The Pastor Theologians Podcast
A theology podcast for the church. The pastor theologians podcast consists of conversations and teaching resources at the intersection of theological scholarship and life and ministry in the local church. The vision for this show is to help equip pastors to be theologians for today’s complex world.
The Pastor Theologians Podcast
What Makes a Good Shepherd? | Amy Peeler
Amy Peeler for a rich conversation exploring pastoral identity, theological formation, and the upcoming Pastor Theologians Conference, Good Shepherds: Pastoral Identity and the Future of the Church. Amy shares insights from her latest projects—including a forthcoming book on Ordinary Time and an in-depth study of Paul’s use of birth and incarnation language—while reflecting on her own pastoral journey and the people who have shepherded her well. The discussion dives into the challenges of pastoral isolation, the necessity of relational connection in ministry, and the transformative power of vulnerability and shared learning.
So service and protection, you cannot separate them in Christian leadership. And I find that image then of service and protection really generative for how I'm thinking about what it means to look like and to function as a leader.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the CPT podcast. I'm Zach Wagner. I'm joined by CPT President Joel Lawrence. Hello, Joel. Hello, Zach. And normally we do a little kind of preview bumper at this time. But for today's recording, we're just jumping right in. And I'm going to spoil the guest and say we're joined by CPT fellow and board member Amy Peeler. Hello, Amy.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, it's so good to be with you all this morning.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, great to have you. And we've had you before. I'll hand it over to Joel in a sec. But before I do, could you just remind listeners, like I said, you've been on the podcast a couple times before, but just remind folks where you're serving and how long you've been connected to CPT.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So I'm a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and I've been here for 13 years. And I serve a church in the Wheaton area, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, a few town's over. I've been there for the same amount of time, but been on paid clergy staff since 2019. And then how long have I been connected with the CPT? That's an excellent question. I know I attended the conference on beauty, order, and sexuality. That was my first name. I'm the president of paper. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And then you've been a fellow, I think, since 2018 or thereabouts.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. I joined in 2019 when I got off of sabbatical. So picked right up after that. And that has been just one of the most wonderful parts of my vocation.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Amy, thanks again for joining us. And, you know, the The main purpose of our conversation is to preview our conference in October, Good Shepherds, Pastoral Identity and the Future of the Church. And you are one of our plenary speakers, and we're really excited that you're able to do that and looking forward to that. And we'll talk a little bit about what you're actually going to be thinking with us about the conference at the end. But we just wanted to take a few minutes here and whet people's appetite for the kinds of conversations that we're going to be having in October. But But by way of that, we'd love just to hear about the work that you've been doing, the research that you've been doing, things that you're working on right now, and kind of how that's shaping you both as a scholar, but also you're thinking about what it means to be a pastor. So what are you working on currently? And what do you want to share with us about that project? Or projects. You've always got a lot going on.
SPEAKER_00:That's true for all of us, right? We usually have many things in the air. You know, I'm finishing up. I just turned in the manuscript for a book on the church year. It's a series that Esau McCulley is editing, and there's a volume for every season of the church year. And I've just finished up the Ordinary Time book. You got ordinary, huh? I did. I think initially they weren't going to have a volume on Ordinary Time, but then they decided you know, this is the bulk of the church year. Well, we've just
SPEAKER_01:entered. We've just entered.
SPEAKER_00:We've just entered. So I'm going to start kind of promoting that a little bit. And I just sent in all my revisions. So that's been really fun to think. And I say this in the book. I didn't love Ordinary Time because it just felt like this kind of boring. We're waiting for Advent. It's super long.
SPEAKER_01:Can I ask, did you take any offense that they were like, who could write about something ordinary? Let's get let's get amy on on the horn for this
SPEAKER_00:you know i and you know it was later but i am happy to take esau's crumbs you know because his crumbs are a feast so if there's leftovers from esau i'll take it any day
SPEAKER_02:what's that what's the gist of the of the book i mean what are you doing with it
SPEAKER_00:yeah you know that and that was a hard i mean this is a great thing as we think about those of us who write for the church this was a really hard invitation because it's so broad you could have written on anything really, right? Because it's all the normal things. So in conversation with IVP, it was fun to be able to kind of narrow down. So what I ended up doing is focusing on some of the main practices of the church. So I have a chapter on Trinity because ordinary time kicks off with Trinity Sunday. I have a chapter on Eucharist because we're all taking the Lord's Supper, maybe not at the same rhythm, some of us weekly, some of us monthly or whatever it is, but that's a And then I ended up doing three chapters on the Abraham family narratives. I'm a New Testament scholar, so maybe that was risky and dangerous to jump to the other side of the canon. But these are texts that we read near the beginning of ordinary time. And I thought attending to that family, the covenant family, is really a wonderful baseline for understanding how God works with humanity, what faith looks like. how messy that can get. And so, and I was preaching several summers ago at Honey Rock, Wheaton's camp, and those were the lectionary texts for that season. And I preached through those narratives and found a lot of encouragement for myself. And so that thought that can be used more broadly. So it's a bit liturgical, a bit exegetical, and that's been a really delightful, unexpectedly good project. Very glad to see that come to fruition.
