pat loughery

“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 stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods.”

Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson is my favorite of his several works on pastoral theology. The above quote is from the introduction to the book in which Peterson challenges us back to integrity in our pastoral mission.

Our work, Peterson argues, isn’t about management or running committees or any of the thousands of other time-wastes that threaten to occupy our time.

Our primary ministry is threefold: Prayer, Attentiveness to Scripture, and Spiritual Direction. Each As simple (or perhaps simplistic) as that sounds, I think Peterson has a wonderful point – or three, I suppose. Our calling, whether in the institutional church, the organic church, the missional church, a church plant, a seeker church… is to listen to the voice of God in scripture, in prayer, and in forming a people who participate in the mission of God.

The book’s thesis strikes me in the same way that Micah 6:8 does: a stiff blow upside the head when I think that the life of faith is too complicated and baggage-ridden; a reminder that while the walk of faith isn’t easy, it is simple. Or ought to be.

So I’ve been trying on this theme for a little while as a blog title. I really needed to change the title anyway. Maybe it’ll stick. In any case, I strongly recommend all of Peterson’s work on pastoral ministry.