This month’s vibe is…FANCY church

It’s not megachurch vibes.

It’s also not liturgical vibes.

It’s FANCY church vibes.

Megachurches have fog machines. Liturgical churches have incense.

FANCY CHURCH puts frankincense in the fog machines.

MAKE SURE TO SHARE THE VIBE

FANCY vibey ideas for the congregation

Never ever forget that the vibe is for everyone, pastor and congregant alike, so here’s how to implement it with some concrete examples. You can do exactly what’s suggested here, or you can riff on them to make the FANCINESS your own.

1. Wear something that’s 💁‍♀️ SOOOOO EXTRA 🤩 to church every Sunday. Like a fascinator (ladies!) as an ironic riff on head coverings (we’re still egalitarian 👍), or aviator sunglasses (b/c we see through a glass darkly, 1 Cor 13:12).

2. If you baptize someone, throw a bunch of fresh lilies in the water. Because It’s pretty and because Jesus clothes us all 🥹 (Matt 6:28) #GloryGreaterThanSolomon

3. For communion, SKIP THE STORE BRAND! We’re only using the finest Welches grape juice.1 And make sure a crunchy mom or a dude who’s deep in a midlife crisis provides homemade sourdough.

   

   Pastoral Theology is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

IS IT MORAL???

We’re back this month with another edition of IS IT MORAL???—where you, my beloved readers, get to vote on whether something is, in fact, moral or not.

Here it is:

Now, a word from this month’s sponsor:

Little Luxurious Locutions

This month, we’re not calling them “homilies,” “sermons,” or “Spirit-inspired words,” because that’s not fancy enough. Here’s some little ideas for your locutional luxuries:

Read more

and I go way back. Our friendship was originally forged translating the New Testament together in Koine Greek III at Evangel University as undergrads. Years later, our paths crossed again when I became the lead pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God in Iowa City where Tyler happened to be attending and serving in numerous capacities as a lay minister. He now lives in Edenton, NC which is a long ways from Iowa, but I’m thrilled we’ve kept in contact.

One thing that’s been a constant in our relationship has been our mutual love for the Scriptures. And though our academic and ministerial paths have taken significantly different turns, I’m delighted that we’re both so persistently delighted by the Bible. I think that delight is the Holy Spirit.

Tyler is an incredible communicator with a passion to see the mysteries of the Christian faith communicated with clarity and inspiration to every congregant regardless of job, lifestyle, or educational experience. This is what Pastoral Theology with (me) Joseph Lear is all about, which is why I’m thrilled to spotlight Tyler.

Subscribe to Tyler's Substack

Give it a read. You’ll enjoy it.

And make sure to share it with a couple of people who will be similarly inspired.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was trying to wrap up a master’s degree by finishing a thesis on water baptism.

I was stuck.

Everyone in the New Testament who talks about water baptism points to a different place in the Old Testament, and I was trying to figure out why.

• John the Baptist evokes the crossing of the Jordan River in his baptism (Matthew 3, Joshua 4).

• Paul connects it to the crossing of the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10:1-6, Exodus 14).

• And Peter connects it to the flood in Genesis (1 Peter 3:21, Genesis 7).

Clearly, they are all talking about the same basic thing, but they couldn’t seem to agree on which Old Testament passage was the one that water baptism was based on.

Then, like Neo in The Matrix, I finally saw it.

It came like a lightning bolt; adrenaline shot through my body as this massive (for me) project suddenly snapped together, and my understanding of the entire Bible shifted unexpectedly and forever.

What came together was this: the theme of water hovered beneath the surface of much of the biblical text, breaking out at critical and often unexpected junctures in the narrative. This theme of water, like an unseen underground river, connected these passages, revealing an underlying narrative with a particular logic and flow that connected the whole Bible into one unified story.

This article isn’t really about water baptism, though I think that is often criminally underrated in our Protestant churches. But if we rightly understand water baptism, and how the New Testament writers view it as something that connected their situation to powerful movements of God going all the way back to the very beginning of Scripture, it helps us see the Bible for what it really is…

…one unified story.

We read and think about the Bible in parts, bits, and pieces.

Kevin Vanhoozer has the right of it, “There are two testaments, four gospels, and a dozen or so major types of literary genres [in the Bible].” (Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture, and Hermeneutics, 28).

Our Bibles are sliced and diced into a cascading array of different divisions. Our one Bible is divided into 2 testaments, 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and the editors of our modern Bibles even add section headings to help us make use of the 31,000+ verses.

Most of us can’t help but see the Bible as if it is a book of parts, a vast collection of different stories, verses, and hard-to-pronounce names, all knitted together in a strange and mysterious way.

But is it?

The tough thing about a topic like water baptism isn’t just that different writers handle it differently; it’s that no one in the New Testament ever really bothers to give a systematic explanation for how it functions or what it means. There are only hints (Romans 6:3-4 and 1 Peter 3:21, for example).

In other words, it is assumed but never really explained.

Take, for example, Paul’s discussion about baptism in Romans 6. He’s really making a point about how Christians are supposed to live. (Cf. 6:1-2). He then uses baptism to explain why and how.

His point wasn’t “go get baptized so you can live better.” His point was “you ought to live better, or else, why were you baptized?” Baptism lives in the background of the point he’s trying to make.

Elsewhere, John the Baptist uses water baptism in the Jordan River to explain, in part, how the coming of the Messiah will be significant, explaining the mystery of the future in the shared story of the past, i.e., the crossing into the promised land. (Matthew 3:11-12).

This is when I had my Matrix moment: I saw the underlying theological logic of Scripture at work, unfolding like the long stream of code Neo finally sees running everything in the Matrix.

