Church 🤝 Theology

About this Substack, and About Me

This is Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear, a substack about theology in the local church, where it belongs.

I inhabit a unique space. I am a pastor with a PhD. In my denomination, the Assemblies of God, I am more than unique. I’m a unicorn—almost one of a kind. I’m asked all the time why I didn't go into academia after I finished my doctoral work in New Testament at the University of Aberdeen. There’s a market answer to that question: universities aren’t hiring a lot of full time faculty these days, and especially not ones that look like me.

But to credit the market would be pagan. God told me to go to the local church after my doctoral studies. Through the (indeed miraculous) leading of the Holy Spirit, I ended up in Iowa City, IA where I have led the revitalization of a dying church.

I have never doubted it, and I have only been more convinced 9 years later that theology belongs in the local church. My pentecostal movement has historically had a deep suspicion of higher education. “Isn’t education a killjoy and detached from the devotions of working people?” My educational experience was punctuated with the opposite sentiment: isn’t the local church where the fundies, both liberal and conservative, reside?

I think they’re both wrong.

What I publish here will bring theology to the local church and the local church to theology.

I grew up on the edge of the Sahara Desert in West Africa where my parents were church planting missionaries. I was a slingshot sharp-shooter, amateur packrat trapper, wilderness fruit forager, and evangelist before the age of 10. My best friends were my Muslim neighbors who taught me football (soccer), pigeon husbandry, Bambara, and how to escape the evil eye of the neighborhood sorcerer.

God spared my life from eight bouts of malaria, the Bwa revenge-takers, and three violent coup d’états during my childhood so that I could study biblical languages, attend Yale Divinity School, and complete a PhD in early Christianity before settling down in Iowa City, IA to pastor a dying congregation.

Resurrection Assembly of God is alive, to the glory of God. Jesus is Lord because he is risen. Everything follows from that: I’ve fought for housing rights, canceling debts, accessible healthcare, just immigration, the celebration of children, and the dignity of all people. Demons have been cast out, the sick have been healed, and the poor have good news preached to them.

I’ve been a children’s pastor, youth pastor, young adult pastor, Sunday School teacher, college chaplain, lead pastor, church consultant, and overseer. All of it in about 20 years of ministry experience.

Holly Lear, PhD, RN, BSN, MPH, LNHA is my wife. And our sons are Lazarus, Barnabas, and Moses.