SPEAKER_02:What's the publication timeframe?
SPEAKER_00:February of 26. So that seemed an interesting time to me. I thought they might launch in the summer with Ordinary Time itself. And he said, no, it's actually good to do it a little bit early. So that will move along. Get
SPEAKER_02:the books all distributed out so
SPEAKER_00:people have them in Ordinary Time. We'll be right back. challenging or much debated Pauline texts, but seeking to ask the fresh question of when does he talk about birth, incarnation, what difference or how that might contribute to our understanding of these really, really rough passages or rough in the sense of they've elicited a lot of hard conversations over the years.
SPEAKER_02:And how far along are you? Are you able even to tell?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great question. I finished the whole manuscript first draft at the end of last calendar year when I was on sabbatical. My plan for the summer is to do the second refining draft by the end of the summer and then hopefully get that moved over to editorial as soon as possible. But I as a writer and a project like this that is really a heart project, I feel like Thank you so much. I'm not going to compromise on those things. So it just takes more time.
SPEAKER_02:Well, incredibly grateful for the work that you do and the scholarship that you do. And as you were even setting that up, you said, we who write for the church, which I really appreciate about how you frame that and you're thinking about your vocation, even at in your academic writing and teaching, I know for you how important that is to be anchoring that and moving that toward the church. And that's something that we are so grateful for in the way that our paths have intersected at the CPT. And as I said, we want to have a little conversation here as we're thinking about our conference in October. It's our 10th conference. And so we're doing a little bit of a, a summit together of what have we been learning? Where are we in the pastorate in America? Where are we going? Where do we need to be going? And we framed it under the title Good Shepherds, which we all long for to be and to encourage more and more of these in the church today. We have lots of examples of opposites and lots of examples of good shepherds. They just don't really get the press. But we want to be equipping the church and calling the church towards this vision. So I wanted to start just asking you, Amy, about Are there some people in your lives that have been good shepherds for you? As you think about how God has used people in your life, who are those who have been good shepherds? What made them good shepherds?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's such a lovely question to be able to reflect back on the people that God has used. The first person that comes to mind for me is my youth pastor. I had a really healthy church. My pastor, the head pastor, was an excellent teacher, learned a lot about scripture. And what was his denomination? Oh, I grew up Southern Baptist in Oklahoma City and attended the same church from the time I was around 10 until I went off to college. So really through middle school and high school at the same really thriving congregation. But my youth pastor was very dedicated to us. And I think one thing I most appreciate about him is that he matured in his own faith over the time that I was in the youth group. And he really allowed us to see that. I think we started, when I started, it was kind of all fun and games and flashy and silliness. And maybe around the time I was a freshman or sophomore, I think he really had an encounter with God by which he was convicted that it shouldn't all just be fluff, but there was a real call to be like Jesus, to be among those who are vulnerable, to encounter people who aren't part of the Christian bubble and hear their perspective. And as he was on that journey, he led us on it as well. So our camps or our retreats shifted from just fun to we'd go and be among those who didn't have housing. I remember he was bringing in the DJ from the secular radio station, which was kind of anathema. In a
SPEAKER_01:Southern Baptist context.
