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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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

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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.

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The attention that posts like this one got are in part what convinces me that my subscribers find what I do on this platform valuable and worthy of their resources.

But before you read the original post…

Here’s a reminder of what you’ll get with a $ paid subscription $:

• All Paid Posts:

  • Pastor Privileged Monthly

  • Book writing updates and insights into the process of writing and publishing

  • Conference and speaking content from events you can’t be at (I’ll be speaking at the Center for Pastor Theologians conference this fall!).

  • All things Pastoral Theology with my unique Pentecostal, PhD, Third Culture Kid, Justice-worker perspective.

• Monthly “Office Hours” Thread where subscribers can ask me anything:

  • Theological, Biblical, and Pastoral curiosities

  • Resourcing for your own research, educational journey, and ministry/non-profit leadership.

  • Life advice for career moves, ordination, and educational paths.

  • Pentecostalism, global Christianity, political theology or literally anything that comes to mind.

  • Think of it like the opportunity to have a brief conversation after church after you’ve already heard me preach 😁

• Be Part of the Pastoral Theology Team

  • More books are coming, including Tongue On Fire: Recovering the Spirit and Power of Pentecostal Proclamation, and you’ll get first dibs on being part of the launch team.

  • Opportunities to write guest posts

  • Priority for one-on-one zoom chats.

  • Paid subscription tokens to share with friends and family.

Paid tiers are available now, but paid posts are launching June 1st

• Monthly: $7

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• Founding Member: $207.77

  • The first 25 founding members get a free copy of my new book!

(I’m keeping the numbers biblical 😉).

Tradition and the Spirit, or Let’s Go Looting

Five or so years ago a retired reformed pastor knocked on the door of Resurrection Assembly. He told me he felt the Spirit had directed him to stop. He’d been praying for the church as often as he drove past it, and finally felt like it was time to confess. We set up a time to meet for coffee, and we’ve kept drinking coffee regularly ever since.

Stan has been an absolute gift. He’s never once lorded it over me that he has decades of pastoral experience and spiritual disciplines on me. Quite the opposite—he routinely insists that I pray for him at the end of our coffee dates. He might not know it but I’ve always paid attention to everything he’s said and done, because I’ve seen—and so anticipate—that there’s layers of wisdom in his most casual utterances.

One of the layers that I’ve picked up on is that Stan himself didn’t make it all up as he went along through his life and pastorate. The well I sneak sips of water from when I hang out with him is a well that runs deeper than him and has existed long before he was born.

I contrast this with my experience of the elder pastors in my own movement whose wells aren’t—and can’t be—quite as deep. I’m not criticizing them. The reality is that the Assemblies of God is a young, conversionist movement. With it being only about 125 years old, few pastors are second or third-generation church leaders. Most retirement-age pastors I’ve met didn’t grow up in the movement. If they grew up in church at all, they had a distaste for it until the Spirit led them to knock on the door of an Assemblies of God congregation.

That has led to a movement of pastors and church leaders who’ve had to make it up as they went along. Again, if they grew up in a church, it was a liberal protestant or Catholic tradition that had failed them. So drawing on the wells of those traditions would at best feel like raiding Egypt as the Israelites did before embarking on the exodus. Turning around to look would be tantamount to looking back on Sodom and so to become a pillar of salt. It’s a dramatic way of putting it, but it’s how many actually feel.

The Assemblies of God is a renewal movement and part of the on-going Pentecostal takeover of world Christianity. This has all sorts of benefits to it. But we also need to admit its limitations. We simply don’t have the generations-long roots of spiritual maturity.

My earliest memories of spiritual discipline—prayer, Bible reading, and cultivating the fruit of the Spirit accordingly—are from when I was 7 years old. I’d sit on the screened-in porch in Dédougou, Burkina Faso, with my mother at 6am, just when the sun had come up. She’d have our dog, Annie, on her lap, and eyeballing us from the corner was my pet chameleon (brilliantly named “Chamellia”). We’d sit in the silence of the morning with our Bibles open and pray together. (It was only as silent as it could be with the roosters crowing and the infant goats braying for their morning milk in the distance). I could hear my father praying in tongues in his office, which was just a converted concrete storage closet with a metal door, a few feet away.

I’m 39 years old now. That means that for 32 years I’ve had daily spiritual discipline. I began ministering in the church when I was about the same age—going to pagan villages for outreaches with my father, and aiding my mother’s kids and youth ministry by being her personal puppeteer and clown. There simply has not been a single season in my life where I haven’t been involved in some ministry in the local church. There are innumerable pastors who are twice my age in the Assemblies of God that don’t have that many years of daily spiritual maturation and ministerial experience.

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Again, I’m not criticizing pastors who are twice my age with less time on the spiritual clock. Nor is time everything. But it is something. The simple reality is that it’s been difficult to find elders in my own movement who have a spiritual authority I can submit to. Yet, submission to an elder Christian faith and walk is precisely what I’ve craved.

That lack of spiritual authority on an individual level is reflected corporately. The Assemblies of God finds its roots in the 1906 Azusa Street Revival. Virtually every historian agrees that it was an astounding, marvelous, church-changing, and world-changing event. But I’m also not the first to say that my movement has regrettably functioned as if church history began with Azusa Street even if we’ve formally said otherwise. There’s a deep well of church life, spirituality, and wisdom that Pentecostals are invited to drink from. We’re robbing ourselves and shortchanging the next generation when we don’t.

Those who know me know that I am not reticent to criticize Christian traditions that have gone lifeless with age. There’s generations of wisdom in the historic church, but those churches have often long lost the baptism of fire that fell on the day of Pentecost. Yet it’s also worth saying the inverse: you can’t keep a fire going with green wood.

The good news is that none of us—Pentecostal or otherwise—need to choose between the depths of Christian maturity that stretch back millennia and the Holy Spirit. We can have both.

I want both. Don’t you?

If you’re compelled that tradition can be baptized in the Spirit, consider sharing

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As I’ve reckoned with my contract non-renewal at Evangel, I’ve been doing my best to open my ears to hear and my eyes to see what the Spirit of God is doing.

One thing is very clear: I’m staying in Iowa City for the foreseeable future, and I feel at peace about that.

