Robert J. Dean

What is the church? What is its mission in the world? Modern Protestantism's inability to provide a clear answer to these seemingly simple questions has resulted in vast confusion amongst pastors about the nature of their calling and has left congregations languishing without a clear reason for existence. Many of the voices and allegiances competing for the churches' attention have rushed in to fill the void, with the result that the church in modernity has frequently found itself captive to the prevailing culture. Yet from within the belly of highly culturally accommodated churches, both the German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas were able to articulate compelling visions of churches freed from their cultural captivity in order to truly and freely serve God and neighbor. Against the complex and confusing backdrops of Nazi Germany and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America respectively, Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas sought to recover the ethical and political character of the Christian faith through recalling the church back to the christological center of its faith. Together they provide a rich set of complementary, and at times mutually correcting, resources for the contemporary church as it seeks to faithfully bear witness to Christ amidst the ruins of Christendom.

Jesus Christ and the Church in the Theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas

For the Life of the World

Stanley Hauerwas

For over forty years Stanley Hauerwas has been writing theology that matters. In this new collection of essays, lectures, and sermons, Hauerwas continues his life's work of exploring the theological web, discovering and recovering the connections necessary for the church to bear faithful witness to Christ in our complex and changing times. Hauerwas enters into conversation with a diverse array of interlocutors as he brings new insights to bear on matters theological, delves into university matters, demonstrates how lives matter, and continues in his passionate commitment to the matter of preaching. Essays by Robert Dean illumine the connections that have made Hauerwas's theological web-slinging so significant and demonstrate why Hauerwas's sermons have a crucial role to play in the recovery of a gospel-shaped homiletical imagination.

Making Theological Connections

Minding the Web

If you are passionate about participating in the recovery of preaching for the spiritual formation of God's people, then you will want to jump into this lively collection of biblically rigorous, culturally intuitive, grace-drenched sermons. Robert Dean sets the bar very high, even as he throws the gauntlet down, with these remarkable expressions of all that preaching was supposed to be and can still become. Animated by the conviction that the preached word is the playground of the Living Word, the pages of Leaps of Faith are populated by saints and sinners, pimps and prophets. Unexpectedly and delightfully, Bono works alongside Bonhoeffer, Dr. Phil learns a lesson from the Amish, and a discussion of body odor primes the senses for contemplating the mission of God. Rooted deeply in the lives of actual worshipping communities, these wonder-laden sermons from the prophetic imagination of an emerging pastor-theologian dare the reader to leap into the continuing story of the Triune God and, in doing so, discover that all of life has been taken up in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Robert J. Dean

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