The Center for Pastor Theologians Journal
The Center for Pastor Theologians Journal (formerly the Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology) is published bi-annually by the Center for Pastor Theologians. The essays contained within the CPTJ are drawn from the papers presented at the Center’s theological symposia for pastors. As such, each volume of the CPTJ focuses on a single theological theme relevant to ministry and the life of the church. Spanning a wide ministry context (rural, urban, small church, mega church) and the breadth of evangelical denominational affiliations (Baptist, Anglican, Wesleyan, Reformed, Lutheran, Independent, etc.), the majority of our contributors are evangelical theologians and scholars whose primary vocation is pastoral ministry. It is our aim that the CPTJ models robust ecclesial theology — theology that is born out of a parish context and driven by parish questions and concerns.
Views of the contributors are their own, and not necessarily endorsed by the editorial staff or the Center. The CPTJ does not accept essay contributions outside the Center’s four pastoral fellowships.
Print editions of the CPTJ are available for purchase at GlossaHouse and on Amazon. Free digital downloads of CPTJ essays are available below. Indexing available in Christian Periodical Index, owned by the Association of Christian Librarians and produced by EBSCOHost.
Current Volume
Essays on HOPE
Volume 10.2 | 2023
Hope is a word we use regularly in daily life to describe an aspiration, a wish, 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. Biblical hope is the settled conviction that that which is not yet will be, that the promises God has made will come to pass. As such, a hopeful life is one lived with hearts and minds oriented to the reality of God, who calls us to live in this world as those whose minds are built on the foundation of the eschatological promise of eternal peace in God’s presence.
The essays contained in this volume of the Center for Pastor Theologians Journal pursue a deeper understanding of hope and how followers of Jesus are formed in hope. It continues our project at the Center for Pastor Theologians 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.
