In 2015, the theological vision of Stanley Grenz continues to be meaningful and challenging for both the inquisitive seeker and the post-conservative evangelical. Roughly ten years after his untimely passing at the age of fifty-five, Grenz’s work has spawned numerous doctoral dissertations and theses from inspired young theologians seeking to embody the erudition and ethos that was Stanley Grenz. I am one of those students. I met Stan Grenz in the summer of 1998 and moved to Vancouver to study with him at Regent College, where I was his teaching and research assistant from 1999 to his untimely death in 2005. His understanding of convertive piety as trinitarian participation shaped my own doctoral work. In both my life and work, I am indebted to Stan’s love of God, of the church, and of the theological task.
This revised edition of Created for Community contains a new foreword by Dr. John R. Franke. Dr. Franke was Grenz’s coauthor for Beyond Foundationalism, the provocative construal of evangelical theological method in a postmodern context. Additionally, Franke has taken Grenz’s method and ethos to the next level with his construal of missional theology. For many, myself and John Franke included, Grenz’s work not only stimulates and invigorates our own theological projects but also serves to enrich our daily spiritual lives. This is one of the enduring qualities of his work—it is both theologically engaging and spiritually encouraging. Not many theologians can make that claim. The parsing of theology into a variety of subdivisions, such as systematic, practical, historical, and spiritual, has had the effect of segregating the intellectual from the spiritual. Not so in Grenz’s work. By his own estimation, Grenz was “a pietist with a PhD,” and all of his readers will benefit from that understanding.
The body of Created for Community basically remains as Stan wrote it, with a few notable changes, including footnotes with references to his other works and updated cultural references. The discussion questions have been updated and expanded as well. This edition also contains a bibliography of Grenz’s works and a postscript. The goal of this edition is to provide more resources and access to Grenz’s work for both serious laypersons and undergraduate theology students. Many thanks go to Bob Hosack and Christina Jasko at Baker Academic for their commitment to this project. Bob, a longtime friend of Stan Grenz, is committed to Stan’s vision of a “generous theology,” and Christina is a patient and insightful editor. Without both of them, this project would still be a dream.
Both John Franke and I dedicate this new revision to Stan Grenz and the generations of students yet to be touched by his life and theological vision.