Acknowledgments
This project has incurred many debts. We are thankful especially to the stellar contributors who made this collection what it is and who worked within a relatively short timeframe for a publication like this. Among the contributors, we owe a particular word of gratitude to the students of Amos Yong who first suggested the possibility of our editing this collection on the occasion of their teacher’s 60th birthday. We readily accepted their invitation and now rejoice with them over the fruit of our shared labor. Aizaiah Yong, one of the contributors and the honoree’s son, carried an additional burden by advising us on all of the important details that the surprise nature of the project kept us from asking Amos directly. Other members of Amos’s family—Alma, Alyssa, and Annalisa—also supported this project throughout.
We appreciate Elizabeth Bento and Tessel Jonquiere at De Gruyter Brill for their guidance and patience throughout the process. Fuller Theological Seminary provided and gave permission to use the cover image of Amos lecturing, which, with a little imagination looks as if Amos were conducting—an apt image for a concert. We also thank Sawai Chinnawong for the generous permission to include the image of his Pentecost, as well as Jonathan Anderson and Paul de Neui for kindly assisting with our communication with Chinnawong. David Roebuck and the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center helped run down some citation information for footnotes. Sarah Harvey, a budding theology student, assisted with the earliest organizational stages of the project without knowing what any of the “secret” work was for.
Our families deserve the most thanks for their patience with yet another academic project that took longer than we hoped, and all the more for their strength and encouragement during our unplanned shifts since its inception. To Rachel, Nicholas, and Joshua, and to Lisa, Abigail and Bella—we appreciate your ongoing support.
Of course, we also thank Amos, without whose work this volume would not be possible, much less needed.
Last, we note that the completion of this project happens to coincide with the deaths of D. Lyle Dabney and Fr. David Coffey, both of whom were our teachers and were conversation partners for Amos. Both Dabney and Coffey, each in his own different way, started, and have now ended, with the Spirit.