think about what it would be like to be empty nesters someday once we get all these kids through college. And please pray as well for the ministries of the center for pastor theologians and the mission and the movement that they're trying to serve. Thank you for tuning in. We're praying for you too. We love you and we say goodbye for now. 
>>Mark Gignilliat:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.