The reason why the New Testament writers kept looking to different passages rather than the same one was that they intuitively understood something I was just beginning to uncover. Water baptism isn’t ultimately about one single passage, story, or event, but about a critical theme that spans these different moments in the story of Scripture.

When I saw this, it opened up the Bible in a new and better way.

John the Baptist, Paul, and Peter connected water baptism to different stories not because they disagreed, but because they all agreed with each other. Each tapped into a different expression of the one unified underlying story.

The theme they tap into isn’t water per se, but that when God acts decisively to condemn (Genesis 7, Exodus 14) or save and create (Genesis 1, Exodus 14, Joshua 4), water is a physical expression of God’s work.

From the New Testament writers’ perspective, these are different stories that tap into the same unifying idea, or maybe different expressions of one overarching story.

Obviously, this has huge implications for what we think water baptism is all about.

• It brings our story into the story of Scripture. In water baptism, Scripture’s story is united with our own personal story. What God did through the Red Sea and the Jordan River, he does for us, all pictured in the waters of baptism.

• It reminds us of an essential theme in Scripture. Water baptism isn’t some vague, meaningless ritual we do simply because Jesus commanded us to; it taps into an essential theme that runs throughout Scripture, dramatizing it.

• It demonstrates that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Water baptism shows everyone who (hopefully) watches that God is still doing what he’s always done.

• It brings past, present, and future together into one moment. Water baptism pictures what God did, what he is doing, and what he will do, all at once.

The great thing is that this idea isn’t just reserved for water baptism. It can transform how we see all of Scripture, too.

We quickly begin to discover that Scripture tells one unified story.

It is one.

While there are 66 books, an unknown number of authors, and different literary genres, we see the Bible as one. One of the reasons why we have so many of Paul’s letters enshrined in our New Testament, for example, is that he set out to explain how Jesus makes sense of the entire history of Israel, how the Gentiles actually fit perfectly into this history, and how everything that has happened, will happen, and is happening, is happening according to the will of God, as it has all along.

It is unified.

To say the Bible is non-contradictory is just the beginning. I’m saying that there is a miraculous unity in Scripture—that, even though the Bible is stunningly diverse in so many ways (authorship, language, nationality, literary genre, writing style, etc.), it displays a resounding unity that is impossible to explain purely in terms of its human authors. The Bible wasn’t randomly compiled, an artifact of history. It has a unity within its diversity that reflects its divine author, God, as much as its many different human authors.

It is a story.

All these books and writings, whether narrative or not, are part of a unifying story that supplies the context, meaning, and significance of every individual part. That story, beginning in Genesis, climaxing in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and culminating in Revelation, is one story told over many generations.

The Bible has 66 books, and they tell one unified story.

I think there are four very practical takeaways from the fact that the Bible is actually one unified story.

1. Reading the Bible becomes more than a fact-finding mission. It is no longer about merely trying to figure out what a particular passage means, or how to apply it to your current work situation. Instead, it becomes about embedding yourself in the one unified story of Scripture and learning to see the world the way the Bible does.

2. Making sense of the text becomes easier. Everything you read connects to the larger narrative of Scripture. What is confusing in the micro becomes clearer in the macro. We call this Scripture interpreting Scripture.

3. It becomes more interesting. We all love stories; recognizing the Bible is, at the end of the day, a story, rather than a random collection of propositional truths, makes the whole experience of reading the Bible better.

4. We see our story (our life) in light of God’s story. Our lives, good and bad, become “caught up” in the story of Scripture. The Bible becomes less about what God did and said long ago and more about what he’s doing and saying right now. We’re no longer looking over the shoulders of the figures in Scripture, listening to what God said to them; we’re finally hearing what God continues to say to us.

I want to end with this bit of encouragement.

Reading the Bible isn’t about unraveling a riddle; it is about learning a story.

It is the story of what God did.

But it isn’t just about a story that happened long ago. That story relates how what God did in one generation, God does in another. So it is also a story about what God is doing for us today.

But it isn’t just about what God is doing for us today, either.

The story of what God did once, and did again, also declares that what he has done, he will do again. (Psalm 22:29-31). So, reading the Bible is also about learning about what he will do, just as much as about what he has done.

Water baptism and the Bible tell us a story that brings together past, present, and future into one multivalent moment because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

I hope you can fall more deeply than ever in love with the Bible.

Subscribe to Tyler's Substack

In this edition:

For Free Subscribers:

👉Center for Pastor Theologians Podcast: Joseph Lear on becoming a pastor-theologian.

👉Promo for ’s “The Unified Story of Scripture (through Baptism)”

For My Supporters:

👉Book update on Tongue On Fire: Recovering the Spirit and Power of Pentecostal Proclamation (it’s a FUN one 😏😎😉)
👉Office Hours

The Center for Pastor Theologians’ “Becoming a Pastor Theologian” with me.

In September, invited me to talk about my journey as a pastor and academic. Joel is one of the most generous and hospitable people I know, so it’s worth listening even to just get an introduction to his leadership as president of the Center for Pastor Theologians.

I’m linking the Apple Podcast version, but it’s available wherever you get your podcasts.

Additionally, here’s a little snippet I wrote about my book, Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival for promotion at CPT.

The Unity of the Bible

Keep an eye out Monday morning for a guest post on Pastoral Theology by my friend . He loves the Bible as much as I do, so I think you’re going to enjoy his perspective.

👉Don’t forget that one of the perks of being a supporting subscriber is the opportunity to write a guest post. If you’re already supporting and want to write something, but want a little coaching on your idea and the writing process please reach out. I’d enjoy the collaboration 😇

Read more

In this edition:

For Free Subscribers

👉Announcing Geneva at U Iowa.

