Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1989). 171 pages.
Eugene Peterson
Quite often when I read Eugene Peterson on pastoring I
feel my blood pressure dropping and my spirit settling into the place it longs
to be. As a pastor I am subject to a lot
of theories and expectations about what it means to do my job, and I suspect
most of them are warmed-over corporate make-work that simply do not belong in
my vocation. Peterson, however,
expresses with great experience and aplomb what it is like to try and be a good
pastor.
When I sat down to open up "The Contemplative
Pastor," I thought I would just read a couple of pages to get started and
so did not have a pencil in hand. I read
the first sentence, put the book down, and returned with a pencil. "If I, even for a moment, accept my
culture's definition of me, I am rendered harmless." I do not want to be harmless, but I suspect
that is how many view me. I knew then
that if the rest of the book lived up to the promise of this first thought I
was in for a marvelous read.
Peterson's goal in the book seems to be reshaping what we
mean when we talk about the vocation of pastor.
What do we do? What makes us different from other people helping
professions? Is there anything different
between the two, and if so, is there a way of recapturing it? He begins with describing the pastor as
"unbusy, subversive, and apocalyptic." And so the book goes, relabeling the pastor
in ways that are not in-step with current cultural trends but which capture the
significant, if hidden, vocation of pastor.
One particularly insightful passage near the end deals with the
adolescence of our age and how that kind of immaturity has crept into even the
pastor's life.
The first half of the book simply soars with insight and
encouragement to be something different from what the world around us, and even
within us, wants us to be. At moments
halfway through the book I thought the pastoral insight waned a bit, but overall
it never really lost its subversive encouragement. Throughout, Peterson moves expertly from
discussing a theology of sin and what that does to our view of others, to the
genuine expectations of a congregation, to the value of learning to use
language well through reading and writing poetry. There is a lot here to absorb and learn from.
The biblical role of pastor has been lost in our American
and Western cultures, and therefore needs to be regained. It is something of significant value in the
lives of people, congregations, and communities and thus cannot be surrendered
to corporate style leadership or nice-guy optics. Peterson is a phenomenal guide back to the
path we should be trodding.
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