Abstract
Anthony Robinson and Robert Wall have teamed up again and provided us with another helpful study (see their 2006 project Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day). In this second volume, Robinson and Wall look at 1 and 2 Timothy and focus on ministry leadership. Wall is a professor at Seattle Pacific University and he serves in the Free Methodist Church. Robinson is an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ tradition. The scholar and the pastor work together to produce a book that is, by and large, exegetically and theologically responsible and pastorally relevant.
The book is composed of a brief introduction and ten primary chapters. The introduction discusses ministry in a time of contested authority and summarizes the authors’ approach: ‘While some works on leadership offer a largely technical and atheological approach, providing a host of methods and sometimes gimmicks that are lacking in theological depth and content, we hope this book will offer an alternative to such limited approaches’ (p. 7). Their tack is a textual one; the letters to Timothy are divided into ten large units, and each chapter of the book offers: 1) a theological exegesis of the unit, and 2) specific implications from the unit for pastoral ministry. Every chapter concludes with a short list of discussion questions.
I have a few quibbles, such as: Robinson and Wall treat the issue of Pauline authorship as largely irrelevant, and they suggest that 1 and 2 Timothy should be viewed as ‘pastor to pastor’ correspondence. If one considers apostolicity to be a criterion of canonicity, then one must be concerned to answer the authorship question. Additionally, the assertion that Paul and Timothy were both pastors is an oversimplification. In my estimation, what we have in 1 and 2 Timothy is apostle to delegate correspondence that certainly has implications for pastors today. But apart from these differences and a few others of this ilk, I found the authors to be sound and quite sensitive to the struggles of twenty-first century church leaders. Above all, I applaud them for responding to the numerous and complex issues of ministry with an exposition of Holy Scripture. Robinson and Wall are churchmen who see pastoral ministry as a serious theological undertaking and who view the Word as the viva vox Dei. For this I am grateful.