From his book "Working the Angles."
"American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted.. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of
images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status.Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills. The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper's concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.
Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades."
I would suggest that shop-keeping is no worse than becoming politicians or nobility or, dare I say it, priests that prevent the rest of the priesthood - the laity - fulfilling their calling.
ReplyDeleteI guess it is less glamorous though. Guess anger is the new forelock tugging.
Oh- well said, Mr. Peterson. Very well said. That is it exactly.
ReplyDeleteBut does he know how to reverse the trend?
I really like the re-discovery of Eugene Peterson's works. They were first written in 1987 in "Working the Angles" and have drifted under the evangelical radar as being the grumpings of a codger. It's emergent friends who are rediscovering the power of his words/observations more about a whole culture than a short time-frame. Maybe next we will rediscover the power of a'Kempis.
ReplyDeleteI dunno Toni. I mean I think shop-keeping is no worse than becoming a politician. But shop-keeping under the guise of shepherding... thats just deceptive on such deep levels that I shudder to even think of it.
ReplyDeleteBut I know what you mean, and i agree.
Don,
I find and have found Eugene's stuff to usually hit it right on the head.
He was always behind the time and ahead of his time, all the time.
I'm glad he's being read now. He always had a mostly healthy understanding on the North American / Western approach to pastoring.
I probably lean more towards the eastern pastor model. A shepherd.
:)
"The pastor"s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God."
ReplyDeleteNo pressure preacher. If you need me I'll be praying... I don't know about other pastors, but egads that can be an overwhelming thought if in an utterly human moment your lose perspective on who empowers you to serve.
Thanks for sharing this.
DJR
Doug
ReplyDelete“The pastor"s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God.”?
I have serious concerns about this. That statement does not especially reflect a biblical model, rather it reflects an evangelical model where everything is dumped at the feet of the paid 'professional' regardless of his calling and gifts. My perception is that the evangelical church has blind-alley'd itself by demanding that one man is teacher, evangelist and pastor. I've left out prophet and apostle, since the evangelical church didn't really recognise these roles at all.
To me, it seems that the task of "keeping the community attentive to God" needs to be shared among the different 'primary' giftings. It's little wonder to me that some guys have sought the shelter of being behind the counter. At least they aren't malign or self-seeking in that role.
Toni,
ReplyDeleteI was re-quoting the passage that Randall had laid out. While I think I understand your concerns about the statement I still feel that as "pastor" my calling is about helping people see God. That does not exclude others from helping in that role. I think that statement from Peterson's book (of which I had put down 3/4 the way through- will finish it this week) is sharing a key point of being a pastor but certainly not the only point. I could stand to be corrected.
Truthfully, I'm muddling my way through this thing more than anyone else I can imagine. God better show up or I'm in trouble, but what else is new.
Blessings.
Hey doug - I'm not riding you, really. It was more expressing my concern that the perspective if that passage (I've not read the book) was reinforcing the idea of the one-man-band.
ReplyDeleteMy church background is a little different from the conventional evangelical system. We have a couple of elders, one of which is recognised as the community head, with a bunch of guys in a team around them. Together they have the skills to do the job that generally a single man cannot. Most of the time it works well ;»?) But not all teach, not all lead, not all pastor, not all are prophetic, but together it's better than not.
I am concerned for guys that have to 'do it all', as not only does it put them under huge stress, but they will often fail anyway in some area.
Toni,
ReplyDeleteI finished the book since my last post and one of the big things Peterson finishes the book on is being and having a spiritual director. Essentially someone to keep you on track. It is a scarier thing to me that many pastors have very little in terms of spiritual mentorship and direction then it is that they do it themselves. "Doing it all" is very different things in different contexts with varying expectations of what a pastor does. As I contemplate my position as a pastor I am less concerned with the task of ministry as I am my own spiritual vitality and health. If I'm good with God, then the rest will come. There's a few more of my thoughts. I have appreciated the dialogue, so thank you.
In His Grip,
DJR