Beeson Podcast, Episode #669 Dr. Doug Webster Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. I am here with a good friend and a long time beloved faculty member at Beeson Divinity School, Dr. Doug Webster. He has been a professor here for 16 years and has been a theologian many more years than that, and was a faithful pastor for many years before he joined the faculty of Beeson Divinity School. We’re here today mostly to talk about Dr. Webster’s new commentary on the Psalms, but we want to introduce him to those listeners who may not know him yet, as well. So, lots in store. Doug, thank you very much for being with us today. >>Webster: Thank you for the opportunity. >>Doug Sweeney: So, probably a lot of our listeners know you already but just in case there’s some people tuning in who have not met you and who don’t know much about you yet, tell us just a little bit about yourself and your family and maybe how you got involved in pastoral ministry to begin with? >>Webster: Well, I grew up in western New York in a family that was solidly Christian. Came to Christ at a very young age. And I think through our own family dynamics, probably never went through a particular period of deep questioning or rebellion. I saw the solid and sound faith of my parents. My dad died young. I was in college. In high school I had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So, I mean, sometimes suffering plays a part in crystallizing our faith, deepening our faith. I think that was true for us. My parents were also very involved in a Chinese Christian fellowship group. So, our home every Friday night would have literally scores of Chinese students. I think that, too, had an impact on my brother and I. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, your brother who is to this day living in Hong Kong? >>Webster: Correct. Yeah. He’s lived most of his adult life in Asia. >>Doug Sweeney: How old were you when you felt like the Lord may be moving you into pastoral ministry? >>Webster: I don’t know if I felt ... I was just really in love with the bible. And at a young age studied the bible. I had a pastor who when he went on vacation, even as a teenager, asked me to preach. It was a small Baptist church. And I was ... I don’t know if I imagined doing something different. I didn’t picture myself as a lead pastor. But as somebody who spent time in the bible, I guess. >>Doug Sweeney: Tell us, how was the timing of your theological study related to the beginning of your pastoral ministry? Did you serve as a pastor for a while before you did your doctoral work in theology, or did you go straight through to grad school and then become a pastor after that? >>Webster: At Wheaton I majored in bible and then did an MA in New Testament. While I was doing the MA in New Testament I worked as a youth pastor. I sometimes think I was probably the world’s worst youth pastor. But quickly sort of afterwards decided to pursue graduate theological degree, a PhD at the University of Toronto, Toronto School of Theology. So, we went to Toronto. I landed immigrant status. And I taught 50% of my time at a bible college. And then the rest of the time working on maybe German, Latin, and Spanish. When I got to theology I was thrilled. During that time in Toronto, all three of our children were born. Our two sons were adopted, our third daughter came along wonderfully. The Lord built our family. We were living hand to mouth. That meant that I also was involved in church work just to put bread on the table. As well as teaching. I think I trace it back to a student after a class one day saying, “When are you going to go do it?” And that question really stuck in me. The last three years in Toronto I pastored an urban church along with the full time teaching. And I think the combination of those two pointed me in the direction of pastoral ministry. Sort of applied theology. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped really working on theology, but I’ve done it now in the context of kind of real people, cross generational, cross cultural. Just trying to build the church. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. And then when you moved away from Toronto you served as a pastor in a few different places before you wound up at Beeson. We don’t have time to talk about all of that, but just real quickly, where did you do ministry before you got to Birmingham? >>Webster: It felt very nomadic for a few years there. Three years in Bloomington, Indiana and then three years in Denver, Colorado at a UPC church, and then 15 years in San Diego as Lead Pastor of a First Presbyterian Church downtown Sand Diego. >Doug Sweeney: And after all of that ministry, you were at least open to the possibility of getting back into a divinity school context as a professor. How did that work for you? What was going on in your head when Dr. George reached out and invited you to join the faculty at Beeson? >>Webster: I was 56. The church was doing really well. First Pres was doing really well. It seemed like, “Well, is there another phase of work?” And should the last phase of my ministry be involved with preparing people for pastoral ministry? I’ve always had this tension between the academic and the church and where to be. I probably mentally and spiritually prioritized the church but I think it’s okay to teach in an academic setting someone who really loves the church. >>Doug Sweeney: What a great tension for a divinity school person. >>Webster: That’s what I want to convey to students – that church is the place. So, yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. All right. We’re about to talk about your project on the Psalms. But I want people to know ... you wouldn’t probably put it in these words, but you’re pretty prolific as an author. You’ve written about lots of different topics. So, give us, our readers, a feel for the kinds of things you’ve written about before and why you’ve been so wide ranging as a theologian and as a writer. >>Webster: Well, I am a generalist and most pastors I think are generalists. I don’t think I’m an expert in anything. I process ministry through writing. So, in a way that’s my counseling. I came here and we didn’t have a pastoral theology class as such. And so I lectured through that and that became living in tension with theology of ministry. Most of my time has been spent trying to understand ... trying to work in the middle between popular Christian writing and scholarly Christian writing. And how do I develop a pastoral commentary? I have done so on James, Ephesians, Hebrews, the parables ... that’s where probably my comfort zone is to try to process. And I do that for the serious lay person as well as for the pastor, to give them something to think about when preparing for sermons. >>Doug Sweeney: Fantastic. All right. My hunch is even a pretty serious lay person is going to be uneasy about investing in a four volume commentary on the Psalms. How did that come about? How did you get into the practice of reflecting on, writing about the Psalms? And how did this project get as big as it came to be? >>Webster: Well, there’s a lot to that question. We had worked for about three and a half years in New York City, almost every weekend ... I mean, there were weeks off, but very consistently in re-planting a church at 64th and Park, Central Presbyterian Church. That ended just the way it was supposed to end. The Lord was very much in the transition. We were ready. The Lord provided a full time, very capable pastor, Jason Harris. I had all of this energy after working sort of nonstop it seemed, and having all the time needing to be used profitably. So, I started on the Psalms and I had no idea of the extent of the project. I just wanted to spend time in the Psalms, spiritually, and also prepare material that would be helpful for Beeson students who I hoped would preach and teach the Psalms more consistently. And so one thing led to another and I started with Psalm 1 and just kept going. I felt ... and I would maybe say, I don’t know if I should say, but I would say that the Holy Spirit was in that. I kind of felt like I was in the zone for three or four hours a day on the Psalms. And it was just coming together in a way that I was pleased. I brought Virginia in on the project. She was probably the first editor, cross-out line person. But it worked out really well. I did not set out to publish that. But the more I got into it, and the more I felt confident in the helpfulness of the material, I started approaching publishers and I think every publisher, every Christian publisher turned it down. >>Doug Sweeney: Because of its size, eventually, or? >>Webster: Mainly because of its size. Several said, “We’ll publish select Psalms.” But that defeated something of the whole purpose. Because I wanted a consistent voice through the whole Psalter. And I didn’t want to neglect certain Psalms. And I think that there is a rhythm to the Psalter in the five books. I think that there is a kind of ... the same themes re-circulate. There’s kind of a rhythm to the juxtaposition of pain and praise, lament and joy. I wanted to capture that. I think there’s reboot Psalms sprinkled throughout the Psalter. And so the publisher that I went with had first turned me down and their editorial acquisition person left, took another job, and I didn’t tell them I had been turned down. I wrote to them again and presented it. And one thing led to another and ... Kregal has done a beautiful job on this. They’ve been wonderful to work with. Just in terms of their editorial work and artistic work, I couldn’t be more pleased. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. So, on the one hand, the Psalter is a central part of the Word of God. It’s certainly worthy of a lengthy commentary. Pastors need help preaching through the Psalms. If that’s what you’re doing in the project, that is definitely enough. But my sense is there’s an approach that you have to the Psalms that you’re also commending a little bit among the pastors and others who will be reading and using the commentary. And maybe even the subtitle of the books themselves, “Jesus’ Prayer Book” is an indicator of that. Is that a fair thing to say? How would you characterize sort of your take on the Psalms? >>Webster: I think I’m faithful to the historical grammatical method of interpreting scripture. I think we do that due diligence in the book. But I also believe that from first to last we preach the Psalms from a Christological perspective. And we don’t tack it on at the end. I think that we learn from the apostles a way of hermeneutic interpretation that puts Christ right at the beginning and right at the center and right at the end. One, I think it really helps if you pray the Psalms thinking Jesus prayed that Psalm. And what’s the impact of that? Because then it turns almost all Psalms into a Christological focus. Because it describes the life of Jesus through the narrative gospels. But also the high Christology that comes in the gospels as well as in the epistles. I think that’s evident. As TS Elliott would say, he is the “objective correlative.” It is what this is all about eventually. So, to be honest with the historical grammatical context but also then move into the theological impact of the Psalm. So, Psalm 1 captures really well the Son of Man. He is the one who meditated on the law, day and night, and lived it out. Psalm 2 captures really well the Son of God, the Son who kisses the Father. And then Psalm 3 is the suffering servant. So, it opens up to me real preachable material. >>Doug Sweeney: You’re already explaining this a bit, but what I have in my mind right now is not so much pastors who already know what you’re talking about when you talk about preaching the Psalms Christologically, but maybe lay people who are kind of feeling you, they’re getting a hint as to what you’re talking about. And some of them may know that there is a category of Psalms that we refer to as Messianic Psalms that seem very clearly to be pointing forward towards Jesus. But for a regular Christian who wants to be more faithful, as he or she is a reader of the Psalms, could you give us just a little bit more? What does it mean to read them Christologically. What does that sentence mean? >>Webster: I think really to address what you’re asking I would probably say, “Don’t worry about that.” Don’t worry about a kind of theological interpretation. First, get into the Psalms. I would hope that my pastoral commentary would help you get into them. And I think the analogy that comes to my mind, the difference between a tourist when it comes to the ocean and a real swimmer or surfer when it comes to the ocean. And I think we’re a little bit more like tourists when it comes to the Psalms. We’re walking around the edges. We’ve got a few favorite Psalms. But we should expand our favorite Psalms beyond Psalm 23 or Psalm 1. And that would be a part of the motivation I would encourage people to have. Get a larger circumference around the Psalms. Because I think we need a deeper theology of evil, and we’ll get that in the Psalms. I think we need a deeper understanding of suffering – we’ll get that in the Psalms. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the words that the Psalmist has for praise and doxology. I kind of need that. So, we all like writers who give us words for our thoughts. I think the Psalmist really does that. In time, you’ll see Christ in the Psalms. I wouldn’t worry about the Christological – just take it in. One of the things that helps me is that sooner or later every Psalm is going to mean something to you. It may be a long time. It may be decades. Or someone you know. And I think if you line up the Psalms with the global church – wow – then they’re all relevant. You line up the Psalms with the household of faith, every Sunday morning someone is coming in, in the worst possible shape. And somebody’s coming in, in the greatest possible mood of joy. So, we can work at lining up the Psalms and we’re doing ourselves in the Spirit a great service to do so. Because we have a lot of resource there. >>Doug Sweeney: Are there some ways in which God has used the Psalms to shape you, to shape your walk with him? To shape your pastoral ministry? To shape your outlook on Christian faith? >>Webster: Oh, very much so. Yeah. I think now for quite a while ... even before working on this project, the Psalms just ... Psalm 103 on salvation, I can’t top that in terms of how the comprehensiveness and breadth. A pastor friend of mine memorized that Psalm and would say it from memory during communion. And that encouraged me to do the same. And Psalm 73, just the passion of the concern that Asaph has for the brokenness and for the greed of the people of God. And coming to terms with that. And feeling repentant because he had felt that it was so unfair. That just begins to just inform ... when you’re holding a baby and you’re thinking Psalm 139, “Fearfully and wonderfully made,” and I mean how can you be a materialist, a naturalist, a nature-alone, material-alone person holding a child and thinking of the words of Psalm 139? >>Doug Sweeney: All right. So, Dr. Webster, I am pretty sure this isn’t going to be your last writing project. So, do you have another one going on now? Do you have another one sort of in the works or on your mind that you want to get busy on soon? >>Webster: Lexum is publishing, “More Than A Sermon.” I just finished the index. And it’s about a 300 page paperback – to halves – “The Purpose and Practice of Preaching.” The first half is the “Theology of Preaching.” The second half I take mainly probably pastors through preparing Lent and Easter and Christmas and crisis sermons and memorial services and wedding meditations. So, it’s kind of bringing ... it was pandemic writing basically. It’s trying to bring everything up and expressed as I probably near the end of my ministry. Who knows how long the Lord gives you? But it’s what I would like to have down. So, I’m very thankful for that project, too. The big long term project, which will probably never get published, is “Stay In The Story.” I worked through the Lay Academy ... so far I’ve done the wisdom literature, I’ve done the Pentateuch, I’ll be soon doing Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, and First & Second Samuel. Again, I’m just trying to open the scriptures up, take in the whole salvation history. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. But why do you think it will never get published? >>Webster: Oh, I had trouble enough with the Psalms! >>Doug Sweeney: Length? (laughter) Well, our listeners are going to buy so many copies of your big four volume commentary on the Psalms that Kregel will be dying to publish this one, too! >>Webster: Can I give ... this is a very practical thing, right? ChristianBook.com sells this four volume thing on the Psalms for $35. >>Doug Sweeney: Steal of a deal. >>Webster: And on Amazon it’s running close to $80. Kregel, it’s about the same. So, ChristianBook.com is cheaper than I can buy it as the author. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow. All right, Doug. You know we like to end these podcast interviews by asking our guests what the Lord is doing in your life these days? What is he teaching you? What’s going on in your spiritual growth even as a mature Christian? So, we ask that of you. What is God doing in your life? >>Webster: This is the first week of classes at Beeson. And I’m nervous all over again. It’s funny. It’s how that first week of school doesn’t change. Jonah, our grandson who is five, just started kindergarten. And I told Jonah, “Granddad feels the same way you do.” I have an opportunity in pastoral theology and preaching with a whole new group of people to hopefully help. And not take away. And I aim to kind of instruct them on what it is to be a pastor. So, I feel humbled by that. We’re involved with Church of the Cross here in Birmingham, which is an EPC church plant. I preach this week on Matthew 16:13-28. So, my mind is there in that text as well. So, it’s just trying to live in the rhythms of grace that God gives me. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Well, I’ve always thought you know you’re with someone who really ought to be preaching and teaching when you’re with someone who even after having done it for many, many years still gets excited about it; still has adrenaline pump when it comes time to do it. So, thanks for your ongoing excitement about [crosstalk 00:23:15] for the people of God and the students of Beeson Divinity School. >>Webster: Well, it’s a privilege and a joy, even if it’s nerve-wracking. (laughter) >>Doug Sweeney: Listeners, this has been Dr. Doug Webster, who has taught here at Beeson for 16 years and has been involved in pastoral and theological ministry for many more years than that. He is a beloved colleague and a dear friend. Thank you, Doug, for being with us. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. Please pray for the Lord’s work here at Beeson. We’re praying for you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.