Eugene Peterson's Pastoral Ministry 2

This interview is taken from a link that I will send you after I posted the entire thing. I know that you won't read the entire thing if I post it up altogether. (Of course, I assume that you read my blog from time to time. Elisabeth is my first follower. Praise her. But I know that she has already stopped reading a long time ago, for each writing is too long for her. Even my tigress said that it's too long, stupid.)

Eugene Peterson has had a huge influence on me in terms of my pastoral mentality, style, and spirituality. He has helped me keep the main things the main things. The reason why I post his interview is that when you read him, you can understand what and how I think about certain things, especially about ministry, church ministers, personal life, and culture. 

Over the years, I've read and re-read his books many times in order to save my pastoral/personal soul. For example, he wrote four books particularly for pastors: Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (Eerdmans, 1980);
Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Eerdmans, 1987); Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992); and The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Eerdmans, 1989).

I believe I read and re-read each of them at least 3-5 times in different periods of time.

Here is Part 2:

What do you mean by "fairly small"?

Peterson: Somewhere between 50 and 500 people. The only way as a pastor to be discriminating and aware of the deeply ingrained idolatrous nature of human beings is by learning to love a particular group of people in one place over time. They’ve got to know you are on their side even if you don’t give them what they want you to give. They’re not going to know that just from hearing you from the pulpit. You can only convey that to them by being with them, by listening to them, by feeling their pain and suffering, and even by sharing their wrong ideas, but all the time giving witness, whether verbal or silent, to the work of the spirit.

If you’re just confronting them all the time, you lose all pastoral sense. I often use the word "story" or "narrative," as a way of understanding pastoral life. The pastoral life is best lived when it is experienced as participation in an unfolding narrative. You can’t do the discerning or the criticizing from a standpoint outside the narrative that is the life of the congregation. It has got to be done from within the story. The pastor must understand himself or herself to be one of the people there.

Of course, we’re part of the sin in the congregation’s story as well. But hopefully, as pastors, we are so well formed by the biblical story of redemption and forgiveness as not to be overwhelmed by the story of the congregation.

How did you achieve this kind of narrative correspondence with people? What practices were essential to that kind of engagement?

Peterson: Nothing fancy. I spent a lot of time with them. I was in their homes. I would go to their workplaces and see what they were doing. My kids played with their kids.

I always preferred to go to people’s homes, because then I was on their turf. If there was a special problem, then it was easier to have them come to my study. But I always went to their homes when I could. To tell you the truth, I hated doing that, since I’m shy and introverted -- it was never easy for me. But once I got there I was fine.

I did a lot of home and work-site visitation because I wanted to be their pastor -- and I couldn’t be their pastor if they encountered me only on my turf, in the place where I was the authority.

You’re describing a pastoral life that doesn’t fit squarely into the round hole of what we have come to call "the professional life," which is premised on the division between public and private, work and family, the personal and the social. There is a definite "boundary ambiguity" to the way of life you are describing. For many pastors, it’s this "boundary ambiguity" that constitutes the unambiguous downside of the pastoral life.

Peterson: I grew up in a small town and my dad was a butcher with a shop in the middle of town. Between that shop and our home, in a sense, there was no boundary. So I had modeled for me a way of life in which work and home were not distinct things. My dad addressed everyone who came into our shop by name. At one point I realized that I’m doing as a pastor just what my dad had done as a butcher.

I also remember early in my ministry listening to colleagues who often seemed irritated and angry with their congregations, as if the congregation was the enemy. I remember making a conscious decision to not adopt that view. The congregation is not the enemy. They are my friends. I am their friend. We are in this together, even when we don’t like each other very much.

If there was any substitute for having boundaries, it was knowing when and how to ask for help. Some advice I have remembered well is this: "The two most powerful words in the world are ‘help me."’ So I asked my congregation to help me.

I did have needs. One of my strong needs is the time and space for solitude. So I didn’t feel uncomfortable about locking my door or making set hours for study or for when I would be available for calls.

Asking for help was a regular part of my conversation with the congregation. Twice a year I would go on retreat with my elders and deacons, and I would share with them what my needs were as a pastor. I’d say: I want to help you live your Christian life, but I need your help too. This put us more on an even playing field, and they developed ideas and strategies for how to accomplish our common aims.

For example, they knew that writing was important to me. One day they had a private meeting in the session and came back and said, "We want to give you six weeks a year just to write." Well, I never would have dared to ask for that. That was pretty generous. We learned to take each other seriously, and that made all the difference for how we worked together. This approach is a whole lot more effective than the more contractual approach that is so common these days. For the most part, I never felt hassled or pushed or had demands put on me that were inappropriate.

To live this kind of life -- which I wanted to do and my wife wanted to do -- you do have to be wise and careful, so that you aren’t exploited by neurotic or even psychotic people. You can’t be naïvely open all the time to everybody. There’s got to be some protection. But that being said, from the very beginning of my pastoral career I reacted against the professional model of keeping the boundaries clearly defined. I found other ways to protect myself from exploitation.

Such as?
Peterson: Well, the major one was keeping a Sabbath. Monday was a Sabbath. My wife and I would spend the day in the woods quite regularly. I told my congregation what I was doing. About every three years I’d write a pastoral letter explaining "why your pastor keeps a Sabbath." In time they started to see me as a person who had needs, which I was taking care of. And they started to recognize and respect the fact that I was not simply someone who was available to them all the time, but someone who, on Mondays, was out in the woods watching birds. I think this helped create a sense of identity which transcended their need of me.

Another protective pattern I developed was this: If somebody called to ask to meet with me, and I sensed it was not a crisis, I would say, "Could we do that in three days?" Or, "Could we do that next week?" I’d set up an appointment. That kept me from overreacting to the needs of my congregation.