For Supporting Subscribers

👉Sneak peak at my presentation for the Center for Pastor Theologians Conference (Oct 21-23).

👉Office Hours.

Geneva at U Iowa

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve added a final piece to my portfolio for the next year: I’m officially the Theologian-in-Residence with Geneva at the University of Iowa.

Geneva is…

• Dedicated to bringing churches, campus ministries, local organizations, and university of Iowa together for the common good.

• Committed to open dialogue about the big questions of life (this is where I come in!)

• A place to integrate faith across university disciplines and departments.

Geneva is part of the Consortium for Christian Study Centers, which is a network serving at the intersection of the local church and universities across the country.

If you want to see what other Christian study centers look like, check out Anselm House at the University of Minnesota, and Upper House at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Over the last decades, Geneva has hosted leading intellectuals at the intersection of faith, higher education, and the common good, including NT Wright, David Brooks, Sir John Polkinghorne, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Bryan Stevenson.

What I will be doing:

As the Theologian-in-Residence, my portfolio will be comprised of two things this fall.

First, I will be hosting live Field and Faith Forums, where I will engage scholars and community leaders about the intersection of their faith and their unique vocation. The first session will be next week on Friday Sept 18 at Noon CST. I will be interviewing Dr. Fred Skiff, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Iowa, about chaos, order, and mystery in science and Christianity. The event will also be LIVE on Substack, so keep an eye out for the link later this week.

Second, I will be hosting an “Ask Anything” night at Geneva’s location called The Space (located at 20 E Market Street in Old Brick, right smack in downtown Iowa City on U Iowa’s campus).

The gathering will be open to young adults who want the freedom to ask honest (and maybe a little unhinged!) questions about faith, theology, the Bible, church, and life.

In sum, I’m aiming to be a resource for other university ministries like Chi Alpha, Navigators, The Salt Company, and more—providing a space for Christian intellectual formation.

Say a prayer for me as I embark on this new exciting endeavor.

Subscribe now

Share

Read more

I do.

There’s football in the air, rising thicker than Canadian wildfire smoke. Grab a pig skin (chicharrón or an oblong “foot”ball—your choice) and dig in, because you’re gonna need it for the September 2026 Pastoral Theology VIBE ⚡️

Welcome to another edition of Pastoral Vibe-ology, a seriously unserious sub-Substack. I, Joseph Lear, am your viber of vibes, here to help you vibe with the VIBE that’s taking the American church faster than the NCAA can ruin college sports.

Last month, I was on vacay. I appreciate all of the direct messages, emails, and texts I got supporting me in my vacation vibe. I didn’t respond to any of you because I WAS ON VACATION, but I see your love and I give it right back to you.

Subscribe now

This month’s vibe comes with an update on my life: I’m the first-ever Theologian in Residence at the Geneva Christian Study Center at the University of Iowa. More on that later, but since I’m on campus every day—huffing deeply the pigskin-scent wafting across the black and gold sunrise (unique to Iowa City)—I’m declaring that this month’s vibe is BIG TEN.

FOOTBALL?!?!

Before you do anything else, the following video is required viewing for the VIBE. Not only does it highlight the vibe, but it’s also a precious piece of Christian history because this video put YouTube on the Evangelical map circa 2010. Watch the whole thing, but pay attention to the 55 second time-stamp onward:

Pig Skin Preach ‘em

As always, I’m here to help you preach the VIBE so you can vibe the vibe and viiiiiibe while preaching. The first sermon suggestion is a little on the nose, but we have to be willing to go there:

1. The Original BIG TEN (i.e. The Ten Commandments). Be sure to highlight that the B1G Conference (confusingly) has more than ten teams, which is evidence of humanity’s penchant for adding to God’s law. It’s called legalism.

2. Sing B1Gly for the Lord: Making Melody with the Harp of Ten Strings (Ps. 33:2)

3. Eighteen and the Mission of God: 18 is how many teams are actually in the Big Ten. 18 is in between 12 and 24. Understand it like this: we’re trying to get from the 12 apostles to the 24 elders (in Rev 4). Which means 18 stands for the era of the church. When the Big Ten Conference reaches 24 teams, that’s when Jesus will come back. It’s complicated, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

4. Tim Tebow. (That’s it. Just preach about Tim Tebow).

IS IT MORAL???

This month I’m introducing a new bit tailored to the vibe called 🤔 IS IT MORAL???

I want to hear your voice, and you should want to hear your voice too.

Here it is:

Now, a word from our sponsor:

This month’s VIBE Sponsor is…

The Iowa Pork Industry

who make skins for the boys on the gridiron

and for our keto-inspired chip bowls at home.

They remind us with every brat grilling venture

that the OT purity laws aren’t for us.

Keep piggin’ out.

#OinkOink

#JesusIsLord

Share

Finally, A Herky Update

Read more

“I am not ashamed of the evangel, for it is the power of God for salvation for all who believe” (Romans 1:16, my translation).

From the Great Awakenings to Billy Graham to Donald Trump, Evangelicalism has been a mainstay of American public life. Today, the term elicits anxiety. It’s something out there, held at arm’s length even by those who by all metrics belong to the movement. Who even is a self-identifying evangelical anymore? I honestly don’t know, because I can’t recall the last time I met someone who said so without all manner of caveats, extra modifiers, hums and haws, and (sometimes) apologies.

Except .

She’s an evangelical, and she’s not ashamed of it. She really believes that what evangelicals stand for is the power of God for salvation for all who believe. That is the ultimate defense in her new book (hitting the press today!), In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured Despisers.