SPEAKER_00:But he taught us not to be afraid because if God is good and true, we can engage with lots of different people and we should be the hands and feet of Jesus. I remember he took a Bible and cut out every time that Jesus talked about money and any form of economics or anything and pasted that on the wall. And he said, this is how often Jesus talks about how we use our resources. Don't you think it matters? So yeah, he was just a really faithful person. And as he matured, he helped us mature. And I think that shepherding, which is like a vulnerable, like I'm not perfect, but I'm learning and I following Jesus made an incredibly deep impact on myself and so many of us who were under his ministry.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Yeah, that's great. At that time of life to have that kind of a shepherd, that is so formative. And I was in a serious symbol. I had a similar kind of experience, my own self with, um, both in high school and college, a couple of people who really came alongside and shepherded me and it just recognized the impact of that. Now, Gosh, however many years later that is, 25, 30 years, more than that, I'm afraid, later. And just seeing how many stories of people who are disillusioned with the church have opposite experiences. Right. And particularly in those kind of vulnerable
SPEAKER_00:seasons. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Where bad shepherds have done things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a good shepherd in the work that you're doing, both at Wheaton as well as in your local context in your church.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a fantastic joining question. as I probably have shared on here before, it's, it's very easy for me to see those connections to my academic work and working at a Christian college, you really do get to walk alongside pastor, shepherd your students because they're here to be shaped as whole people. And so in my classroom, I think that posture of, Hey, I've done some study. Here's some things I know, but I'm still learning. I could get it wrong. Maybe, you know, learning that, from my youth pastor and others, but that's the demeanor I hold in the classroom. And it really has facilitated then a boldness in the students that they're willing to kind of take risks and try things out because you don't have to be perfect. You're still learning. You can kind of research something and decide you agree or not. And that provides a lot of opportunity for growth when they're willing to take those risks. And I try to demonstrate that. In the church, I think that does translate for me to preach Right. And that's a tricky space of like, you don't. want to be kind of just airing all of your dirty laundry or TMI, but there is a way in which the sermons that really seem to connect are those sermons that are most helpful for me. So some degree of vulnerability of what I'm learning about, those seem to be the ones that hit people wherever they might be, even if their situations are widely different than my own.
SPEAKER_02:So zooming out just a little bit now from your own experience to kind of a broader context within which we're thinking about being good shepherds. As you look out at the American context, the church context, and you consider pastors today, what do you think are some of the deepest needs that we have in order to be better at shaping our pastors into good shepherds. And what are some of the strengths that you see that we need to be tapping into as we move into the future?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. As I have spent more time in intense church ministry, really over just the last few years at a level of intensity that had not been true for me before, I am struck at how potentially lonely the pastorate can be. And I know that anyone who's been in ministry for decades is like, exactly. But it has been striking to me that something I had heard people talk about, I now connect with in an experiential way. In
SPEAKER_02:your own experience, maybe? Or you've been closer and you've seen it play out in others?
SPEAKER_00:It's more the latter. That's right. I more have the deep sense that if Because I'm bivocational, I think I've been protected from it personally because I can have a whole and I have many, many friendships, many, many stimulating conversations in my academic life. But I recognize, I'm more increasingly coming to realize that in the pastorate, You can have friends with the congregation, but there's always that distinction and it can make friendship quite difficult. And then if you don't happen to connect with clergy in your area, so many pastors serve on teams of themselves or maybe one or two people that if you're going to be a good shepherd, you really need other shepherds to support you in that work. And often that's very difficult to find in your own congregation. I see that across the board. I'm part of kind of a local group of pastors and it has been beautiful, but also kind of heartbreaking to see how hungry these people are for this one hour monthly connection. And I like, you know, I have really great theological connections all the time. And these people, it might be, this is all they get. once a month. And that is not a state in which someone can maintain healthy ministry if they're really lonely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's so insightful and so important. And fairly universally felt, it seems to me. I don't want to say that every pastor feels relationally starved or isolated or anything like that. But just in our experience over the years here at CPT, It's an occupational hazard of being a pastor. It's that you are at a higher risk of becoming relationally isolated. Perhaps ironically, because it's such a relational role. Right. And you're engaging people, having conversations, standing up and speaking in front of people, meeting with folks. But it is that dynamic, like you say, where a lot of times you're kind of on the team side. by yourself in many cases. So I would be remiss here if I didn't plug here at CPT, this is kind of one of our ingredients to the secret sauce as we sometimes say, is that pastors need relational connection, not only just kind of like, oh, it's sad that they're lonely, but so that they can thrive in their ministry and that they can be formed into the type of shepherds that they need. And you see the deep relational connections between the Lord Jesus and his disciples and the apostles with each other throughout the New Testament and lots of relational language. And what we, I think, don't want, the dynamic is is in front of us, and we want to be doing what we can at CPT to not just accept that isolation and that loneliness and that relational starvation as mere occupational hazard, but try to correct that in ways that we can. So that's our fellows program, our local theologian cohorts, which get together pastors from a local area, kind of like the group that you're describing, for fellowship and reading a book together and sharing a meal. And yeah, I don't want to derail the conversation too much, but I do want to plug this. This is what we're about. So folks, you know, get on our email list. We're going to have a whole slew of new programs and cohorts and different things for people to get plugged into in the fall. And we'll be announcing a lot of that stuff in the coming months. Yeah. So just stay tuned and get connected if you're not already.