My wife has a dream job at the University of Iowa teaching the next gen of nurses, and I’m still zealous for the ministry of where I’ve been pastoring for the last decade. I’ll continue preaching and ministering there part time as long as we’re in Iowa City.

Staying local means my options are limited in terms of finding full-time employment.

It’s time for me to enter my hustle era 😎.

Beyond part-time ministry at Resurrection, I have some exciting, targeted gigs coming down the pipeline. Nothing is set in stone yet, so I still have to wait to announce anything. But stay tuned.

I’m Going Paid on Substack

With all of this in view, I've decided begin paid subscriptions on this Substack platform that I’ve come to enjoy so, so much.

I’ve had more success with subscribers and interest in what I’m doing, researching, and thinking about than I ever anticipated.

I feel the love 🥰, and moving to paid subscriptions will allow me to take the relationship deeper.

Slow Burn Christianity will remain a free publication, and there will continue to be regular, public posts on Pastoral Theology. The relational, visionary pieces will be for my supporters.

Here’s what you’ll get with a paid subscription to Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear

• All Paid Posts:

  • Pastor Privileged Monthly

  • Book writing updates and insights into the process of writing and publishing

  • Conference and speaking content from events you can’t be at (I’ll be speaking at the Center for Pastor Theologians conference this fall!).

  • All things Pastoral Theology with my unique Pentecostal, PhD, Third Culture Kid, Justice-worker perspective.

• Monthly “Office Hours” Thread where subscribers can ask me anything:

  • Theological, Biblical, and Pastoral curiosities

  • Resourcing for your own research, educational journey, and ministry/non-profit leadership.

  • Life advice for career moves, ordination, and educational paths.

  • Pentecostalism, global Christianity, political theology or literally anything that comes to mind.

  • Think of it like the opportunity to have a brief conversation after church after you’ve already heard me preach 😁

• Be Part of the Pastoral Theology Team

  • More books are coming, including Tongue On Fire: Recovering the Spirit and Power of Pentecostal Proclamation, and you’ll get first dibs on being part of the launch team.

  • Opportunities to write guest posts

  • Priority for one-on-one zoom chats.

  • Paid subscription tokens to share with friends and family.

Paid tiers are available now, but paid posts are launching June 1st

• Monthly: $7

• Annual: $70

• Founding Member: $207.77

  • The first 25 founding members get a free copy of my new book!

(I’m keeping the numbers biblical 😉).

I’m a pastor, theologian, and professor bringing theology into the local church and the local church into theology because they belong together.

In today’s episode I host Matthew Erickson, author of The Pastor as Gardener. Matt is pastor at Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

His book is all about how the pastoral life needs to be reframed as gardening. Pastors should believe that we plant, we water, we hope, but God causes the growth. Matt provides a vision not only for the pastor, but also the church. He touches on theology, culture, philosophy, and above all else, the biblical basis for his vision.

Give it a listen, give it a share.

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👉 Here is the FULL review I wrote a couple weeks ago 👇

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And here's the discount code:

🚨 Exclusive to Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear: Readers get a limited time 40% discount on Erickson’s book at the Eerdman’s website. Discount code is valid through May 31, 2026.

Discount code is GARDENER40

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My book, Resurrection Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival continues to make a splash, and is selling better than expected.

If you’re still curious about it, check out the line-up of endorsements it has here.

Last week, I crossposted Chris EW Green’s response to my work from the Society for Pentecostal Studies.

This week, we’re hearing from my dear friend, Pastor Samuel Scalf. He’s writing on Substack himself, so be sure to follow and subscribe.

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My name is Samuel Scalf.

First, a little about me: I have been in pastoral ministry as an Assemblies of God pastor for over twenty years, live in Longmont, Colorado, and have been married for twenty-five years. Melodie and I have four wonderful daughters. I graduate May this month with an MA from Luther Seminary.

I had the opportunity to participate in a book panel for Dr. Joseph Lear’s recent book, Resurrecting Worship, at the Society of Pentecostal Studies Conference in Waco, Texas, in March of this year.

Here is the response I presented:

Like many Pentecostals raised in the 90s, I have a deep and visceral reaction to the r-word… Revival.

Revival was always just around the corner, but never quite here. We worked hard to manufacture what looked like a move of God through endless altar calls, conferences, and emotional crescendos in our services. I was there as a genuine seeker, serving on prayer teams at Awake America events and responding to every invitation that came my way. But I was also pushed down by overzealous evangelists and told, as someone more intellectual by temperament, that I simply needed to “get the joy of the Lord.”

So I came to Joseph Lear’s Resurrecting Worship carrying all of that baggage, and I want to say at the outset that his is a vision of revival I can finally embrace.

I fully agree with Dr. Lear that what our churches need is more than a marketing strategy. More than mailers. More than Facebook ads. More than whatever the latest church growth consultant sells this year. As Lear puts it, renewal “is not going to come with marketing campaigns and managerial ingenuity. It’s going to come when small congregations get back to the basics of worshipping in Spirit and truth.”^[1] These methods may fill seats for a moment, but they cannot resurrect worship or form disciples.

Lear tells the story of Resurrection Assembly, a small, multicultural, lower-income Assemblies of God congregation that was nearly dead. No pragmatic techniques saved it. Instead, renewal came as the church reshaped its worship around Word, Table, prayer, creed, and the expectation of the Spirit’s work, what Lear calls “slow burn revival.” As Lear describes it in the final chapter, this is revival that “burns like the charcoal Jesus used to cook bread and fish for his disciples”‚ not the consuming fire of Elijah’s altar, but the kind that “stays lit over the long haul.”^[2]

This is not revival as spectacle or strategy. It is God’s steady, long-term work, unfolding as the church gathers faithfully week by week. This picture is directly connected to my story.

After years of laboring to develop sermon series and create plans for spiritual formation as a lead pastor trying to create a spiritually vibrant church community, I needed a new way forward. In 2019, a handful of my pastor friends and I began preaching through the lectionary together. We met weekly on Zoom to wrestle with the texts and kept a group chat going to share insights and questions. The rhythm of the church calendar, along with the steady cadence of the assigned Scripture readings, proved unexpectedly powerful and generative.