Subscribe to Bonnie Kristian's Substack

For her, to be an Evangelical is to be resolutely committed to and (indeed) unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ—for it to infiltrate every nook and cranny of life, and for it to determine the meaning and purpose of literally everything. It’s in the name: the word Paul uses in Romans 1:16 is euangelion. Evangelicalism is just Gospelism.

Share

In case you missed it, check out the Substack Live I did with to talk with about her book.

I remember making a similar claim to a new-found friend at Yale Divinity School in the fall of 2009. We were both attending new student orientation, and I self-described as an evangelical. (I was also a Pentecostal, but at that point I knew that my particular species of Pentecostalism fell under the genus of Evangelicalism.) My new friend was a liberal protestant, an Episcopalian, who was in favor of same-sex marriage and all the critiques of the Nicene tradition that were in vogue at the time (and in some circles still are). He asked me what I meant when I self-described as an “evangelical.” I sheepishly said, “well, I think the meaning is in the name—it’s a resolute commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to evangelize (i.e. proselytize) accordingly.” By then I’d already had a lifetime of ecumenical experience to know that not all Christians were as interested in evangelizing as evangelicals were.

He laughed, mockingly, then condescendingly told me there was no way it was that simple. Looking back, I realize we were talking past each other. He was looking for a description of Evangelicalism, where I was offering a prescription for it. He was thinking of the movement’s legacy in the wake of the Bush administration. I was thinking about my missionary experience as a kid in West Africa where every evangelical missionary I met was there to evangelize. Liberal protestant and Catholic counterparts were there for relief work.

Kristian gets at the problem of the prescription-description divide in the conclusion of her book. She says that the “core claim of [Evangelicalism] is that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’” (quoting 1 Tim 1:15). She adds, “at our best, not caring what the world makes of us, this is how evangelicals live.” Note that she says this is evangelicals at their best. It’s a prescription, not a description.

Let me be clear: Kristian is not reductive. She has a most welcome and compelling negotiation of the term “evangelical,” drawing on its history, its sociology, Bebbington’s Quadrilateral, and the (astounding!) inconsistency of the identification in exit polls. Nor does she shy away from Evangelicalism’s descriptively bad behavior—she pulls no punches about the history of racism, sexism, financial and political corruption, and (even) cringiness.

But she’s equally unwilling to accept the caricature—favored by its despisers—that evangelicals are incognito power-grabbing hypocrites bent on creating a patriarchal dystopia. Engaging the confession and real, living evangelicals at the grassroots of America, Kristian makes a convincing case that there is no such sinister conspiracy.

More importantly, Kristian concludes that the solution to the very real problems of Evangelicalism in America is more Evangelicalism. More of the love of God made manifest in the love of neighbor, which is the hallmark of evangelical preaching and confession.

Each chapter of Kristian’s book is organized around a specific accusation against Evangelicalism whether in academia, politics, or punditry. The accusations are cumulative (which is why you must read it!), building on one another. So, for example, are evangelicals evil by nature (chapter 2)? No, but are they evil in practice (chapter 3)? Do evangelicals want to impose their beliefs on others? No, but do they still want to control the highest offices of the country (chapter 4)? Some do. Many don’t.

The deep irony is that in every critique Evangelicalism is the standard by which Evangelicalism is despised. Its critics are really just saying, “Evangelicalism isn’t measuring up to the love of God and neighbor that it claims.” As Kristian says, evangelicals are often quick to agree. They call it sin.

Share

Evangelicalism is here to stay. And it won’t be through the power and influence of the Republican Party. It’ll be through mom groups at the local church, meatpacking immigrants in the rural Midwest, and the food pantries churches plant in urban food deserts. The American public needs to admit all of that, and treat the movement as a worthy neighbor to have. Because it is.

Perhaps the way forward is to recognize what Kristian and so many others she cites are doing. They’re turning outside critique into reform. Examples abound, including ’s own surprise at how well her Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation was received by evangelical leaders.

In Defense of Evangelicalism is going to make a splash in all the best ways. It’ll scandalize Evangelicalism’s most outspoken critics, it’ll edify the curious, and it’ll succor those who are (really) just trying to love Jesus and proclaim his euangelion. In my estimation, Kristian is just the conversation partner the American public needs to engage the emphatically American movement that Evangelicalism is.

Leave a comment

She told me she had come to the United States on a temporary worker’s visa, and had subsequently been accepted into a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin (for which she was granted a student visa). At some point she married a man from Chad and they had a child together. The child was disabled.

From there, the timeline of her story became somewhat murky, but her situation in the United States, including her legal status, devolved. She finished her PhD, which meant her visa was running out. So she hired a lawyer to find a legal path to stay in the country. Her husband had adopted witchcraft, divorced her, and moved back to his native Chad. He warned her never to follow him, and if she did, he would kill her with his sorcery (a common enough occurrence for those who know Africa).

Things then took a turn for the worst. Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came to her door late one night and arrested her and her disabled son. They were detained separately. She told me her son was sexually assaulted in the holding facility.

And all of that was why she had come to me. She’d come to the end of her rope with her husband, the complex legal system, every other non-profit resource she had hunted down, and the endless check-ins with ICE. She was in limbo: deportation hung over her head and death awaited her should the United States decide to deport her to Chad, the land of her legal passport.

Read more

The book isn’t out yet, so be sure to pre-order your copy.

