Preface the present theological education paradigm, but to think more deeply and especially theologically about what we are doing. This kind of reflection inaugurates a process that potentially generates changes more sweeping than currently foreseeable. Such is always the risk of following after the winds of the unpredictable Spirit. I have written this book not only for theological educators and faculty colleagues but more especially for administrators and church leaders who are wondering how theological education ought to proceed in the present global milieu—here in North America but also around the world—and why or toward what ends. Even more particularly, as a minister credentialed with the American Assemblies of God since 1987 (and dually so as of the year this volume goes to press, now also with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel), I have written this book from a pentecostal location and especially for those working in institutions of theological education affiliated with pentecostal and charismatic churches and movements around the world.1 I invite my colleagues in these domains, many of whom are just starting up, to think differently about the work of the Spirit, and about how theological education can be deeply pneumaticized, even radically charismatized, beyond the movement’s signal manifestations, and to do so from an ecumenical and global perspective. Christian faith has always been not only after Easter but also after Pentecost, and in that sense theological education also ought to be post-Pentecost, at least as presented in the New Testament. For prospective readers who come from mainline Protestant, evangelical, and other (nonpentecostal) churches and traditions, I believe it indisputable that all Christian theological educators work fundamentally as those filled with the Spirit of Jesus and hence have the opportunity, even the obligation, to think not just theologically but also pneumatologically about our work together. Come, Holy Spirit!
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