What’s a Pastor to Do? Eugene Talks About It

Funny how someone you initially and judgmentally dislike becomes someone who becomes influential in your life. Eugene Peterson has been that kind of person for me. It’s not that there was any personal reason to dislike him; I just didn’t particularly care for his work in The Message Bible. Amazingly his writings have none the less intersected my path in a very helpful way. They have become instrumental in shaping my thoughts about what it means to be a pastor.

The first encouragement came from a Leadership Journal article a decade ago just before a leadership retreat. As I recall we had been talking about keeping the plates of ministry spinning, and I read portions of this article in which Peterson contrasts caring for souls and running the church. “In running the church I use language that is descriptive and motivational. I want people to be informed so there are no misunderstandings. And I want people to be motivated so things get done. But in the cure of souls I am far more interested in who people are and who they are becoming in Christ than I am in what they know or what they are doing.”

As we tried to get our bearings in Mexico, The Contemplative Pastor gave direction. “If pastors become accomplices in treating every child as a problem to be figured out, every spouse a problem to be dealt with, every clash of the wills in choir or committee as a problem to be adjudicated, we abdicate our most important work, which is directing worship in the traffic, discovering the presence of the cross in the paradoxes and chaos between Sundays, calling attention to the ‘splendor in the ordinary,’ and, most of all, teaching a life of prayer to our friends and companions in the pilgrimage.”

In the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Diana and I browsed through the books for a snowy afternoon of reading and walked away with Subversive Spirituality. It was yet another reminder of the work of a Pastor. “I had supposed that my task was to teach and preach the truth of the scriptures so that they would know God and how he works their salvation; I had supposed that my task was to help them make moral decisions so that they could live happily ever after with a clear conscience. I had supposed that my task was to pray with and for them, gathering them into the presence of a holy God who made heaven and earth and sent Jesus to die for their sins. Now I was realizing that more than accurate learning was at stake, more than moral behavior was at stake, more than getting them on their knees on a Sunday morning was at stake. Life was at stake. People can think correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live badly – live anemically, live bored and insipid and trivial lives.”

And finally, “Being a pastor is an incredibly good, wonderful work. It is one of the few places in our society where you can live a creative life. You live at the intersection of grace and mercy and sin and salvation. We have front line seats and sometimes we even get to be part of the action. How could anyone abandon the glory of that kind of life to become a management expert? We are artists not CEOs. The true pastorate is a work of art – the art of life and spirit.”

Flying Gameday Colors