Somewhere along the way, our church began to celebrate Communion weekly. Coming from a Pentecostal background, I shared the reservations Lear describes. One of his own leaders voiced it plainly: the Lord’s Supper might “actually become less special if we celebrated it all the time.”^[3] Would this become rote? Would it dampen the Spirit? However, as we continued to share the table each Sunday, it became the gravitational center of our gathering. Weekly Eucharist became a way to re-member, to be put back together into the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. It did more for our spiritual lives than the most passionate altar call ever could.

I also deeply appreciate Lear’s emphasis on reading substantial portions of Scripture aloud in worship. His practice is deliberate: “We started reading it out loud, sometimes in large portions, as an act of worship,” ^[4] with a minimum of three passages read publicly every Sunday, grounded in the New Testament’s charge to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Tim 4:13).^[5] I have preached through entire biblical books so that over the course of a series, our people hear whole books of Scripture read publicly. However, engaging the lectionary provides more than exposing congregations to large portions of scripture. One of the great gifts of the lectionary is that it keeps us from simply returning to our favorite hobbyhorses and instead draws us into the breadth of God’s word.

For that reason, I am convinced that pastors need to reflect deeply on the liturgy of their churches, whether they use that term or not, and intentionally craft what Lear calls “formational worship‚ the kind of worship that forms Christian disciples over the long haul”^[6]‚ rather than merely funneling people toward the offering box and altar call.

Lear’s book does not merely inspire. It also exposes several gaps that our movement still needs to address.

First, there is what I will call the Trinitarian gap: Lear himself models what he envisions: “From the very first moments of our gathering to the very last, we confess and worship God as Trinity.”^[7] However, the book largely assumes that readers already share this conviction. My experience is that many Pentecostals are woefully uninformed and uninterested in Trinitarian theology. It often feels impractical, as it offers no immediate payoff. However, when I began coursework at Luther Seminary, I came to realize just how foundational a Trinitarian worldview is for worship, prayer, mission, and pastoral life. We need much more intentional teaching on the Trinity in Pentecostal circles to address this issue.

Second, I think this book points toward the need for a Trinitarian pastoral care plan and, frankly, a Pentecostal catechism shaped by a slow-burn revival. Lear himself hints at this: “This book could be rewritten as a catechism‚ a paradigm of discipleship for new Christians.”^[8] He sees the need. However, he leaves the catechism unwritten. Perhaps this work will spark a follow up. “Resurrecting Formation: A Pentecostal Catechism for a Slow Burn Revival” has a nice ring to it. I could see a series that would help Pentecostals address the need for more intentional Trinitarian formation. If our liturgies become more sacramental but our counseling, visitation, and formation do not follow suit, we will still be running on half an engine.

Third, I see the lectionary as a natural ally of Lear’s vision. Lear mentions it only in passing; ‘he notes that Resurrection Assembly “at times” sources passages from a lectionary following the liturgical calendar, ’ but treats it as an option rather than a framework. The lectionary’s global rhythm of Scripture seems to me to be a perfect complement to everything else he argues for. It roots a local Pentecostal congregation in the wider church and reminds us that slow-burn revival is not merely about my church’s moment. It is participation in God’s long story with people across time and space.

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As someone who has both chased revival and been bruised in the chase, I am grateful for Resurrecting Worship. It offers a quieter, slower, more sacramental, more Trinitarian, and frankly more sustainable vision of renewal.

My hope is that this book will shape not only our Sunday worship, but also our teaching, pastoral care, and catechesis, perhaps even our use of the lectionary, for the slow-burn revival our congregations so desperately need.

^[1] Joseph Lear, Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival (Cascade Books, 2025), 2.

^[2] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 72.

^[3] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 32.

^[4] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 51.

^[5] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 51.

^[6] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 5.

^[7] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 13.

^[8] Lear, Resurrecting Worship, 75.

Welcome to the latest edition of Pastoral Vibe-ology, an imprint of Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear.

In this seriously unserious sub-Substack, I’m your atmospheric Viber of vibes.

May’s Vibe

You’ve heard of dudes Looks-maxxing and the ladies Glam-maxxing. But we’re NOT giving into the narcissist-influencer vice-maxx culture. Which is why we’re

☦️ VITRUE-MAXXING ☦️

🤩 We’re Making Modesty in our attire and our finances Great Again (MAafGA)!

🤯 We’re counting others more important than ourselves in our social media postings (and if you’re feeling bold, in real life too).

💥 We’re selling all we have and giving to the needy in order to be poor in spirit (okay, not everything, just some things because Jesus couldn’t have been serious about that).

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Sermon Series

As always, I’m here to help formulate your next sermon series. I mean, who needs the lEciTionArY when you have the vibes?!

This month we’re MAXXING the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love

1. Faith-Maxxing: We’re not just praying for the sick 🤒, we’re praying for the healthy too!

   👉 Make sure to preach about how we’re all gonna die anyway (#resurrection).

2. Hope-Maxxing: Forsake the vice of wishing and gamble on God.

   👉 Be sure to mention that sports gambling is still worse than playing the stock market.

3. Love-Maxxing: Invite your enemies to church this month!

   👉 This is not an invitation to greet one another with a holy kiss ‘cause #churchtoo 😬

Men’s and Women’s Ministry 🤝 Swap

In order to truly virtue-MAXX, men are adopting feminine virtue, and women are adopting masculine virtue. Like Jesus.

Masculine Feminine-Maxxing

• Men are gonna dress more conservatively than any pastor has ever advised women to. Cover those knees and ankles, shoulders and elbows. #Proverbs31husband

• Men are gonna say sorry for things they don’t need to apologize for.

• Submit(!!!) to your wife and lady-boss. Like Barack to Deborah, ya know?

  Thanks for reading Pastoral Theology! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Feminine Masculine-Maxxing

• Women are gonna be wild at heart.

• Women are going to fight a lion in a pit on a snowy day.

• Women are only reading from the Men’s Devotional Bible (the one with the army camo and the cross made out of weapons of mass destruction).

And now, a 📣 shout out 📣to this month’s very supportive sponsor.

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To keep the VIBE, let’s remember some important talking points about the competition

🙂‍↔️ Utilitarianism is for capitalists, dictators, and red coats.

🤓 The categorical imperative is for antitheistic chumps.

