Updates, Events, and Publications
DR. CRAIG KEENER NAMED GLOBAL TEACHER OF THE YEAR
Asbury Seminary congratulates Dr. Craig Keener, F.M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies, on being named Global Teacher of the Year by the Global Pastors Network. Dr. Keener received the award at the Synergize Conference, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Global Pastors Network.
“It was a surprise, as I know there are many still more committed teachers on the front lines globally,” Dr. Keener said. “Nevertheless, it is a great privilege for me to contribute to this work that is serving God’s people even in areas without seminary access. It is a great encouragement for my work; sometimes I feel that I am juggling too many projects at once, trying to make every waking hour count for the kingdom, yet so much in the background when so much that is crucial is happening on the front lines.”
Synergize Conference speakers included James Merritt, former Southern Baptist Convention president; Carla Sunberg, leader of the Church of the Nazarene; Doug Beacham, superintendent of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church; best-selling author Sheila Walsh; Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress; and leaders within the Global Church Network, James Davis, Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, Tommy Barnett, and Leonard Sweet.
Dr. Keener has authored 34 books, six of which have won book awards in Christianity Today, of which altogether more than one million copies are in circulation. His IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (1993), now in its 2nd revised edition (2014), has sold some 700,000 copies (including editions in several languages, including nearly eighty thousand copies in Korean). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, for which Craig authored most of the New Testament notes (and which John Walton and Craig edited), won Bible of the Year in the 2017 Christian Book Awards, and also won Book of the Year in the Religion: Christianity category of the International Book Awards.
Other book publications include Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World (Baker Academic, 2021); Acts (Cambridge, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Galatians, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Spirit Hermeneutics (Eerdmans, 2016); The Mind of the Spirit: Paul’s Approach to Transformed Thinking (Baker Academic, 2016); Acts: A Exegetical Commentary (4 vols., 4559 pages; Baker Academic, 2012-2015); Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Baker Academic, 2011); The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009); The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Eerdmans, 2009); Romans (Cascade, 2009); 1-2 Corinthians (Cambridge, 2005); The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Hendrickson/Baker Academic, 2003).
Craig is married to Médine Moussounga Keener, who holds a Ph.D. from University of Paris 7. She was a refugee for 18 months in her nation of Congo (their story together appears in the book Impossible Love, Chosen Books, 2016), and together Craig and Médine work for ethnic reconciliation in the U.S. and Africa. Craig was ordained in an African-American denomination in 1991 and for roughly a decade before moving to Wilmore was one of the associate ministers in an African-American megachurch in Philadelphia. In recent years he has taught in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and in connection with various denominations.
NONAGENARIAN ASBURY GRADUATE PUBLISHES HIS FIFTH BOOK
At age ninety-six, Asbury Seminary graduate Rev. Donald N. Bastian, class of 1956, has published his fifth book, From Kitchen Chair to Pulpit: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Ministry (BPS Books, available on Amazon). Bastian not only studied at Asbury but also received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the school in 1991.
Bastian includes a chapter on his time at Asbury — three years spent juggling full-time studies and a student pastorate at the Lexington Free Methodist Church. At the beginning of their first year, he and his wife, Kathleen, and their three small children lived in a Lexington apartment with no running water and no heat until November.
Bastian’s first sermons were preached in 1930 as a five-year-old standing on a kitchen chair following the morning service in the little Free Methodist church in Estevan, Saskatchewan. But following his conversion as a sixteen-year-old in that same church, he would go on to become a well-known and much-loved preacher in the pulpits of three local churches and internationally as a bishop of the Free Methodist Church.
Now he looks back on a life that was a rich blend of:
- Family life — growing up in the home of English immigrants from Lancashire; meeting the love of his life, Kathleen Swallow, while a student at Lorne Park College in Port Credit, Ontario; and welcoming four children into the world.
- Faith — becoming aware during his teenage years of a call to full-time ministry; ministering as a song evangelist, initially as a hitchhiker across the Canadian prairies; and studying at four church-related schools after dropping out of high school at age sixteen.
- And ministry — pastoring a church in Lexington as a student, then churches in New Westminster, British Columbia, and Greenville, Illinois — pastorates that were marked by growth in numbers and spiritual maturity; and overseeing pastors and conference for nineteen years as a bishop of the Free Methodist Church.
By turns touching, revealing, and entertaining, From Kitchen Chair to Pulpit is a rare look at just how extraordinary the pastoral life can be.
OPPORTUNITY TO BETTER REACH CANCER PATIENTS
Cancer Treatment Centers of America offers an amazing, completely free resource tool to church leaders. Our Journey of Hope ® is a curriculum tool which helps churches establish a cancer care ministry to serve those in their congregation and community. To use the tool, one or two church leaders (clergy or laity) attend a live, two-day virtual training which is led by Rev. Chip Gordon, a leader in Pastoral Care. After the two-day training participants have full access to all curriculum, resources, and tools for training a cancer care ministry team within their local church setting – all at no cost. Beth Ellison has the privilege of assisting OJOH train churches as they seek to develop a cancer care ministry, should assistance (and encouragement!) be needed. We have been privileged to train over 1,000 churches from around the world.
One in two men and one in three women will get a cancer diagnosis, so the need for the church to effectively “walk the journey” with the patient and their family is vast. The website is www.ourjourneyofhope.com.
JOE CULUMBER PUBLISHES THE MISSIONAL PASTOR: LEADING A CHRIST-COMPELLED MOVEMENT
The Bible’s clear missional thrust is often hidden in plain sight, and we miss it when relying too much on our traditional way of reading it. A fresh way of reading Scripture gives us new insights. It happens when we read the Bible as a missional document. It calls for a particular way of interpreting God’s Word. Affirming that pastoral ministry must be missional requires us to re-examine our calling and work as pastors.
Joe Culumber has drawn upon his vast experiences as a pastor in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest while training other pastors as a professor for colleges and seminaries in the United States and Asia. He served for 13 years as the pastor of Seattle’s Rainier Avenue Free Methodist Church in the nation’s most ethnically diverse ZIP code, and he recently led a Seattle church plant that attracted many Iranian refugees. His roles in academia have included director of Greenville University’s leadership and ministry graduate program and president of Light & Life Graduate School of Theology in the Philippines. He also has held key leadership positions in the Free Methodist Church – USA such as executive director of its international men’s ministry and vice president of its urban fellowship. He earned a Doctor of Ministry degree in church growth from Fuller Theological Seminary, a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary (1970), and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and religion from Greenville University. He and his wife, Caryl, are the recipients of the B.T. Roberts Earnest Christian Award.
For more information, or to purchase the book, see HERE.
Leave a Reply