mgpcpastor's blog

What does Dangerous Calling (Paul David Tripp, Crossway, 2012) promise?
Subtitled Confronting The Unique Challenges Of Pastoral Ministry, Dangerous Calling was written to help pastors “take an honest look at yourself in the heart-and-life exposing mirror of the Word of God – to see things that are wrong and need correcting and to help you place yourself once again under the healing and transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (pg 11) Tripp addresses pastors specifically because he believes there is much in the culture of the church by which pastors (actively and passively) are separated from the normative communal spiritual growth processes in which all healthy Christians should be engaged.
What I liked.
Pretty much everything. Search this blog. I’m a Paul Tripp fan.
That said, I found Tripp’s diagnosis of pastoral culture compelling. A lack of accountable communal spiritual formation which would cause concern if practiced by other Christians is almost adopted as a virtue among pastors. The temptation to confuse increased knowledge with spiritual growth; and to base success on parish management outcomes instead of maturing holiness create a toxic culture. For any pastor who has ever been tempted to feel that it would take a change in the spiritual climate (or some other facet) of their congregation for them to feel settled and satisfied, this book challenges why we’d apply reasoning to our own circumstances that would sound alarm bells if we heard it being applied by those who aren’t pastors to their personal situations.
Inappropriate anger, misplaced aggression in the home, compensatory habits of excessive consumption, all of these are touched upon.
Having spent the first half of the book establishing the diagnostic tools, Tripp spends the second half in two chapters which encourage pastors to cultivate their sense of awe in the character and person of God so we can be lead worshipers celebrating the glory of God; and then cultivate a due sense of who we are so that we don’t try to take God’s place or substitute our function for the place God should have in our lives.
The tone is challenging, but ultimately encouraging.
What I’m not sure about.
As someone from the same denominational background as Tripp, I missed significant development of a notion that pastors collegially, across congregations, have a responsibility to submit to, and support one another in accountability regarding their spiritual states. The emphasis on personal and congregational responsibility to the pastor’s spiritual care was not reflected in mentioning presbyteries or retreat groups or anything similar. This may be because a majority of the book’s intended audience are probably from congregational or independent church structures. While such collegial relationships may receive passing mention in the book, they don’t receive anything like the treatment which the other two areas receive. This is a shame, because even in connections which have such structures in place it is trendy to denigrate them and marginalise their pastoral function in the life of ministers.

I’ll be recommending Dangerous Calling to my retreat group, and we’ll spend some time considering an outline of its contents. It should be part of the curriculum for training those preparing for pastoral ministry and is a volume that should be regularly revisited.
Recommended.

The review copy of Dangerous Calling was provided by Crossway Publishing as part of their blog review program.
Provision of the book did not require the publication of a positive review.