"Oil Boy Theology" - Don J. Payne

Thanks for visiting my website.  It is named "oilboytheology" because I grew up in small towns in the Permian basin region of West Texas and SE New Mexico (Jal, NM; Odessa, TX; and Kermit, TX).  Those geographical/cultural roots have profoundly shaped me, both for good and ill, and for the most part I relish them.  And I love theology -- and the University of Texas Longhorns -- a lot.

If you know my friends or hang out at Denver Seminary you may occasionally hear people call me "Donny Joe."  This is not a nickname; it's my full legal name (that is, it is not Donald Joseph).  Those not from the South seem to find this somewhere between curious and corny, though generally amusing.  Personally, I'm fond of it, though I don't think my publisher cares to use it.

My wonderful wife Sharon (Stroup) and I were married in 1981.  We love and enjoy each other immensely and I am still stunned that she said "yes."  She teaches speech, drama, and literature at Front Range Christian High School.  She is an incredibly gifted director.  We have three children whom we also love and enjoy immensely: Dani (gifted actor and 2008 graduate of Trinity Western Univ. in Langley, B.C.), Jim (drums, guitar, harmonica, golf, softball, and student at the Univ. of Colorado-Boulder), and Robb (bass guitar, mandolin and student at Arapahoe Community College). 

Sharon is from Williamsport, PA, which she is proud to tell people is the home of Little League Baseball.  To borrow a phrase from Napolean Dynamite, she is pretty much the greatest person I have ever known.  Merging Central Pennsylvania with West Texas has been a cross-cultural experience (usually interesting and sometimes even entertaining).

We met in Chattanooga, TN at Tennessee Temple University and married just after I graduated.  Sharon was a relatively new faculty member there, so I married up in more than one sense of the word!  Later we moved to Denver, CO where I completed an M.Div. at Denver Seminary in 1988.  After seminary graduation we returned to Chattanooga to embark on a church planting ministry that collapsed after just over a year.  In 1991 the church in Denver where we had previously been involved while in seminary (Southern Gables EFC) called me back as an associate pastor and provided a gracious, supportive environment for practicing ministry.  I served on the pastoral staff there until 1998, when Denver Seminary asked me to join the faculty to help build a mentoring program. 

Along the way, I was privileged to complete a Ph.D. in systematic theology at the University of Manchester (through the Nazarene Theological College) under the wise supervision and godly example of Dr. Tom Noble and Dr. Murray Rae.  I am still at Denver Seminary, serving as an associate dean and assistant professor of theology of ministry.  Oversight of the seminary's mentoring program is the mainstay of my responsibilities, but I also teach systematic theology and pastoral ministry.