Note: Sorry for my garbled image. The travails of Airbnb internet connections! I even used an ethernet cord 😩

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Get more from Joseph Lear in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Here’s what he says: stop trying to control people who manifest mental illness. And stop abandoning them. Those are the two routine (and unchristian!) responses Cody has seen in the church and in society. We need a third option, which isn’t really an option at all if we’re going to witness to the presence of Christ in our worship.

is like a brother to me, so it was particularly exciting to hear about his work and the ways in which our ministry together fed his theological imagination. This interview is the sum of his recently-completed thesis at the University of Aberdeen under Prof. Brian Brock.

Give it a listen, give it a share.

and STAY BLESSED ✌️

Subscribe now

Get more from Joseph Lear in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

In this edition:

👉For FREE subscribers:

• The August Vibe

• Apply for Northern Seminary!

• Breaking Pastoral Rules

👉For my Supporters:

• Discerning your call for the long haul

• The importance of friends who are not like you

• Office Hours: Need a leadership, academic, or vocational conversation partner? I’m here for you.

First up, a little bit of sad news (for you) with some good news (for me):

I’m off to family vacation this week, and I’m really trying to pull back from all the hustle. Which means I gotta take a break from writing an entire post for August’s Pastoral Vibe-ology.

Instead, I’m just going to declare the vibe and give you some sermon titles to work with. I trust you to handle them with care and intention 😌

Fittingly, this month’s VIBE is vacation.

Here’s what you’re gonna do: preach restfulness (and take some time to rest yourself).

Sermon titles might include:

• The Sabbath Is One of the Ten: Why Do You Keep Breaking It? (Shout-preach this one like an old school Pentecostal) 🗣️

• Runaway Jesus, Runaway Pastor: Getting Away From Needy Congregants like the Lord (Mark 6:46).

• The Night Is Far Gone (Romans 13:12), Which Is Why I’m TIRED 🥱

• Sleeping You-tichus (Acts 20:7-12): Take a Nap Before You Die

I’ll let you take it from here ✌️

Subscribe now

ICYMI—I’m going LIVE on Friday August 14th

I’m joining to chat with about here upcoming book, In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured Despisers.

Subscribe now

Northern Seminary

Another ICYMI: I’m directing a one-year Certificate in Pentecostal Ministry at Northern Seminary. The first cohort starts in January, so apply now before all the spots are taken.

If you’re wanting to advance your biblical or theological education as a lay person, pastor, or church leader, this program is for you.

It’s one year. 5 classes. And meets educational requirements for licensure in the Assemblies of God.

Got questions? Ask me.

Breaking Pastoral Rules

I broke a pastoral rule in July: I presided over the wedding of a couple I barely knew. Only marrying couples I really and truly know has always been a hard and fast rule for me (as it is for most ministers of the gospel). Christians take marriage seriously. We pastors don’t preside over the weddings of strangers because marriage isn’t just about the two people making the promise. It’s about the entire church committing to support the couple in their until-death-do-them-part vows (which is no small challenge).

Not all wedding liturgies are the same, but I always ask the attendees at weddings to promise that they’ll do everything within their power to uphold the couple in their vows. It might strike some as being too demanding of the congregation. Promises are serious things. But that’s why I must do my due diligence not to set either the couple or the congregation up to fail.

So why did I break my rule? Because a dear friend and pillar of the Christian community in Iowa City asked me to help the bride, who is like a daughter to him. (The pastor they had originally asked to preside had to unexpectedly cancel). I’ve known this man for many years, and because of that, I know he takes marriage as seriously as any Christian should. From there, I verified that their church would support them after their vows. Then, I met them for a cup of coffee, and walked through the seriousness of what we were doing together. Even in the short time leading up to the wedding, I could spiritually discern that this was a fitting thing for me to do. And I was honored to do so.

Not all rules are there to be broken. But some are. And that’s in part why I’m grateful for the Pentecostal Christianity I grew up in, which taught me how to discern both in community and in my own heart when to bend standards to do the right thing.

Subscribe now

Read more

Going paid on Substack was a decision full of trepidation for me. As I’m sure most of you know, I’d lost my job at Evangel and I was in a troubling place both professionally and financially. Making the transition to soliciting income from subscribers felt like a real risk.

I was afraid of rejection—or wo…

Read more

We’ve gotten the reputation of being a church that cares about kids. Over the years, we’ve had church family dinner every Wednesday that’s open to the community. Kids come for a few months at a time, disappear for a few months more, and then will often reappear as their parents navigate U of Iowa-caused high rental prices, slum lords who know how to bend the law to their will, and personal failures to plan for next month’s rent. The kids know there’s always food, fun, and neighborly love waiting for them when they enter the doors.

This reputation seems to have brought a heartbreaking situation to our doorstep.

One day I found an open jar of peanut butter, grape jelly, and a sticky butter knife on a shelf in our kids ministry closet. The walk-in closet is where we keep the puppets, costumes, and decades of random craft supplies. It’s also where the circuit breaker is. The carpet is stained from decades of use. There are no windows, and it smells like 1982.

I was more than a little irritated to find the mess. Other small church pastors will understand that volunteers are sometimes few and far between, and when messes are left, pastors frequently play the part of janitor. Assuming the PB&J had grown mold, I chucked it all in a trash can.

It was around this time that our basement door latch had also broken. It is an old metal door hidden at the bottom of an outdoor flight of stairs that goes below street level. I kept asking various people in the church to help me fix it because we didn’t have money to hire a handy man. It was broken for weeks, but we weren’t worried about it because it looked like it was locked. Who would go down a dark flight of concrete stairs to check it anyway? And if they got in, what would they steal? Our sound system to this day has no re-sale value. The only thing worth stealing would be pantry items, and we give food liberally and without reproach to all who ask.

