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TenElshof: That goes to parenting too: teaching young people, who themselves have never been parented and their hearts have never been nurtured, how to nurture a child’s heart, and how God uses marriage and parenting to refine our holiness.
Sundoulos: As scholars, as seminary professors, you are involved in academia, but you all are also actively involved in ministry. How do you manage both? How do you see this dual role? How do you keep one from overwhelming the other?
Sunukjian: I think in our particular department we’re drawn in both directions. We just are. Our department is Christian Leadership and Ministry. We need to be trainers more than practitioners, but we can’t give up being practitioners. Obviously, there’s a benefit to us to stay current in “practitioning” while we’re trying to be teachers.
Sundoulos: Could you give us some examples of the kinds of “practitioning” you do that are out there in the real world, not here in the “ivory tower”?
Johnson: My wife and I lead marriage conferences, and periodically I speak to other family issues as well. But I think it’s important to not just minister in our area of expertise. I think it’s easy for us, as well as other pastors, to get so focused on the area that we have our expertise in, that we are not well-rounded. So on Wednesday nights, I go out witnessing. My focus is to try and find people who have not responded to the claims of Christ yet and have the opportunity to share Christ with them.
Sunukjian: That’s amazing! Do you do that within the context of a church that is committed to that activity, or is that just something you have chosen to do solo?
Johnson: No, I proposed it to our church and said, “Look, there are people coming because it’s a new church, and it’s reaching out to community people. We can’t make assumptions about their relationship with Christ. I’d like to go and visit them and take some people with me and train them in the process.” The pastor said, “Hey, that’s a great idea.” Kind of retro, but it’s a great idea. [laughter]
Sunukjian: So you’re following up with these people who had visited the church, and you have a natural bridge entering into the conversation instead of just standing on the street corner encountering strangers. I think that is the best way to do that.
Boersma: My wife and I, as you know, work with alumni as well as students, so we spend a lot of time off campus visiting, and I guess I would say I research people. The kind of research I do is not related to book writing and article writing as much as it is getting to know people while they are students and after they leave here, finding out what is going on in their lives and their ministries. I think that hugely informs what I do in the classroom. I think in some respects, I’m in a better seat here to have my finger on the pulse of ministry than I was as a solo pastor. It’s exciting to glean from our alumni and students what’s really going on in their world of ministry and their life, and then let that inform my curriculum and how I approach the subjects that I teach and the field education program I direct.
TenElshof: I probably do more outside of Talbot than I do inside of Talbot. Spiritual direction attracts pastors as well as people from the community. My husband and I are developing Hilltop Renewal Center, which we had going for three years before forest fires destroyed it, and now we’re fundraising for rebuilding. [Editor’s note: find out more at www.hilltoprenewal.org.] I’m in a group with teachers in secular schools, and we get together and talk about books and how they relate to the spiritual life. And I’m involved in outreach programs to pastors outside of Talbot.
Edwards: Through the years as I’ve been teaching, I’ve spoken at conferences and retreats, preached often on Sunday mornings, and served as an interim pastor. I have found that it’s critical to have my foot in the pastorate on an ongoing basis. For one thing, it helps in the classroom because when someone says, “You can’t do that in today’s church,” I can say, “Well, you may be right, but two days ago it worked, and I’m going to do it again next Sunday, and you are welcome to come and watch.” That gives real credibility in the classroom.
Sunukjian: Most of what I do outside Talbot is connected to the same kind of thing I do inside. I teach preaching at Talbot. Outside, I teach preaching to pastors. I do a lot of denominational conferences, a lot of Doctor of Ministry courses, and these are all pastors who are actively involved in ministry, so somehow there’s a ministry to them. And then of course I preach on Sundays, and so my life is pretty narrow… [laughter]
McIntosh: I can identify with Don, because most of what I do outside of Talbot is related to what I do inside of Talbot. I work with churches in terms of leadership and management issues and small group development in the church. So I tend to end up consulting with two or three churches a year on an in-depth level, 4–6 months with each church. I also teach courses at about ten pastoral conferences around the United States on various topics.
Johnson: I’ve had a wonderful ministry overseas over the past years, where I’ve had the opportunity to write curriculum for the former Soviet Union, and then for Africa, and now for the Pacific rim, related to character development.
Sundoulos: What are you working on now? What research are you doing? Do you have any articles or book coming out soon?
McIntosh: I have a book coming out next year with Baker, and it’s going to be called Get Ready for Company. It’s going to analyze how to welcome new people when they come to church, and it’s going to look at some of the new things that some of the newer, younger churches are doing that might be quite different from what we’ve traditionally done to welcome people. I’m also doing some research on evaluating the actual impact of the church growth movement on denominations in the United States. The church growth movement has been influential for the past thirty years, but no one’s really done any in-depth research to see what the precise impact has been.
Sunukjian: I’m writing what the publisher, Kregel, hopes will be a major textbook in the area of homiletics.
I think the title will be “Invitation to Biblical Preaching.” It’ll be part of a curriculum of seminary texts, drawing on several different denominations and professors from different traditions, so it should have a pretty wide exposure in the American culture.
TenElshof: Bob Saucy and I have talked very seriously about coming up with a sequel to our first book, Men and Women In Ministry, taking a look at how we can bring that into a more practical book of how does the complement between men and women really work out, in ministry, in the home, and in life.
Boersma: I continue to write newsletters for our alumni; each one contains an article of some encouragement to them. Currently, I’m working on a book about pastoral transitions (transitioning from one ministry to another) along with Michael Anthony from the CE Department, to be published by Zondervan in late 2006. And then next summer, several of us are involved in the International Pastors Conference. I was asked by Mike Wilkins to speak on spiritual formation and church leadership.
Johnson: I have an article on ministry with newlyweds coming out in the Journal of Christian Education next spring. I’m wrestling now with an article on ministering in the context of grief that comes out of our own experience of losing my son-in-law’s brother a year ago.
Sundoulos: As you think back to your own days in seminary and graduate school, what are some of the most important factors——people, books, experiences, spouses, children——that have gone into shaping who you are today?
McIntosh: Well, what comes to my mind immediately are two pastors who mentored me and gave me opportunities in ministry. I stayed in contact with them for many years; one of them has gone on to heaven, the other one is about 81, and we still see each other and I still look to him for lots of advice and mentoring. I think the other most important factor is my family. Going through the process of seeing your kids grow up and become teenagers and then get married and establish their own families—that has a certain maturing influence on your life that you can’t get anywhere else.