People of Good Faith: David Wheeler

David Wheeler is an adjunct professor of theology at Palmer Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He served previously as senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, and as professor of theology and ethics at Central Baptist Theological Seminary.

1. What story, verse or passage from your faith tradition shaped your life?

First of all, the amazing, powerful, unsentimental stories of Jesus, and his ethic for the new reality (the Reign of God) presented in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Then, the proclamation of 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, that God is in Christ, reconciling the world to God’s Self, and drawing us into the ministry of reconciliation. And building on that, passages such as Romans 8:18-23, Psalm 104, Isaiah 11:1-9 and Revelation 22:1-5, which affirm that the new creation of 2 Corinthians 5:17 catches up and affirms the totality of God’s creation, not just humanity.

2. Who are three people (other than your family) who have shaped your worldview?  And why?

My gratitude comprises legions; I´ll keep it as close to three as possible.

John Penick, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Leitchfield, Kentucky, was my first supervisor in ministry when I served as youth minister there. His careful, good-humored responses to my boundary-pushing exuberance affirmed me while protecting me, ministry beginner that I was, and the congregation.

Rev. William T. Kennedy, Jr, pastor of the Mt. Olive AME Zion Church of Waterbury, Connecticut, turned a seminary internship into a tutorial in disciplined preaching, accountability and cross-cultural learning in a segregated inner-city community.

Professor Durwood Foster of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, my doctoral supervisor at the Graduate Theological Union, treated me as a friend and colleague, and helped me make manifold connections among theological and philosophical traditions and the cultural contexts that birthed them.

Lola Garcia, Elias Castillo and the good people of Portola Baptist Church, San Francisco, California, drew me into the Spanish language, and some of the multiple cultures that use it; this gift has shaped my life and ministry ever since.

I do need to give a shout-out to my parents, Robert and Reid Wheeler, who took my siblings and me to church from “the cradle roll” on, and provided us with Bibles, encyclopedias and dinosaur books without the slightest suggestion that there were conflicts embedded in these multiple sources.

3. List three of your “desert island” books, movies TV shows.

The Bible, in English and Spanish at least, Aldo Leopold´s Sand County Almanac, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin´s Le Phenomene Humain.

4. What is one of the most critical issues people are facing today?

As I have written in several venues, including EthicsDaily.com (now Good Faith Media), and as I emphasize in proclamation, teaching and activism, I believe that the global climate crisis is the inescapable context for every contemporary struggle for justice and for the Great Commission activity of the church.  It is the axis along which whatever “more” time God grants to my story will move.

5. What are a few of your hobbies?

Reading, running, biking, travel (“green” when possible), adventuresome eating, writing (or, more accurately, “having written”). I love the city and wild areas equally, though in different ways; “urban forests” today are signs of promise and sustainability; we are nature, and nature is us.

6. If you could freeze your life into an already lived 10 seconds, what would they be?

A box of encyclopedias; “back in the field” tracking birds and dipping up tadpoles; basketball inside in gyms and outside on asphalt courts under the lights; track meets and road races; meeting Carol on a work trip with students; watching the birth of my children; preaching, singing, lecturing, moderating discussions; weddings and funerals; New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Portland; shutting down LAX on behalf of Century Blvd hotel workers;  Edinburgh, Moscow, Managua, Mexicali, Tijuana, San Salvador, Cordoba; a cornucopia of friends and colleagues.

7. Our tagline at Good Faith media is “There´s more to tell.”  What´s your “more to tell”?

In the church of my childhood, we sang “This world is not my home, I´m just a passin´ through.”  On the contrary, though we must view this world in its present state in the light of God´s values, this glorious creation is my home, and however people of faith imagine the life everlasting, it will come as the healing, transformation and culmination of this world. The grace of redemption is possible because of the original grace of creation.