🤲 Epicureanism and Stoicism are BOR-ING

🫵 Divine Command Theory is for the fatalists and predestinarians.

I know these are fighting words. But that’s the whole point of virtue-MAXXING.

Oh, and if you don’t know what any of this means, DO NOT use AI to look it up. Be virtuous and read a book.

Finally, behold virtue-MINNING.

Do you think it’s chocolate inside? Because some people are about to eat it 🥴

DON’T FORGET TO SHARE AND SUBSCRIBE PLEEEEEAAAAASE

We’ve gotta keep the vibe MAXXED together 🤝

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👉 In April: LOUD conferences, an inspiring book, and some GOOD news on the personal front.

Iowa Ministry NETWORK COUNCIL

Every year, Assemblies of God pastors in Iowa gather for two days in Des Moines for worship, prayer, voting on leadership and policies, and—most importantly—to ordain the next generation of pastors.

It’s a loud event.

There’s a lot of lights, booming worship music, enthusiastic preaching, and sporadic hoops, hollers, and cheers for those getting their ministerial credentials.

I’m not into the loudness. Like, I’m not being critical of it. I could just do without it and I think the event would be equally glorious.

I say this because the best part for me is the relationships that I’ve formed over the last decade here in Iowa. At the event, I found myself routinely skipping the songs (and sometimes more) to hang out in the lobby of the church to catch up with friends old and new.

Again: I don’t want to poo-poo anything else happening at the event (especially not the laying on of hands), but I’ve come to realize that the lobby time of Network Council is probably the most important part of the event. It’s the place where we pastors build each other up and hear one another tell of the goodness of God over the last year. We share secrets of God’s kingdom work that will never be told from the stage of the megachurch we’re meeting in—nor should they be.

It’s also the place where we talk about everything we perceive to be going in the wrong direction in the Assemblies of God. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s really important too. I promise it’s not complaining. It’s patriotism.

(I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying it’s okay to play hooky from service 😬)

Book Update (the first of the HAPPY news)

I sent my next book to the editors, and I already have it back with some minor adjustments. I’ve morphed the working title a bit to Tongue on Fire: Recovering the Spirit and Power of Pentecostal Proclamation.

Two things:

1. I really think Pentecostal preaching is not what it used to be. And that’s why I felt like I needed to write this book.

2. The book isn’t about preaching as such, but more broadly about the task of proclamation. Which means this book isn’t just for pastors, it’s for everyone who cares about witnessing to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My editor told me he was entirely inspired and teared up reading the manuscript. That’s about the highest compliment a writer can receive, so I’m all the more excited to get it to the printing press.

The publisher says they’re going to get it translated into SPANISH for simultaneous release in both languages 🤓.

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Finally, more HAPPY NEWS

As many of you know from the last edition of this sub-Substack, I unexpectedly lost my job at Evangel, and they let me know so late in the academic year that deadlines for job applications in academia had already passed.

I’m still applying for jobs that I’m qualified for, but I’m increasingly feeling like God is calling me to a season of hustling. As it stands right now, it looks like I have FOUR part-time gigs lined up for the rest of the year. Some of those things are not set in stone yet, but I’m super excited about the prospects because they’re all about using my particular skill set of pastor and theologian together. That’s what I want my life to be about (which is why that’s what this Substack is about).

I’ll keep you posted on the deets.

For now, the HAPPY NEWS is that I’ve been entirely humbled by the outpouring of kind words, expressions of solidarity, and belief in my calling that I’ve received from so many directions in the last month.

Since announcing that I lost my job, I’ve really felt the meaning and reality of the body of Christ.

I cannot express my gratitude.

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That’s not a hostile question from a skeptic on the outside. That’s the argument my friend, Tyler Bream, makes from inside the tradition — carefully, historically, and, dare I say, convincingly. He wrote about this at Regent University tracing how evangelical hermeneutics developed, and his conclusion is a little uncomfortable: that in borrowing the tools of the Enlightenment to defeat the Enlightenment, evangelicals accidentally absorbed its assumptions too. And those assumptions have been quietly distorting the way we interpret Scripture ever since.

It’s a historical argument, but it’s not just an academic one. Because if he’s right, it has real implications for how the church reads Scripture today — and what a healthier path forward might actually look like.

I think you’re really going to enjoy this one.

Note: please forgive the bad video quality. Substack studio gave no indication there were network issues, so I’m not sure what happened.

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These biblical passages, and so many more, are what lay the foundation for the renewed vision for ministry that Matthew Erickson offers in his new, compelling, and wonderful book entitled The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry.

Pastors, ministry leaders, and congregants of goodwill across the denominational spectrum need to read this book. Leaders will be encouraged, and congregants will discover a biblical, realistic, and hope-driven vision for what they should expect of their pastors (and themselves).

👉 Eerdmans has generously offered a limited-time 40% discount code that you will find at the bottom of this Substack review.

Why Pastor as Gardener?

There are existential reasons Erickson believes gardening is the needed metaphor for pastoral ministry in our cultural moment. Living in a post-Covid world, where religious observance and church attendance is in decline, with troubling numbers of a pastoral mental health crisis (including rising suicide numbers), touches on the depths of the challenge.

Erickson also rightly highlights that the Evangelical church has, up until this point, been captive to the church growth movement—a mile-wide and inch-deep approach to ministry, aiming to get as many bodies in as many seats as possible as quickly as possible. The existence of a handful of highly “successful” megachurches seems to vindicate the model. The argument goes: every church is a potential megachurch if one can simultaneously harness market trends and the favor of God.

Unfortunately, there’s a trail of beat-up, lonely, and self-loathing pastors who’ve never seen these capitalist-style promises manifested and feel like they only have themselves to blame. Pastor as gardener is the necessary antidote to the toxic ideology of church growth models.

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Erickson admits that the biblical metaphor for ministry that generally first comes to mind is the image of shepherd. Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and his followers sheep. Psalm 23 is an enduring favorite to memorize amongst the faithful. But Erickson asks (in so many words), “how many people in the West can really connect with the idea and meaning of a shepherd?” Few have the lived experience of tending sheep. There’s of course no reason to throw out the emphatically biblical image of ministry-as-shepherding, but Erickson wants to suggest that we lean into the equally-biblical image of gardening. Doing so is a step in the direction of listening to the whole witness of Scripture, and—we should add—it’s an image that even those who live in the concrete jungles of American metropolises with their parks, lawns, and flowerpots hanging from wrought iron railings can resonate with.

