Pastor and Professor

Pastor and Professor is one pastor’s story of a rich life filled with experiences that tested his faith and demanded growth that was both exhilarating and painful. It is the personal story of moving from faith as right doctrinal belief to faith as a liberating response to a loving God–a God who is always with us, continually drawing us into the future. This dynamic understanding of faith is based on the belief that the kingdom of God is a present reality where followers of Jesus are to be pastoral in spirit while prophetic in living. Don Blosser weaves personal experience with public expression of an emerging faith that wrestles candidly with the realities of life and deals with the pastor/professor tension of integrating academic scholarship in the classroom with pastoral proclamation in the pulpit. Pastor and Professor invites the reader to share a journey where faith is often challenged, sometimes doubted, yet lived with enthusiasm as it is shared from the pulpit and in the college classroom. It invites the reader to find fresh insights in the Scriptures, and to live with new hope, to embrace life more fully, and to share more gently one’s own story with others. “Dr. Blosser is reflective, current, aware, and deeply committed to the ancient text with an understanding of the world and church in the twenty-first century. Preaching is not only his gift but also his lifelong vocation. Preaching and teaching have consumed his attention and time for the past decades and this book is a reflection of this gift. To be challenged and encouraged, enlightened and stimulated, spend time reading and thinking with Donald Blosser.” –John M. Lederach friend and fellow traveler “Pastor and Professor is an engaging, at times provocative, and always interesting coda to a lifetime spent in Jesus-based pastoral and educational ministry. Don Blosser takes us inside the mind and experiences of a creative practitioner of Bible-centered peace theology. He shows his readers how ‘theological progressive’ and ‘Mennonite’ can be complementary perspectives.” –Ted Grimsrud Professor of Theology and Peace Studies Eastern Mennonite University Don Blosser (PhD, St. Andrews University, Scotland) is an ordained Mennonite minister who pastored congregations in Freeport, Illinois, and Akron, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Dictionary of the Literature of the Bible (1993), and contributor to Jesus: His Life and Times (1998). He lives in Goshen, Indiana, with his wife, Carolyn.