Spirited Sojourners

Theological Conversations along the Edges of Late Modernity 1 ~ Welcome to the launch!

My new year’s resolution for 2026 includes starting my Spirited Transformation Substack, beginning with this (more-or-less) weekly post Spirited Sojourners. We are all on a journey as souls carried by and seeking after the great spirit. I do so as a follower of the spirit of Jesus, even if I’ve spent much of my adult life as a theologian trying to understand what that means and still feel like I have barely made progress from where and when I started three decades ago. If you feel curious, or at least open to being surprised by where the great spirit takes us, I’d be delighted to accompany you – and for you to in turn walk with me – in this venue.

Post 1: Welcome to the launch!

I also decided a while ago to launch my Substack sometime during my 61st year. Two months before I turned 60 (which happened this past July), my wonderful life partner, Alma, schemed with my son and a few of my friends and colleagues to throw me a surprise birthday party, at which it was unveiled that a scholarly volume was being prepared to celebrate my theological work. That book’s publication happened in November, and I just received my copy of The Pneumatological Imagination: A Theological Concert in Honor of Amos Yong. My initial perusal of the chapters left me humbled, grateful, and motivated to extend the conversation with the book’s contributors who graciously took up and expanded my ideas. My plan is to use Spirited Sojourners as the primary platform to further the dialogue, perhaps on a weekly or every other week basis (one never knows from week to week if other real time developments might be relevant to and even welcomed by those accompanying me, and this Substack, as spirited sojourners). I will begin with the concluding chapter of the book and work backwards, one-by-one. Hopefully long before the end of 2026, I will have had an opportunity to express my personal gratitude to each of the contributing authors of the volume.

So, Jesus did say, “the last shall be first…” (Matthew 20:16), and taking my cues from here – alongside with the fact that I sometimes have just liked to turn things around and begin with the end, as I did in my book Renewing Christian Theology (2014) – I want to initiate my reflections on The Pneumatological Imagination by thanking one of the co-editors, the one who also wrote the “Finale” chapter: Christopher (“Crip”) Stephenson. Crip was very gracious in his concluding words, not least about our friendship, dialogue, and collaboration since I participated in his dissertation almost two decades ago. That effort was an outstanding one, leading to publication in OUP’s fine AAR Academy Series, which was the first by a pentecostal theologian! Even more importantly, while expertly cartographing the various types of pentecostal theological methodologies on offer then (the mid first decade of the twenty-first century), Crip’s own constructive proposal has since become a major tributary in its own right, one that recognizes the interconnections between spirituality and doctrinal formulation or theological reflection, and which leads directly to Crip’s “benediction” in the “Finale” that foregrounds a painting of Pentecost that I had attended to previously, the excavating of its implications following his lex orandi lex credendi – loosely: the rule or practice of prayer inspires belief – approach bringing the book to culmination with the Veni Sancte Spiritus (Come Holy Spirit). How fitting that Crip would insist the last word echoes the “Spirit” or “Pentecost” that is in the title of at least twenty of my own books (including in an earlier set of Yong readings Crip edited and so nicely introduced, but not even including the dozens of my edited volumes) that have been published through 2025 (a full list through 2025 of which appears in the frontmatter section of The Pneumatological Imagination).

And even more noteworthy than the last point about Crip’s contributions to making this honorary work come about are some of his first words in the book, next to the copyright page, dedicating the book to “Lisa, Bella, and Abigail—the most important human triad in my life”! I will address Lisa more directly later on this year when I get to her chapter in the book, but at my birthday party I got to sit and chat with Bella and Abigail and that was one of the real delights of that occasion, warming the heart of one with three of his own kids and six grandchildren, the former as adults older than Crip’s daughters, but the younger group not quite yet in the teen years of my conversation partners that evening. It is not surprising that the two Stephenson theologians are raising up, I am guessing following the rule of prayer in their own family, the next generation of pentecostal theologians, as these two teens are already well on their way to following after the great spirit for the opportunities and challenges confronting their world. And even as the promise of the Spirit is not only for us but also for our children (Acts 2:39), they and their generation will say their own prayers, speaking to the great spirit from out of their own sighs, groans, and tears, in many languages, amid various religious and other settings, from out of a plethora of personal and other life circumstances, and those cries and prayers will catalyze new theological insights and significations pertinent to their world and that of their children also.

I bring this first installment of reflections on The Pneumatological Imagination to a close precisely engaging with Crip’s repeated notices in his middle “Reception” section about the key theme of discernment that has permeated my work from the beginning. Since the great spirit blows where it chooses (John 3:8), those of us attuned to its rustlings will be continuously attempting to discern from where and to where these breathings are occurring. The world of Bella and Abigail, like that of my grandchildren, will need other spirited sojourners to pray hard precisely in order to be able to think about, and help the rest of us understand better and live in ways that are up to the difficulties that our human species will face. I am sure that Crip Stephenson knows this well from all of his theology I have read, but having talked with Bella and Abigail, I am also now positive Crip feels the urgency in his parental bones on behalf of these most important beings in his life. I am blessed to have been accompanied by someone like Crip through my 60th birthday, and look forward to seeing how the great spirit continues to blow through his filial and vocational efforts.