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Sundoulos: Can you tell us about some of the current trends in your field that might be a real benefit to the church? What is “out there” that might really be of help to a pastor or a youth pastor?

Don Sunukjian: In the area of preaching, we’ve always been really strong in the preaching of epistles, didactic literature. But we’ve often floundered when it comes to preaching narrative, poetry, wisdom, or apocalyptic literature. And the field is starting to give attention to that. We’re starting to get more books on how to handle these genres so we are true to what the biblical author is saying and yet still relevant and clear to our contemporary culture. Kent’s recent book [See “Recent Publications” on page 11] is a great example. Pastors want to preach biblical narratives, but they don’t want to treat narratives as simply moral stories. God is writing theology in these events, and we’re getting more help now in how to preach narratives.

Kent Edwards: I’d like to jump on that too because I think that, in spite of concerns people have about the emerging church, one thing we are seeing there is a move towards storytelling. There’s much more emphasis on understanding the story of God and then relating our story to the story of God. I think we’re going to see a lot more preaching from the Old Testament because the Old Testament is ripe with a multitude of stories of how God worked in real people’s lives. I think pastors are going to find they aren’t communicating to the younger generation unless they learn how to tell stories.

Gary McIntosh: Another emphasis related to that is the whole aspect of metaphor. The whole emerging church movement is built around metaphors. One of their reactions is, of course, against scientific modern perspectives. And instead of talking about formulas, they want us to talk in terms of metaphors that have a little more mystery to them and allow people to kind of determine the meaning themselves. Instead of always telling them what it means, they want us to describe the metaphor and then leave some mystery—a bit like what Jesus did with the parables.

Sunukjian: Of course, in terms of mystery, ambiguity is not what we’re after. The parables were not ambiguous; they were flat hidden from those whom God had closed their ears. They had very clear meanings. In fact, Jesus said to His disciples, “If you have ears to hear, you will hear.” And that was an invitation to faith which would then lead to the meaning. It’s not that Jesus gave an open-ended story into which the listener could pour whatever content he or she wanted. To preach the biblical stories is good, but those biblical stories were designed to convey theological, propositional truth.

Mick Boersma: I’m seeing more books and articles on pastoral ministry in terms of the role of the shepherd. I think this emphasis has gotten lost over the years, especially in the kind of the cult of leadership where everything is about leadership. You walk into a Christian book store and it’s like walking into a bookstore at an airport—it’s all about leading to succeed, leading to get this or go there, and there hasn’t seemed to have been a focus on loving people, on genuine relationships, and that’s obviously a big deal with the younger generations. When I talk to our alumni, many of them tell me, “You know, I appreciate the programmatic stuff, I appreciate the leadership training. We need that—but it’s too narrow. I need a bigger picture of what pastoral ministry is.”

Sundoulos: It’s not either-or, it’s both-and?

Boersma: It’s both-and. Leadership is a part of being a faithful shepherd, but it’s not the whole deal. Feeding is a part of it, but it’s not the whole deal. It’s encouraging to me to hear from our alumni that they’re beginning to shy away from big seminars and are going back to basic stuff—teaching the Scriptures, loving God’s people—the meat and potatoes of ministry, which are really captured nicely in the shepherd metaphor.

Judy TenElshof: I’m amazed at what God is doing in all pockets of the country in spiritual formation. I think part of our responsibility is to present a good biblical foundation for spiritual formation. Times of solitude and silence are one of the ways that God builds his love inside of us, and our reaching out to people flows from that love. It flows out into a much different kind of ministry than the programs we’ve been used to. What we haven’t done very well in the church is articulate a good theology of “how does the Spirit really grow us?” And it seems to me that is where the emphasis needs to be. How does it work that we actually have the fruit of the Spirit and not fruit from a program or from our doing? So I see a growing awareness of the need for more emphasis on what the Bible says about sanctification.

Rex Johnson: Continuing with the thought of sanctification, the church has not, in general, addressed such basic issues as how to live together as husband and wife or how to parent, from the standpoint of sanctification. Although you have lots of books on those issues, they tend not to start from the theology of personal change, and in the context of a generation where the institution of marriage has crumbled, we have a generation of young people who have been hurt by the crumbling. I’m just beginning to see some materials on marriage that come from a solid theological base. Gary Thomas has written some good stuff, and David Gushee has a good book, Getting Marriage Right, that addresses some of these issues a little more foundationally.