I began reading this book shortly before Eugene Peterson entered into hospice care. I finished it shortly after he passed away. Not surprisingly, a number of the anecdotes from this memoir found their way into eulogies for Peterson and his good work.
I picked this book up because it was next in line on my list of books on being a pastor. I find that unless I am consistently reading reflections about pastoral ministry, I succumb to thoughtless expectations for it, a few spoken but almost entirely of my own imagination.
If you look hard enough, you can find learned ministers reflecting on pastoral ministry in every era of church history. It is good that we have such an accumulation because many, if not most, of the books on the subject of ministry today will be rightfully ignored in twenty years, if not two years. Perhaps it has always been that way and the proliferation of publication just makes it more obvious. Peterson’s is a voice that will endure both for pastors seeking to be faithful to the shape of pastoral ministry and for scholars seeking to understand the culture of much of the American church today where pragmatism and managerial skill can so easily replace prayer and the word.
Reading Peterson keeps me agile because while I agree with him on many matters about what it means to be a human, a minister, and the church, I am also wary of much of his theology, including on what it means to be a human, a minister, and the church. Sometimes I wonder if we use the same words differently as Machen described in his Christianity and Liberalism.
As I read Peterson, I find myself think agreeing, disagreeing, and often doing both at the same time. I find this far more energizing than reading someone of my own tribe. I also find Peterson’s vision for ministry more organic and true to experience than many of the voices in my own tribe, a few of whom seem to have all the answers to the seemingly unanswerable questions of life and ministry. I’ve wanted to be one those people with all the answers, but life is messy and mysterious. Peterson gets that, but we differ on where the lines of mess and mystery are.
This book is well worth reading. Pastors will see much of themselves in it and some of what they hope to be in it. Other believers will see the questions, concerns, and visions (in the best sense of that word) which their pastors carry with them.
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If you don’t read the book, the following paragraph won’t be of much value. If you do read it, I hope that it helps frame a particular tendency of Peterson’s for you:
As I read I found myself chafing at the way Peterson recognizes the sacred in almost everything. It seems every road trip is a pilgrimage and every meal is eucharistic. This is doubtlessly part of his appeal to a culture as drained of the sacred as ours. As I read, I found myself wondering whether Peterson thinks it is the realization of such sacredness that makes the moment or event sacred or if it is sacred even if no one, other than God, realizes it. If I eat mindlessly, is the meal still sacred? If I drive with nothing in sight but my destination, is the drive still a pilgrimage? More importantly, could a road trip become a pilgrimage to a secularist if he viewed it with Peterson’s poetic imagination? To get to the nub of the matter, do you need to have an encounter with God for something to be sacred? I found myself both attracted and wary of Peterson’s vision of life until a friend reminded me that Reformed theology offers a more substantial, and safe, way to think about this same reality — common grace.