For Pastor Theologians

At the Center for Pastor Theologians, we are engaged in a project reflecting on virtue formation. The essays contained in this volume of the CPTJ pursue a deeper understanding of hope and how followers of Jesus are formed in hope. This volume continues our project of bringing theology into conversation with the findings of the social sciences, finding in that conversation areas of agreement, as well as places of tension, that enable us to develop a rich picture of hope.

Hope is a word we use regularly in daily life to describe an aspiration, a wish, or a dream of something we long for in the future. To hope for something is to have a desire for that thing to come to pass. And while this definition certainly resonates with the biblical and theological usage of hope, when we ground our understanding of hope in the narrative of God’s work in Christ and the Spirit, a much fuller picture emerges.

Biblically, hope is not a wish or a dream; hope is a settled conviction that what is not yet will be, that the promises God has made will come to pass. As such, a hopeful life is one lived from this settled conviction. Biblical hope is fundamentally eschatological; it orients our hearts and minds to the reality of God that calls us to live in the world of appearances and suffering as those whose lives are built on the foundation of hope for the promised eternity in God’s presence.
The essays in this volume of the CPTJ explore many dimensions of a hopeful Christianity.

Our mission at the CPT is to equip pastors to be theologians for today’s complex world. This world needs a church rooted in hope that resists the fearful posture that so marks our world, and this church needs pastors who are equipped to shepherd in hope. We commend these essays to you and pray that they will encourage all who are engaged in the pastoral vocation that is undergirded by hope.