Around that time, one of our deacons approached Pastor Abby and said, “Ha! You really had me startled the other morning with the pile of clothes and the shoes in the closet. I thought there was someone laying there.”

Then we connected the dots: The peanut butter and jelly. The unlocked door. The pile of clothes and shoes.

We went into the kids ministry closet and observed right under the circuit breaker a bed made of carpet scraps from a recent renovation project, a small pair of ratty shoes, and food wrappers strewn about.

A child was sleeping in our church.

Pastor Abby, the deacon, and I had a hushed and whispered conversation. Who was the child? How could we help him or her? Why did they need to sleep here of all places? What should we do?

So we made a plan. First of all, we definitely weren’t going to fix the door. If someone needed a warm, safe place to sleep—especially a child—we weren’t going to stop them. We also decided to keep it a secret because it might have made people in the church uncomfortable—not to mention our insurance company. Pastor Abby, both since she had a reputation amongst the kids of the neighborhood for being a safe person, and because she is a woman, would check the building every night to try to introduce herself. She always knows what to do when kids are in crisis. It’s one of her spiritual gifts. Back in the day, she had also slept in the church when she was a homeless kid in Iowa City.

We checked night after night, but we never found the child. Pastor Abby spread word amongst the kids of the neighborhood that if anyone needed a place to sleep, to be sure to talk to her (but, of course, they already knew that). I still think about that little person every time I go into the closet. I take a moment to look at the circuit breaker with both gratitude and a broken heart.

Here is what I’ve learned:

The kingdom of God is like a broken door latch. God breaks the latch so that all who want to enter may do so. There’s free food inside.

The kingdom of God is like a pile of clothes. It startles us.

The kingdom of God is like a bed under a circuit breaker. It’s a safe place to sleep.

The kingdom of God is like peanut butter and jelly. It’s a kid’s favorite.

Let them come to Jesus.

And may the church not fix her broken doors.

Share

It snuck up on us, as grief so often does.

Tyler Fulcher over at My Bible School invited me to do a pod with him diving deeper into lament. We talk about what Pentecostalism has to offer, and where it falls short.

I also fire a few friendly shots at the tradition that formed me (and that I still love so, so much).

Give it a listen, give it a share 🤲

Leave a comment

Share

Share

Leave a comment

Paid subscribers get the full sermon below. Before you read (or sign up), I want to highlight just a few things that will help both the pastor in their preaching discipline, and the congregant understand the levels preachers are often working with to communicate to different levels of Christian maturity.

First, notice that I ask a hermeneutical question without using that particular word. “Hermeneutics” is the philosophical discipline of interpreting texts, focusing on what meaning one can expect to get from any particular text. With reference to the Bible, it’s always about asking, “what does this text mean?” Which, as I’m sure we’re all aware on some primordial level, is quite the difficult question to answer.

In this sermon, I ask a question that touches on a hermeneutical school called reader-response theory—the idea that we make meaning with the text by bringing our own experiences to it. You’ll notice how I negotiate that question when you see the word “elephant” 😋.

Second, I also intentionally preach four separate passages in one sermon. Genesis uses the Revised Common Lectionary, which has four passages that are connected thematically and theologically every Sunday. It’s a great resource.

Notice how I filter each passage through the main one, the Parable of the Sower. It’s not only a lesson in seeing how the Bible fits together, but also how to read the Old Testament and New Testament as a single Scripture (which is also no easy task!).

Finally, I want you to notice how I bring the whole sermon back to the Rule of Faith, which is the core doctrines of the church through which everything else gets interpreted (notice this is a hermeneutical matter again!). I bring the Parable of the Sower back to death and resurrection in Jesus Christ before connecting it up with the Lord’s Supper.

It’s (again!) no easy task to bring every sermon back to those things, but that is the precious discipline preachers are called to.

Give it a read, give it a share :)

Read more

Last month’s vibe was HUSTLE, and it occasioned the announcement of my new side hustle: the Certificate of Pentecostal Ministry at Northern Seminary.

👉THAT’S RIGHT: a Baptist institution is teaming up with me, a born and bred Pentecostal. Who would’ve seen that coming (except probably God)? This remarkable turn of ecumenical events has caused July’s vibe to manifest itself—

it’s PENTECOSTAL.

This month, being Pentecostal isn’t just for free church, happy-clappy, tongues-speaking enthusiasts. It’s for all of God’s one, holy, catholic, apostolic, annnnnd PENTECOSTAL church.

This month you’re a 🔥 Southern Bapticostal,

You’re part of the 🔥 Presbycostal Church of America,

And you’re a 🔥 Roman Catholicostal:

Pentecostal Vibe Preaching

I know you might be tempted not to prep any sermons this month and just rely on the Spirit to inspire you as you enter the pulpit. You can give that shot, or you can have as much faith about the Spirit speaking to you before you even show up at church (that’s called Spirit-led preparation 🫡).

Either way, here’s a few sermon ideas to get the Spirit moving:

1. 🐍 Politics and the church 🐍: Rethinking which snakes we’re actually handling.

2. 🫰 SLAY GURRRRL SLAY 🫰: Slain in the Spirit // Slaying at life!

3. 🎁 Christmas in July 🎁: The spiritual gifts are the true meaning of summer

4. 👨‍🚒 WILDFIRE SEASON🧯: Setting your heart and your home on fire with the love of the Holy Spirit.

   If this post has made you chuckle 🤭, restack the joy or share it with a friend

   Share

   ---

A Pentecostal 250 Celebration

Pentecostals love finding meaning in the absurdly small details of the Bible and life. Like numbers. It comes with the territory of loving the book of Revelation (because we all know Jesus is coming back soon).