In addition to being biblical, gardening also provides a realistic and hopeful vision for ministry. Let me I highlight these three features with just enough to whet your appetite for more.

Gardening is Biblical

I’ve already noted the obvious and far-reaching biblical grounds for thinking of the pastor as gardener. But I’ll add my own bit about why it provides a much-needed answer to the pitfalls of the church growth model that has ravaged the Evangelical church in America. Those who recognize the toxicity of the more-is-always-better movement feel powerless to critique it because the response from the pastor-as-CEO is always, “well, don’t you want the church to grow?” No one would say “no.” Jesus himself spoke of crops yielding 30- 60- or 100-fold.

Gardening provides a way of affirming the desire for growth and abundant harvest while also acknowledging that other factors affect the possibility of growth. Climate, soil quality, birds of the air, and the salting practices of one’s pillaging enemies offer just a handful of possible factors.

Gardening is Realistic

The realism that Erickson offers follows from the gardening’s biblical basis. Erickson uses the real-life example of African agriculturalists finding ways of growing food even in the harsh climates of places like South Sudan. Equally, churches and pastors need to recognize the climate and environment that they find themselves in, discovering creative ways to use the raw material of circumstance to persist in planting and watering. Irrigation might be in order. Or aquaponics. Or a greenhouse. Sometimes seedlings need to be sprouted in a home basement with full spectrum lamps because of the harshness of a lingering winter.

Erickson uses philosopher Charles Taylor’s compelling account of secularism to talk about the West’s particular gardening climate. “Secularism,” he notes, is not merely the lack of belief, but a different way of believing. There’s too much to say about our secular environment in the West as Taylor describes it to detail it here (and some, like Lori Branch, are now speaking of post-secularism). But Erickson helpfully engages thinkers like Andrew Root and others to tease out the implications of the terroir and climate of secularism. You should read it for yourself.

Suffice it to say: the pastor as gardener is neither idealistic nor given to the despair of environmental fatalism. It’s a realistic approach to the actual experience of pastors serving on the front lines of the church, which makes it all the more compelling. It names reality, but doesn’t make the church victim to it.

Finally, Gardening is Hopeful

That’s how Erickson ends his magnificent book: hope. He points out that pastors, like gardeners, find that vocational fruitfulness often “remains beyond tangible perception.” Seeds sprout where the eye cannot see. And, after sprouting, the plant grows only when no one’s watching. I will add that, most importantly, the process is one of mystery. We don’t know how a mustard seed turns into a tree for birds to nest in, but it happens—and it’s God who makes it happen.

Again: one plants, another waters, but God causes the growth. The pastor as gardener is an image of hope because it puts the final responsibility on God. Or, put better, God is the master gardener, and we are his field workers, weed pullers, and fruit pickers. We don’t know how the End comes when we will once again stand beneath the tree of life, just like we don’t understand how the deceased body of our loved one will one day rise incorruptible. We don’t understand, but we hope. And if there’s anything the church needs in the West, it needs to experience afresh the theological virtue of hope.

Where Next?

I don’t have anything substantively critical to say of Erickson’s work. There are a few places where the reader’s attention will require some extra effort, like when Erickson introduces Taylor’s concept of secularism, but that extra effort is itself a fertilizer to the ideas Erickson is teasing out. It will surely bear fruit.

After engaging The Pastor as Gardener I began to wonder what other ways of speaking about the pastoral life and the life of the church might also connect biblically and realistically with our living hope. Might pastor as chef help us consider the work and hospitality of eucharistic observance? Eugene Peterson once remarked that the place he first learned his priestly craft was in his father’s butcher shop, which connects with matters of food, sacrifice, gratitude, hospitality, and the giving of the self to the world (which is always a bloody affair).

What about pastor as ship captain (like Paul)?

Pastor as nurse or doctor (like Luke)?

Pastor as contractor who builds with living stones (1 Peter 2:4-6)?

My point is: Erickson’s work has set my imagination down a path of rethinking all the ways we’ve come to speak so glibly about the pastoral life and the church’s ministry to the world. New images that inevitably turn out to be ancient images seem to be the only way forward. And that’s the inspiration Erickson’s book gives.

🫵 Go read it 🫵

Exclusive 40% Discount from Eerdmans

🚨 Exclusive to Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear: Readers get a limited time 40% discount on Erickson’s book at the Eerdman’s website. Discount code is valid through May 31, 2026.

Discount code is GARDENER40. Go get your copy, and be sure to share this post so other can get a discounted copy too 🤲.

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In this jokey and unserious sub-Substack,

I’m your personal viber of VIBES.

The Vibe

Bad news everyone: The vibe is 🚫 OFF 🚫 this month.

I’m a little late on this post, and I’m now realizing that the reason I’ve been struggling to declare April’s vibe is because the vibe is, in fact, totally OFF.

Here are the top three reasons why the vibe is OFF:

1. I Didn’t Get the Herky Job

After unceremoniously losing my job at Evangel University, I was standing on the promise that those who wait on the Lord will rise up on

🪽WINGS LIKE HAWKEYES 🪽(from the Iowa Revised Version of the Bible).

I waited, but Herky’s wings weren’t for me. I will now take 40 days of fasting in a corn field 🌽 where the devil will no doubt tempt me to ride the wings of a State cyclone 🌪️ 🤮

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2. The President is joking (?) about being Jesus.

And it’s, like, really killing the vibe this Easter season.

Doesn’t that pic really just tick you OFF? And didn’t the LORD say that those who make themselves like God will be cut OFF from the people?

Well, that’s why the vibe is OFF.

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3. Jesus Hasn’t Come Back Yet

And that’s a real bummer. I know it’s only been like a couple of days since Easter (that is, a couple thousand years in God-days).

But I’m about to scream in a desert, kill a camel, and make some honey-grasshopper popsicles to hurry him up.

This song is on repeat:

We Gotta Bring the VIBE Back

Here’s how we do it:

• Baptize Herky and all college football mascots. Make them all Christian. That’ll teach ‘em.

