Abstract
This essay is offered in honor of my former colleague and dear friend, Joel B. Green. It calls attention to his long-time commitment, as a seminary professor and administrator, to serving the church and its ministry of the Word. Although he is rightly recognized internationally for the excellence of his work as a New Testament scholar, what is often overlooked is that Joel was first called to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. The vocation of preaching and teaching the Word of God has been a primary factor in his cultivation of an integrative approach to the task of educating and forming seminarians for ministry. What follows is a brief account of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work as a theologically oriented preacher and teacher of preachers who was director of Finkenwalde, an underground seminary of the Confessing Church in Germany during the Hitler years (1935–1937). My aim in calling attention to Bonhoeffer is to highlight the kind of exemplary theological wisdom and integrative habit that have characterized Joel Green in his teaching and mentoring of seminarians “to come of age in dealing with Holy Scripture.”