SPEAKER_02:And people can come to the conference in October. And speaking of that, Amy, you are going to be speaking at the conference. As I mentioned, you're one of our plenary speakers and we're really thrilled and looking forward to that. I know we're a few months out from the conference, but wonder what's percolating in your heart and in your mind as you're thinking about what you're going to be speaking about in October.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You know, I have shared with you before, Joel, that the shepherd language in the past had made me nervous, that I worried that that was saying something. that the members of the congregation, the sheep, are kind of ignorant and we know everything, like it fed into some kind of elitism. And I really loved some of the conversations that we had in fellow groups and on the board of like, here's what we're aiming for with this language. And I can't remember if it was you or another reason, but I was really directed to study more intensely John 10 and Jesus's own picture of himself as the good shepherd and what I discovered in spending time with that scripture. is that the metaphor is not focused on how ignorant the sheep are, but is focused on the self-sacrificial leadership of the shepherd. And I think most sheep, deeply important for me in my recent research has been Jesus as the gate. I've also been studying the pastoral offices in the pastoral epistles, 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. And one of the chief things said about the offices of the church is that they stand in front of the congregation and they kind of look over the congregation and you get this sense of the person being at the front and I've thought it's been very helpful to join that with Jesus's image of the gate, because that is kind of, you're standing there at the barrier, but not to Lord over to be the best, but to be the one who simultaneously protects the congregation, either from threats from without or threats from within and lays down one's life. So service and protection are important. You cannot separate them in Christian leadership. And I find that image then of service and protection really generative for how I'm thinking about what it means to look like and to function as a leader. And unsurprisingly to those who know my work, I tend to think about that in gender dynamics. What does that look like for women who are pastoring? What does that look like for men who are pastoring? And I think there is a lot of freedom there. an affirmation of our differences and our mutual invitations in that image of the gate. So I'm excited to keep working on this to kind of draw out how do we study the offices of the church as given to us in the epistles, but rooted in the image and the
SPEAKER_01:Like one more well-known text that you didn't mention in the synoptics where Jesus says the Gentiles lord it over.
SPEAKER_00:Totally.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And that was language that you use. Those who would be great among the Gentiles lord it over them. But Jesus explicitly tells his disciples, it's not going to be like that with
SPEAKER_00:you guys. Like
SPEAKER_01:not so with you. And then that leads right into the ransom saying where he says, just as the son of man came not to be. be served, but to serve and then give his life. So it's just striking to me hearing you name all of these other texts from from John's gospel as well as the epistles and then we also see this it's all up and down the New Testament this vision of what it means to be a leader in the church is almost paradoxical in some ways and it's certainly in worldly terms that the leader is not the one who is served but is the one who is serving it's really really powerful and I'm excited to hear you kind of dig into this for us more
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've been struck by the possibility of this kind of summary of saying it that, as you say, in kind of a secular space, submission and leadership seem counterintuitive, like you can't put those together, they're opposite of one another. But in Christian leadership… they must go together. That to lead is to submit. And I've been reflecting on how a pastor really is called to love unconditionally the congregation. And I think if I weren't in ministry, I wouldn't know that at the depth of the level of there may be people who are squirrely and funny and do annoying things, but it's not like this equal kind of accountability. It's that, nope, I kind of take it on the cheek and love them because I've been entrusted with this leadership position, which means that I defer to them at a deeper level than they might have to defer to me.
SPEAKER_02:Really looking forward to you unpacking that even more for us in October. I think it's such an important conversation. I also have appreciated our conversations about the word shepherd and leadership. It's interesting, you know, that word, there's a lot of different angles that people come at it. And I think to really understand biblically what's going on with that is something we need to wrestle with as the church because the language is, The language matters and the images that come to our minds when we use the language really matters. And I think you're right that on the whole, the language, the way we use that word often has set it up as the pastor's in charge and the sheep are just kind of to follow the pastor. That's just not what's going on biblically. And so I think. deepening our understanding of how that metaphor can shape our character and shape our vision. And in that, like there's an, there's ecclesiology that then follows from that structures of how we organize the life of the church and, and what that's done to pastors in our sense of who we are and, and ego and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's going to be a rich conversation and, and I'm, Just do want to encourage folks who are listening. If you can come in October, come. I think it's going to be a really important conversation, not just in the life of the CPT, but in the life of the church. So Amy. Thanks so much for carving out a few minutes in your busy schedule to take some time to jump on and chat with us. And again, we're so grateful for you and looking forward to being with you in October at the conference.
SPEAKER_00:Very much. Thank you both for the work that you continue to do. So important. And this is going to be exciting. I mean, CPT conferences have a great reputation, a really fun, really intense conversation. And I am very much looking forward to this one.
SPEAKER_02:Very good. Can't wait.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:You can also find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Today's episode was hosted by CPT President Our music was composed by Andrew Gerlicher. I'm Zach Wagner. Thanks for listening.