• Start a No Jesus But Jesus protest in every major city in America. Young men only. In togas. Who flee the rally naked.

• Make Flannelgraphs Great Again as an ecclesial rejection of the AI pig slop of prodigals.

• Pray “Your kingdom come,” like, a lot.

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Finally, here’s some sermon ideas despite the vibe being OFF

• Jesus is Lord

• No one else is Lord

• You’re not Lord

• I’m not Lord

• Only the Lord is Lord

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In March 2026:

1. Taking a break from anti-intellectualism

2. Slow Preaching

3. And some big (and sad) news about Evangel (so make sure you read to the end)

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First: The Society for Pentecostal Studies

Last month I wrote about the Center for Pastor Theologians Conference being the best gathering you’ve never been to. The other conference that you should most definitely attend is the Society for Pentecostal Studies. It’s the place where all the best thinkers in the Charismatic tradition get to take a break from the anti-intellectual ecclesial traditions to joyfully exercise the gifts of wisdom and knowledge given them by the Holy Spirit.

Matt Van Winkle and I road tripped it from Iowa through Springfield, MO (to hear Chris EW Green give lectures on beauty and Christianity), and continued on to Waco, TX where the conference was held. Road trips are for 90s music 👇👇👇

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I was super excited this year to be on two panels. The first was a panel on my book, Resurrecting Worship: A Pentecostal Liturgy for Slow Burn Revival.

Chris Green, Brenton Fessler, Sam Scalf, and—most importantly—my pastor, Abby Anderson reviewed my work and spoke of its import for the local church. I’m glad to say the reviews were positive 😅

The second panel was for another book I contributed to: I Was A Stranger and You Took Me In: Pentecostal Responses to the Refugee Crisis. It was edited by my friend, Lois Olena, and has a moving introduction by (the Assemblies of God scholar Craig Keener’s wife) Médine Keener, who is from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For my part, I talked about how slogans like “Jesus was a refugee!” don’t really get us anywhere. We need to be Christians who, for example, know about the legacy of Oscar Romero and who enjoy the foods of other cultures. But we haven’t really done what Christ asks of us until we utter blessings over the owners of the local pupuseria when we stop in for lunch.

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Second: Slow Preaching for Voice of Christ at Harvest Land

I mentioned in my previous post on Pastoral Theology that I got to once again preach at Pastor Armel Fandohan’s bilingual, African-majority church in Iowa City.

One of the challenges of speaking in a bilingual church is that one must learn to pause in rhythm with one’s translator who relays in another language what you said for the congregation. I’d utter one phrase in English, and my translator would follow, repeating my words in French. Like a dance, preacher and translator must learn the other’s cadence. It’s a challenge and joy to feed off of one another to maintain the dynamism of the communicative act.

That, and it really gives new meaning to being one in Christ.

It’s also is a lesson in how one should preach even without a translator. Preachers often preach too quickly, and human ears—especially those who are hearing a spiritual lesson for the first time—can’t keep up. It’s easy to forget how much slower the ear is than the eye. The preacher has his notes, the congregation doesn’t. The truth is no one will ever complain about a preacher slowing down an idea and carefully annunciating each word (especially for the elderly and those with learning disabilities).

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Finally: Some Sad (and Big) News

About a month ago, Evangel University informed me that I am no longer a part of their plans for the future. This came as a shock to me, and was most unwelcome news. I’d planned on being at Evangel for the long haul, having been convinced of the mission and values of the institution.

I haven’t been told why I was cut, except that there’s a “re-architechting” (sic, President Mike Rakes’s word) of the university underway and that they’re “fully embedding online delivery into the academic enterprise to expand access and engagement” (again, Rakes’s words).1

I’m deeply saddened by the news, not only because of my affection for my students and colleagues, but also because, having been caught off guard by the decision, I don’t know what’s next. The timing of my release has meant that I’ve already missed deadlines for the many jobs I would have been qualified for at other institutions beginning this fall.

I did my PhD in Luke-Acts for the love of Pentecostalism and the Assemblies of God. I’ve given all I have, and am not going to stop giving what I can to the Jesus’s church.

Pray for me 🙏

I’m indeed saddened by my departure, but I’m also extremely proud of what I accomplished as the Director of Theology and Global Church Ministries in the College of Online Learning:

• I created the most affordable and accessible accredited credentialing/ordination pathway in the Assemblies of God, starting a new pipeline of pastors for the Fellowship.

• I launched the first-ever accredited undergraduate theology program taught entirely in Spanish.

• I introduced biblical languages in an online format to prepare the next generation of Pentecostal scholars.

• I brought in 120 students in just the last 18 months.

It’s not so much a pastoral lesson as a life one, but I’ll say it anyway: Measurable success doesn’t always lead to recognition or promotion. Sometimes it leads to termination. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but that’s life. And through it all God is good, faithful, and true.

Jesus is holding my hand to lead me forward.

I promise that he’ll take yours too if you just open your palm 🫴

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Not something I thought I’d ever hear in church, but now I have.

Here’s the story.

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Two Sundays ago I was invited to preach at bilingual African-majority church named Voice of Christ in Iowa City that I had the privilege of helping establish. The pastor of the church, Armel Fandohan, has been a truest friend, and I’m owe him a debt of fraternal love I can never repay. When Voice of Christ was finally able to launch from Resurrection Assembly’s building into their own, we had a replica of the wooden cross in our sanctuary made for theirs to symbolize our partnership in the gospel.

In good Pentecostal fashion, Pastor Armel suggested I preach on whatever the Spirit was leading. In prayer, I felt prompted to talk about one of my favorite topics: Water Baptism.

Note: When I’m given free rein to preach on anything, I always pray. And if in doubt, I preach on a pillar of the faith: The love of God, the love of neighbor, Jesus, the coming kingdom, or, as in this case, baptism. Even if I’ve misheard the Lord’s direction, I can proceed with confidence that it’s entirely unlikely that God will be upset with one of those topics.

