The pastoral philosophy of Eugene Peterson and a conversation with a friend produces these thoughts by Joel Willitts.
Recently I was having coffee with a pastor friend and we were talking about pastoring. He was expressing frustration over the demands of pastoral ministry. The busyness of leading a large congregation. As the senior pastor in a traditionally senior pastor led church, he was involved in almost everything: problem solving, staff mentoring, vision casting and leading, running the church, preaching and teaching and contributing as the church theologian. Here’s the thing: He’s good at all those things (he’s the most qualified in the room) and he enjoys elements of all of them. But the collection of these tasks are not what he wants to be as a pastor.
Willits cites Peterson’s plea to his elders at the formative point of Peterson’s pastoral ministry:
“I want to be a pastor who prays. I want to be reflective and responsive and relaxed in the presence of God so that I can be reflective and responsive and relaxed in your presence. I can’t do that on the run. It takes a lot of time. I started out doing that with you, but now I feel too crowded.
“I want to be a pastor who reads and studies. This culture in which we live squeezes all the God sense out of us. I want to be observant and informed enough to help this congregation understand what we are up against, the temptations of the devil to get us thinking we can all be our own gods. This is subtle stuff. It demands some detachment and perspective. I can’t do this just by trying harder.
“I want to be a pastor who has time to be with you in leisurely, unhurried conversations so that I can understand and be a companion with you as you grow in Christ – your doubts and your difficulties, your desires and your delights. I can’t do that when I am running scared.
“I want to be a pastor who leads you in worship , a pastor who brings you before God in receptive obedience, a pastor who preaches sermons that make scripture accessible and present and alive, a pastor who is able to give you a language and imagination that restores in you a sense of dignity as a Christian in your homes and workplaces and gets rid of these debilitating images of being a ‘mere’ layperson.
“I want to read a story to Karen [his five year old daughter at the time].
“I want to be an unbusy pastor”
And why should a church facilitate such a life for their pastor?
Willitts and Peterson:
He ends his reflection on “the pastor he wants to be” with the image out of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick of the harpooner who is quiet poised and waiting in the midst of the frenetic activity of sailors all around frighting the tempest. He quotes a sentence, “To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil”. Then this paragraph:
The metaphor, harpooner, was starting to get inside me. Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into the fray that we know has immortal consequence.
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