Walking the halls of Colonial Baptist Church these days, you may find yourself passing as many professors as pastors. And, if you’ve attended a recent Sunday evening service, you’ve reaped the benefit of the close relationship between Colonial and Shepherds Theological Seminary.

That’s because one of Shepherds’ newest professors, Dr. Doug Bookman, has been teaching a series for Colonial that focuses on the Passion Week, the final days leading up to and including the crucifixion of Christ.

“It’s always been my highest priority to be aggressively involved in a local church, and generally that’s been at a teaching level,” says Dr. Bookman. Throughout his 35 years of teaching at the undergraduate and graduate university levels, Dr. Bookman has maintained a passion for teaching and serving in the local church. “One of the things I always tell my students is: ‘the worst thing you can do in preparing for ministry is to check out of ministry. You ought to be aggressive about ministry—it keeps your feet on the ground. It’s so easy to become theoretical with your ideas about the Christian life.’”

He draws inspiration from 1 Timothy 3:15, which refers to “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (KJV) In ancient times, Dr. Bookman explains, the function of the pillar was not just to support a roof; more importantly, it was to add beauty to the building. “It was the single most dramatic element of architecture. The cities were built with lines of pillars that didn’t hold anything up, because the pillars were what made it beautiful.”

“If the Church is going to be held up before an unbelieving world and made beautiful, it’s going to be through the local church. And if it’s going to be held solid, it’s not going to be because of seminaries,” says Dr. Bookman. “You don’t entrust the truth to a small cadre of white-haired men. Individual believers gathering together, studying the Scriptures, spirit-filled—that’s how the truth is kept pure.”

Dr. Bookman believes in the role of seminary training: “I absolutely believe that careful, deliberate, formal training for ministry is important. But, if it’s not wed to the local church, it’s going to become an end in itself.” The close connection between Shepherds and Colonial provides students with valuable, real-world ministry experience, along with classroom instruction. Those who attend Colonial enjoy the added benefit of many varied opportunities to be taught the Scriptures by the excellent professors who make up the faculty of Shepherds.

A respected academic, Dr. Bookman is as comfortable in front of a congregation as in a classroom. For over a decade, he has been teaching on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ at churches, Bible conferences and colleges around the country. 

“It’s important to acknowledge that there is bottomless mystery in the person of Jesus and we can’t figure it all out,” he says. “All we can do is accept all that the Scriptures teach. Where we encounter mystery or the inscrutable in Scripture, it’s not a function of ambiguity on the part of Scripture. It’s a function of clarity.”

It’s that combination of clarity and mystery that Dr. Bookman emphasizes when teaching on the life of Christ. He explains that most Christians readily accept the dual human and divine natures of Christ, but we can fall into the trap of thinking that Jesus was merely pretending to be human.

On the contrary, says Dr. Bookman, “Jesus had no more spiritual resources than we do. He was just as dependent on the Scripture.” For example, “we see Jesus praying the whole night long, and it seems to me you’re driven to one of two options there: One of them is that he was just doing it for our benefit, just kind of a play act. And the other is that he was genuinely dependent on the Father. And that’s staggering.”

When we miss out on this truth, “we distort the Gospel narratives in a way that they’re really kind of comic book-ish,” he says. “But if you just always assume that Jesus is living out that incident under the limitations of un-fallen humanity, and that it’s only when the narrative is clear that he acts out of his divine attributes, the black and white picture will become Technicolor for you. It just becomes so exciting.”

Excitement permeates Dr. Bookman’s teaching both from the pulpit and in the classroom, and it’s contagious. Describing the atmosphere at Colonial, he grins and says, “There’s nothing like being in a room full of people who haven’t ‘gotten over it’ yet.”