As I routinely do with my students when I talk about the ordinances of the church, I noted early in my sermon the apostle Paul’s pastoral theology of baptism. In Galatians 3:23, Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and there is male and female. What is often missed, especially by historically non-sacramental church traditions, is that Paul appeals specifically to baptism in this respect. He doesn’t say, “as many of you as are Christian, there is neither…” He actually says, “As many of you as are baptized, there is neither Jew nor Greek…”

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In other words, Paul doesn’t appeal to their status as Christians generally, rather he appeals to their baptisms. In class, I suggest to students they should use baptism similarly in their future pastoral ministry. And, true to my own advice, that’s what I did: I told the congregation that they should count themselves equals in the body of Christ, not because of their Christianity in a general sense (however true that might be) but specifically because they are baptized. And I suggested that those who weren’t baptized should be, if indeed they call upon the Lord. We Christians want everyone to be our equals in Christ.

I prayed for the congregation, and took my seat.

Pastor Armel then took the pulpit—once again in good Pentecostal fashion—to restate what had just been preached in brief, just to make sure no one had missed it. And to do so, he told a testimony of a man he once knew in church. He told us that this man would compulsively relieve himself carnally in the shower. He added that so frequent was the compulsion that this man would as a result fail to pleasure his wife at night. And he was hiding other addictive behaviors from his wife, including abusing tobacco and alcohol.

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Note: I include the bit about the man failing to please his wife because it reminds me of Paul’s pastoral advice in 1 Corinthians 7, where he advises married couples not to abstain from sexual intercourse except by mutual consent. It’s significant that the concern with the gentleman in question was not simply that he was manually releasing himself, but that he was robbing his wife while he did. Perhaps this is a more constructive way of talking about the problem in Christian contexts.

The story concluded: The man got baptized, and in so doing miraculously overcame his compulsive and addictive behaviors.

Again, not a testimony I ever expected to hear from the pulpit. But a welcome and compelling case study in pastoral theology nonetheless.

Here are the pastoral lessons I’d like to offer:

1. Pastoring is always multilayered: Not only did this story testify to the importance of baptism and the reality of the miraculous, but it also communicated that church is a place where one can come to be honest about and find deliverance from addiction. Addiction is not a matter of shame. On the contrary, the story was told as if this man’s experience would resonate with others sitting in the sanctuary. They too could look forward to their sense of shame being transformed into a story of liberation and relational restoration. They could equally look forward to their own story encouraging others to find freedom too.

2. Pentecostals always stumble into sacramental theology. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of miracles taking place through the administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It definitely won’t be the last. Maybe Pentecostals (and all our Evangelical brethren with us) need to start embracing sacramental theology since we’re already (at least in some ways) sacramental in function.

3. I can’t imagine hearing this story in an American-majority church. And that’s the blessing of cross-cultural ministry. We Americans have so much to learn from Christians across the globe. That’s not to say that I would ever tell a story like this in my own church, but it does cause me to consider what taboos I harbor that I’ve wrongly identified with Christianity itself.

In sum: This was a most unexpected testimony, one that gave me a lot to think about. But it was all the more an unexpected gift to see my beloved friend and co-worker in the gospel do the thing I’m so eager to teach others to do, which is to make baptism a matter of lifelong pastoral import.

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I recently had the pleasure of talking with Dave Olsen on his Ask A Theologian Podcast. You should give it a listen.

The links to both Apple and Spotify are at the bottom of this post.

Oh, and don’t forget to share after (or even before!) you’ve listened 😇

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Here’s Dave’s description of what went down in our convo:

I talk with Dr. Joseph Lear about Christian ethics—what’s right and wrong, a shared vision of the good, and how to live in a world that isn’t as it should be. We discuss sexuality as an everyday ethical issue, the importance of virtue and habits, and how spiritual disciplines can exist without real moral formation. We also explore ethical behaviour online, emphasizing generosity and knowing when to disengage. Dr. Lear connects ethics to eschatology in Luke-Acts: “the last days” prompts “what shall we do?” leading to sharing and justice, and he argues that losing kingdom-focused eschatological imagination fuels partisan visions like Christian nationalisms. He recommends resources and previews his forthcoming book on Pentecostal preaching.

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Apple:

Spotify:

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In this jovial and unserious sub-Substack,

I’ll be your coach, calling all the VIBIEST PLAYS, enabling you to outplay the competition with skill and finesse.

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March’s VIBE

As always, from the 1st whistle we declare the VIBE of the month:

It’s 🥴 DRUNK 🥴

With Spring Break and St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, we need a vibe for the church that matches the appeal of debauchery while retaining necessary holiness.

That brings us to our verse of the month to support the vibe of the month:

“Be not drunk on wine🍷 (which is debauchery), but BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT.” -Ephesians 5:18.

Like Peter on 🔥 Pentecost 🔥, we’re shouting WE’RE NOT DRUNK!

But we are filled with the Spirit 😏 🥴.

🔊SERMON SERIES

You know and I know how hard it can be to write sermons, which is why I always give you a series idea to carry you through the month—and always in keeping with the VIBE.

Here’s some 🍺 DRUNK-vibe 🍺 sermon ideas:

Naked Noah, Drunk On Wine // Naked David, Drunk on Spirit

The Foaming Wine of God’s Judgment: Reflections on the Likelihood of Booze in Hell

Drunk Uriah, Dead Uriah: The Slippery Slope of Fermented Potables

WWIII is Coming: The Wine of Sexual Immorality, The Whore of Babylon, and The Wrath of Jesus’s Drunken Sword.

The🫸 Anti-Vibe 🫷

Last month, we introduced for the first time the anti-vibe. Back at it this month, our ANTI-vibe is BUZZKILL.

Here are the top buzzkills 😖 of the DRUNK Vibe:

• Sin

• Death

• Legalism

• Alcoholism

• The Devil

• Janky coffee ☕️

  

  And now, a 📣 shout out 📣to this month’s very special (and perhaps once in a lifetime) sponsor.

🧠 Pastoral Theology Ponderings

This month, we’re digging in deeper and fielding some of the controversial theological questions about this month’s DRUNK vibe.

👉 Psalm 78:65 says that God rouses himself to fight enemies “like a strong man shouting because of wine.”

😧 Is it okay for the Bible to say God is hungover?

👉 Eli told Hannah to put her wine away when she was crying at Shiloh.