This month, we’re leaning into the symbolic meaning of America’s 250, and we’re making it 🔥 PENTECOSTAL 🔥.

Here’s how the number works: the “pente-” in “pentecost” is for fifty, because the Holy Spirit came 50 days after Jesus’s resurrection.

250 divided by 50 is 5.

And 5 should remind us of the five-fold gospel=Jesus is savior, sanctifier, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, healer, and soon coming king.

Here’s how we’re gonna celebrate:

1. Hold a Jericho march around your favorite evil institution (Jesus is savior)

2. Preach a wholesome message through a bullhorn to confused passers-by (Jesus is sanctifier)

3. Smear every door of said institution with anointing oil—extra virgin ☝️, for obvious reasons (Jesus is baptizer in the Holy Spirit)

4. Lay hands on the institution to cast out the demons (Jesus is healer)

5. Last, but definitely not least, have 250 shofar blowers to announce Jesus’s ultimate victory. Be sure to use real rams horns. Those plastic knock-offs called “vuvuzelas” don’t work spiritually (Jesus is soon coming king)

Now, a word from our sponsor:

This month’s sponsor is The Nation-State of Israel

Who have offered kitsch Pentecostal vibes since Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson got TV shows

Israel doesn’t care about

-dispensationalism

-supercessionism

-your interpretation of Romans 11

-or that you call Jesus “Yeshua”

But they do appreciate your tourist dollars

and your political affections

#keepthemcoming

Finally…It’s Story Time

A while back, I got to meet Molly Worthen, author of the excellent book Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump.

When she found out I was Pentecostal she blurted out:

And THAT’S the question I have for YOU, my fellow Viber:

What is the craziest thing you’ve seen or heard about in Pentecostal circles that gives you a little chuckle? Share it in the comments or in a DM to me (with respect ☝️) so we can laugh and marvel at this joyful, one-of-a-kind, wonderful, and crazy movement called PENTECOSTALISM.

🔥 I’ll start:

The comments and DMs are open ⬇️

Leave a comment

In this edition:

For FREE subscribers:

• Let me be your doctor! 👨‍⚕️

• Northern Seminary Announcement

• Sneak peak for TCK EXPOSÉ 👀

For PAID subscribers

• The Challenge of Immigrant Churches

• How to talk about American citizenship after 250 years

• Office hours

First: three quick things for the FREE subscribers:

1. Let me be your doctor:

In June, I had TWELVE one-on-ones with pastors, missionaries, aspiring theology students, and budding scholars. That’s almost three per week.

Does the number twelve mean I’m walking in Jesus’s footsteps 😏? Maybe a little bit.

I gave life advice, resourced both academically and professionally, made network connections, and—above all else—got some new friends.

👉 I can help you with next steps professionally, educationally, ecclesiastically, and personally.

PAID subscribers get office hours, and that’s where I can help you. So become a paid subscriber 😇

For those who already are, the LINK for scheduling a time to talk is below paywall 🤓

2. Northern Seminary Announcement

I’ve officially entered into a partnership with Northern Seminary to oversee and teach a brand-new Certificate in Pentecostal Ministry.

More details are coming, but here’s what you need to know right now:

• It’ll be a one year program, and will give students advanced standing toward a master’s degree.

• It'll meet educational requirements for credentialing in the Assemblies of God.

• It’s gonna be hecka affordable 💸

STAY TUNED

Subscribe now

3. New Podcast dropping later this Summer on Slow Burn Christianity

Ever wonder what it’s like to grow up as a white missionary kid under a dictatorship in the global south and get guns pointed at you all the time only to see miracle after miracle? Boy, do I have something for you.

👉I’ve teamed up with for a limited-series podcast called TCK EXPOSÉ.

“TCK” stands for “Third Culture Kid,” which is another way of saying “missionary kid.”

Click the picture to subscribe, or go to slowburn.josephmlear.com

Read more

It’s an ancient story, but one that bears striking resemblance to many families in the United States, both inside and outside the church, and one that touches the lives of almost all of my congregants.

Subscribe now

I recently preached on the story, and it hit me that preaching this passage puts into profound relief the pastoral task of preaching, and how one must wield all the theological tools at one’s disposal to unpack a story of hate and betrayal, promise and resurrection.

Watch the video below for more of about the pastoral and theological approach I take in the passage, but let me list them here in brief. Then you can read the sermon below 🤓

• At the bird’s eye view, there’s the challenge of interpreting an OT passage. The OT can be a doozy, but this one’s all the more packed with significance since Paul allegorizes it to be about the new covenant in Christ (Gal 4).

• As I preach—and as you’ll see below—I’m always trying to remind people (or introduce them to) the bigger story of the OT. The story of Hagar is jam-packed with foreshadowing and callbacks.

• I’m also always trying to put congregants in the shoes of the characters. How many men haven’t found themselves thinking with their crotch instead of their faith in God? How many women haven’t experienced jealousy of another woman? Probably not many.

• Finally, and most significant pastorally, is what I said at the beginning of this post. Hagar’s story, if nothing else, shows that broken families aren’t kicked out of God’s promises. And all God’s promises are “yes and amen” in Jesus Christ, the one whose body was broken precisely to fulfill the promise of God.

Subscribe now

Sermon: God Works All Things

Today I want to talk about how God works all things together for the good of those who love him. That’s in the Bible. It’s what Paul says when he’s reminding the early church about the love of God.

He says neither height nor depth, angels nor demons, nor anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Here me out:

You all know what I’m about to say, but it’s helpful for you to hear what you already know: people will do things to you in life that are evil. Things will happen to you in life that are evil. You will be wronged by others. You will get screwed over by circumstances.

