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.