😧 Is it okay to be a sad drunk (in the Spirit), or only a happy one?

👉 Finally, Can Episcopalians and Reformed Theobros get into heaven with how much alcohol they imbibe (😧😧😧)?

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🍻 Finally, The DRUNK of the Month

This month we’re handing out our first-ever award: The Drunk of the Month.

The recipient of this award is recognized for

• The Fruit of the Spirit (not of the vine) in their lives, and for

• Being a party animal (like Jesus was).

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Drunk of the Month award goes to…

…

The lead pastor of my church, Resurrection Assembly of God,

🎉 Rev. Abby Anderson 🎉

Raise a glass (of non-alcoholic beverage) to congratulate her.

Click HERE to Congratulate

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Josh is in the department of Religious Studies at Stanford University and the department of Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and Sir Mortimer B Davis Jewish General Hospital—Which makes him a distinguished researcher in the fields of neuro-anthropology and religious studies. His unique perspective combines academic inquiry with a deep appreciation for the spiritual experiences of Pentecostals and charismatics.

Join us for a thrill ride about how speaking in tongues has changed the 🌍, how it can change your brain 🧠, and why we talk about psychedelics (😵‍💫) and tongues in the same podcast!

Share 🤲 this with someone who’s been skeptical about speaking in tongues: Dr. Brahinsky says no one is faking it.

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Give it a listen, give it a watch. And be sure to let me know what you think about all of it in the comments 👇

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Here is Josh’s book. We recorded this on February 26, but his book is officially out TODAY. So go get your copy.

• Click here to order from Bookshop.org

• Click here to order from Amazon

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I’m of course playing on the idea of “Pastor-Penitent Privilege” in the section title, which refers to the pact clergy have with the state in western legal tradition. Similar to therapists, pastors can’t be compelled to divulge private conversations they had with congregants. This goes back to the confessional booth in Catholicism. What you confess to the priest stays with the priest.

“Pastor Privileged Monthly” will be the inverse of that: Me letting you in on the ways I have encountered victories, losses, challenges, and joys. Everything I talk about will touch on what it means to be a pastor and theologian.

My hope is that this becomes a piece of encouragement for pastors and theologians who experience routine isolation and disillusionment. So please do share with anyone you think might be built up by it.

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Polluted Health and Pulpit Fill

One of the persistent anxieties pastors face, especially in small churches, is the prospect of getting sick on Saturday and not having anyone to fill in on Sunday. I’ve woken up on a Sunday morning more than once unable to stand up, let alone preach, from an overnight onset of the flu. Having small children who pick up viruses like candy only concentrates the anxiety.

This February I had the great privilege of being a relief pitcher for a pastor in that precise situation. Bryan Newswander, pastor at Westside Assembly in Davenport, IA, texted me on a Saturday morning to say that he needed help. The flu had taken his family hostage, and he was the latest to be captured.

I had a few things to work out on my end. I was scheduled to lead kids church, but my lead pastor, Abby Anderson, was happy to make things work. Her husband, Kyle, volunteered to fill in for me.

This is a real lesson about the beauty of cultivating friendships between churches, and the importance of having “all things common” like the early church did in Acts (see 2:42-47). It was a joy to share my time and the church’s resources (which was me) with another church.

I asked my son, Lazarus, who is now 10, if he’d like to go with me. I remembered being able to do this with my father when I was 10, and it was exciting to relive it from the other side. I called him my “armor bearer” for the trip 😅.

I preached on baptism from Matt 3, which is what Pastor Bryan had planned on preaching. If there’s anything in life I want to be known for as a guest preacher, it’s for preaching the building blocks of Christianity. Like baptism, resurrection, the Lord’s Supper, and the cross ✝️

I don’t ask for pledges for subscriptions on this platform. So here I’d like to suggest you give a small offering to Westside Assembly to help them out. I suggest $5, or the cost of a St*rbucks drink. I can vouch for your donation going to kingdom use.

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Ecumenism and Evangelicalism

How does one relate pastorally and ecclesiologically to other denominations? I’ve learned that too much theory really gets in the way. The best way of doing ecumenical work (i.e. building friendships and partnerships across churches and denominations) is to be like Nike, and just do it. You’ll be surprised at how easy it to make friends with people you disagree with on a number of theological, churchly, biblical, and practical issues.

The key to ecumenism is to work out differences from a foundation of prior friendship, not the other way around.

I got do this in a concentrated way this month by attending my first St. Iranaeus Fellows meeting at the Center for Pastor Theologians in Oak Park, IL.

We had devotionals, prayer, lectures, and roundtable discussions with a group made up of pastors from what the director of the CPT, Joel Lawrence, calls “Great Tradition Evangelicalism.” We had women and men, complimentarians and egalitarians, and pastors from the uttermost parts of the earth like Brazil, South Korea, and Clinton, MO.

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We also had Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, and not a few Gentiles (!). Okay, that last part is a joke playing on the unexpected people included in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts. But I’m making a point: The CPT felt to me like the kind of unity in diversity that the early church was able to cultivate.

👉 I’m curious to hear anecdotes about unexpected friendships and collaborations across denominational difference. Tell me a good story in the comments or a restack, and I’ll be sure to amplify it.

If you want to be a part of what’s happening at the CPT, come to the conference with me October 19-21. This year we’re talking the identity of the church in a time of cultural crisis.

CPT Conference Info and Registration

Finally: Writing Update

If you haven’t heard yet, now you have: I’m writing a book on Pentecostal Proclamation. I’m really excited to let you know that I’ve completed a rough draft of the manuscript. The working title is Tongue On Fire: Pentecostal Proclamation in the 21st Century, to be published with Logion Press.

I find editing my own writing really painful. It’s astounding how many simple mistakes I make, and how often I think, “Mannnn, I have no idea what I was trying to say here” 🤣.

If you want to see the video updates on what I’ve been working on in Chs 1-4, here’s a link to first video. From there you can follow the progressive numbering of the book updates in my list of publications in my Pastoral Theology. There’s more to come!

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So what the alternative? Peter’s Pentecost sermon is a great place to start.

In this vid, I talk a little about my creative process, and then try to do what Peter did by preaching Mark 2.

Give it a watch, give it a listen, and let me know what you think.

✌️✌️✌️

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