The Holy Spirit wants to remind you today that none of the things that happen to you; none of the things that are out of your control can separate you from the love of God.

Subscribe now

Let me also remind you that you will make mistakes. You will do evil things. You will make decisions that you will regret. You will get yourself into really bad places in life and you will only have yourself to blame.

The Holy Spirit wants to remind you today that none of the things that you do; none of your own evil; none of the bad things that you do to yourself—all of those things that were in your control to prevent—none of those things can separate you from the love of God.

God will always love you, and he will use the bad things that happened to you and the bad things that you did to yourself to work something good for you.

Because he loves you. And he only wants you to love him back.

To show you how God works all things together for the good of those who love him, I want to take you to a story about a woman named Hagar in the OT. This is the continuing story of God calling Abraham to go, and that, if he did, God would make a great nation out of him.

Almost as soon as Abraham got the promise that God would give him and Sarah a son through whom he would make a great nation, they screw it up. This story is about how they’re already screwing up God’s promise. And yet God works it all out because he loves them.

Read Genesis 21:1-21

Read more

That’s where my parents became missionaries in the early 90s. And it’s where I grew up running the streets, slingshotting lizards, and playing soccer until I dropped from dehydration.

This conversation with my father only scratches the surface, but gives a good intro to the lives we lived. That, and there’s a lot about what it means to be a missionary, what the gospel is all about, and why my parents did what they did.

Give it a listen. Give it a like.

Subscribe and SHARE, please 😁.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Couldn’t you?

We haven’t changed the world, but we were sure passive-aggressive against the VICE of this present darkness.

🎊 Let’s celebrate (but not be loud about it because that wouldn’t be humble—and we’ve gotta keep MAXXING the virtue).

👉I’ve gotten a number of new subscribers in the last month, so if you’re new to Pastoral Vibe-ology, this is a seriously unserious sub-Substack, and I, Joseph Lear, am serious about being unserious about PASTORAL VIBES.

Share Pastoral Theology

For those of you who aren’t pastors: (as Jesus says) do not let your hearts be troubled! Vibes are still for you because I’m a Pentecostal and I believe in the pastor-hood of all believers.

I’m glad you’re here 🥹

June’s Vibe 💃

As many of you know, I lost my job at Evangel. Don’t be sad for me, though, because I’ve entered my HUSTLE era.

Which is why this month’s vibe is HUSTLE 💪

We’re gonna GRIND THE GEARS of HUSTLE to forge a new chapter. Just don’t be (semi-)Pelagian about it. Salvation is by grace alone 😤

HUSTLE YOUR SERMONS

No, I don’t mean finding an online pastor who says you’re free to plagiarize his sermon series as your own.

I mean: you’re actually going to read the Bible, meditate on it, and ask Jesus to speak to you by his Spirit.

🫵 now THAT’S hustle 🫵

Nevertheless, to get you started, I’m going to provide you with some sermon title options. You can use them, but give me a footnote in your preaching manuscript so that at least you know you’re not stealing 🫆

Or, you know, just share the vibe:

Share

This month we’re going character-driven in our preaching, focussing on the HUSTLERS of the Bible:

1. Noah, who built a boat. Pretty big achievement. Allegorize the boat as the ship of salvation and hustle to get your fam (blood or otherwise) onboard.

2. Samson, who HUSTLED a lot of girlfriends. Weird take, I know. But allegorize the girlfriends as virtues, and connect it with last month’s vibe.

3. Paul, who made tents. Pretty lame job, but not nothin’. (Do you think he put a Bible verse on the care labels of his tents?) Anyway, allegorize tent-making as church-making to say everyone should be building up the church ⛪️

4. Finally (and obviously), Jesus, who convinced a bunch of people that he deserved their benevolence even though he clearly didn’t give a rat’s behind about the protestant work ethic. He was a leach, but give him cred for the HUSTLE.

   📢 And now a special word from our sponsor:

Hustling the Hustle by sharing Hustle Advice

Listen, I’m no expert. I’m figuring this whole thing out as I go. But, in an effort to show you that I have some insights into hustling (so that you'll support my hustle by subscribing), I’m going to give you my best hustling advice:

1. Marry a nurse👩‍⚕️. Nurses have job security like no other job except pastors. The difference is that nurses are always paid for their secure jobs (unlike pastors 😬).

2. 💰 Spend a lot of money you don’t have on a humanities PhD. It makes you love things other than money so you can be okay with your lot in life.

3. Be a person of integrity 😇. It will mean you lose your marketplace job for refusing to compromise your standards for the Almighty Dollar. But that is precisely how you become a HUSTLER.

4. Just die (in Christ) 😵. Don’t unalive yourself ☝️ because I love you and Jesus loves you even more. But if death comes knocking, attaining the resurrection of the dead by any means possible (cf. Philippians 3) is the ULTIMATE HUSTLE.

   

   click to SHARE the VIBE

   

   ---

Finally…The Poetics of HUSTLE

Read more

This is my first-ever paid post!

👉 In May 2026: My concern for church planters’ unbridled enthusiasm, the administration of Pentecost, and bringing it all back to baptism (again!).

Church Planting Pep Rallies

Church plants are extremely difficult. That’s what I tell every person who asks me about discerning the possibility (which seems to be happening with greater and greater frequency). They take a long time, a lot of resources, and require incredible fortitude for the inevitable season(s) of what Eugene Peterson called “the doldrums”—times when there’s no wind in the sails of ministry, and no sign of the wind returning any time soon.

Read more