Month: September 2014

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What Peterson Would Say To Seminary Students

A friend of mine linked to this long quote from Eugene Peterson concerning what he would say to new seminary students desiring to be a pastor:

“I’d tell them that pastoring is not a very glamorous job. It’s a very taking-out-the-laundry and changing-the-diapers kind of job. And I think I would try to disabuse them of any romantic ideas of what it is. As a pastor, you’ve got to be willing to take people as they are. And live with them where they are. And not impose your will on them. Because God has different ways of being with people, and you don’t always know what they are.

“The one thing I think is at the root of a lot of pastors’ restlessness and dissatisfaction is impatience. They think if they get the right system, the right programs, the right place, the right location, the right demographics, it’ll be a snap. And for some people it is: if you’re a good actor, if you have a big smile, if you are an extrovert. In some ways, a religious crowd is the easiest crowd to gather in the world. Our country’s full of examples of that. But for most, pastoring is a very ordinary way to live. And it is difficult in many ways because your time is not your own, for the most part, and the whole culture is against you. This consumer culture, people grow up determining what they want to do by what they can consume. And the Christian gospel is just quite the opposite of that. And people don’t know that. And pastors don’t know that when they start out. We’ve got a whole culture that is programmed to please people, telling them what they want.  And if you do that, you might end up with a big church, but you won’t be a pastor.”

Oh how I love Eugene Peterson.

ht  Geroge Mason / lucidtheology / Jonathan Merritt

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I Would Like to Make My Own Conference

I usually try to go to a conference each year. These conferences push me to consider new ways of Tapestry being the church. The past few years I have gone to the Q conference and it has been really good, but two years ago I decided I needed a break from it. I spent the next year finishing my dissertation, which was enough for me. I’ve started looking for something else and to be honest I haven’t really found anything that I am really excited about. Must of the conferences I have looked at seem to center around bringing in a Christian celebrity pastor to preach a sermon at you. I’m not real interested in that. I can listen to those preachers online so there is no real advantage to spending lots of money to go to one of those conferences.

I’ve recently asked a group of ministerial friends that I love and respect if they would just pick a conference and I would go there to join them. I figure I’ll get more out of hanging out with them and asking what they are struggling with and succeeding with, than I will with any conference. I actually wish I could just develop my own conference but I don’t really know what it would look like.

At this moment this is what I think I would like to do.

  • Get 20-30 ministers from various backgrounds together in a cabin secluded somewhere. Perhaps in the woods.
  • Pick a very simple theme . I tend to think that simple questions/theme have way more depth than more complex questions/theme. For example, I think it would be fun to ask such a group of 20-30 ministers to define what it means to be the church in their areas. I feel like we don’t usually ask that question, and therefore don’t really even know what we are trying to do. Instead, it feels like we Christian ministers often ask “how do I do church better.” Which is my opinion isn’t the more important question.
  • Ask a few decently respected theologians/thinkers to recommend some books and articles and the simple theme/question we will be discussing and then get all the attendees to read those articles and books before coming to the cabin.
  • Kidnap one of those respected theologians/thinkers to lead a group discussion or two. As you can tell I a would be all in on this conference because it would probably result in some prison time afterward.
  • After each kidnapped theologian led discussion group send all the participants out for some solitary speculation concerning what it discussion would look like in their ministry contexts.
  • Come back together and discussion what we each thought out concerning our ministry contexts and learn from each other.
  • make some awesome meals together and do some fun outdoor activities together.

This is the conference I would like to find, or maybe create. So, anyone have access to a cabin and willing to kidnap Miroslav Volf or perhaps Kathryn Tanner (whose writing I am beginning to like a lot)?