Are you saying it’s all right for pastors to sharply differ in how they run churches?
Peterson: Definitely. I was Bill Wiseman’s associate pastor in White Plains, New York. He has personal integrity and is highly skilled in all areas of pastoral work. He did more than any other person to enable me to be a pastor, especially in the administrative and managerial aspects. He runs a tight ship; things like structure and efficiency are very important to him. However, our styles of ministry contrast markedly. He now has a church of 5, 000 members in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he would go crazy running a church the way I do.
Later on, I realized my real gifts were not in administration; that what I really wanted to do was spend most of my time in personal ministry to my congregation.
Do you have any full-time staff?
Peterson: No, we have a man who has been a pastor, and who works with us just on Sundays as a youth pastor. We also pay our choir director and organist; and we have a sexton who works about twelve to fifteen hours a week. There’s no paid secretarial staff—just volunteers.
Volunteer secretaries? How has that worked?
Peterson: Wonderfully! The idea came to me while I was reading a Dorothy Sayers mystery. Peter Wimsey is out trying to solve a murder, and he’s having a difficult time getting information. Nobody will talk to him because he’s an outsider. So he searches for someone who would know the community, locates an elderly spinster, and hires her as a typist. Then he has her employ a typing pool, and these ten to fifteen people are his links to the community.
I thought, “That’s exactly what I need.” So I asked a woman who I thought was competent in these areas to be the church office coordinator. We found two people for each weekday to work from nine to two o’clock, and informed the congregation of the new office hours. We divided up the office work to specific days and defined the responsibilities for each person. We have to plan a little bit ahead; we can’t get things done immediately. But the plus part is that we really developed a lot of ministry. They do a lot of listening, they’re in touch with many people, and they tell me things that are going on. They are important to the running of the church.
Do these ideas make a difference in how your people view the church? Do they draw the community together?
Peterson: Community to me means people who have to learn how to care for each other, and in one sense, all efficient organization mitigates against community, for it won’t tolerate you if you make mistakes.
This is not the situation in the church. We have inefficiency on our church office staff, but efficiency is not nearly as important as being patient with people and drawing them into a mutual sense of ministry. It’s the way we operate; everything doesn’t have to be “out today.” If work is planned well enough, there’s room for things to wait. Sometimes I need people to just answer the phone or do telephoning for me. I’ll say, “Why don’t you call so-and-so? She’s lonely and bored; see if she can come in one day and help us.” Sometimes that’s just the thing needed to draw people back into a sense of ministry and community. They arrange for my home visitation from a list I give them. It’s important and they know it’s important.
Tell us about your home visitation program.
Peterson: I’ve never done visitation systematically. Sometimes I’ll read about somebody who goes through the whole church list in the year and sticks to a rigid schedule. I’ve never done that. I do home visitation on a sense of need, when I know there’s something special going on in someone’s life. Birth, death, loss of job, relocation, or trouble in the home are good indicators for me to visit. I go and talk with them, listen to their problems, find out where they’re at, and pray with them. That’s the advantage of pastoral work—it can respond to all the little nuances of community life and participate in them. There’s a line in a poem about a dog going along the road with haphazard intent. Pastoral life is like that. There’s a sense of haphazardness to it, for me anyway, because I don’t want to get locked into systems where I have to say, “No, I’m too busy to do that; I can’t see you because I have this schedule.” But the haphazardness is not careless; there is purpose to it. I like to keep the freedom where I can be responsive to what’s going on with my people.
It’s fascinating the way you use literary allusions. Why should a pastor have time to read Dorothy Sayers? Isn’t that a waste? Shouldn’t you be deep into theology?
Peterson: I read because I love to read. Novels are food for me. I need to be immersed in that kind of reality to keep my head straight and be in touch with things that are going on. Sometimes I read detective stories; they’re kind of a spiritual tonic for me. When I really feel clogged and sodden, when everything is complicated, when I can’t sort myself out, I’ll go off for two days and read detective novels. I have to do it on the sly—that is, I have to keep my work going . I’ll make the phone calls, see the people, make the visits, but then I race back to some corner and devour another story.
But, Eugene, don’t you feel guilty?
Peterson: Yes! But some time ago I finally became resolved to the fact that I’d never get over the feeling of guilt. My father was a butcher by trade, and when I was young, he would seldom permit me to just sit around. I always had to be doing something. When I’d be home reading a book, he would come into the room and say, “Gene, why aren’t you doing something!” So I grew up feeling guilty about reading a book.
Sometimes when I’m reading, my wife Jan will say, “But shouldn’t you visit so-and-so?” I kind of kiddingly say, “I’m really doing theological work.” One day I wrote an article about Rex Stout called “Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing” in which I showed how Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were really a type of ministry—a theological underpinning in pastoral work. It was fanciful, but I worked out all the details and sent it to a Christian magazine with a note to the editor saying I hoped he’d take it seriously, because if he didn’t, all my credibility with my wife would go down the drain. Fortunately, he accepted it.
You mentioned that you also read novels. Which ones have been important to you in your role as a pastor?
Peterson: First, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. You have to read that over and over. There’s a sense of the theology of destiny and of pastoral vocation in Father Zossima. Dostoevsky’s perception of the human condition is essential reading for a pastor. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, for Americans especially, is in some ways perhaps the most important theological book ever written. It came at a key time in our history; it showed what we were missing by all of our sentimental optimism, everything-is-going-to-turn-out-okay attitudes. Faulkner articulates so well the sense of sin and redemption in, for instance, Light in August.
Flannery O’ Connor’s stories and novels are also very important. She was a great theologian. A book I think would be important for pastors is the collection of her letters called The Habit of Being. One of the things she says is that somebody reviewed one of her books and called her a hillbilly nihilist. She said, “I don’t mind the first word, but I’d rather they call me a hillbilly theologian.” She was very conscious of the Christian theology she presented through her work.
Walker Percy is helpful for Christian pastors today. Percy has one of the most powerful senses of ministry as a novelist of anybody working, and he senses the desperate straits we’re in spiritually and morally. He’s a believing Christian and is able to present that reality in his novels The Moivegoer, Love in the Ruins, and The Last Gentleman.
Is it important for all pastors to read?
Peterson: No. Others might get the same kind of satisfaction out of completely different activities. I think all pastors must have some way of recharging their batteries, but reading is not the only way to do it.
For example, some people run to recharge their batteries. I started running two years ago just to prove I could do it. But it wasn’t enough for me to just go out there and feel good—I wanted to win races. The first race I entered, a ten-mile race over in Delaware, I finished first and my sixteen-year-old son finished second. It was exhilarating.
Do you use literary allusions in your preaching?
Peterson: I don’t, because my people aren’t reading these things. I don’t want to throw quotations at them that they’re not in touch with.
But if you’re reading a novel and you find this graphic illustration—isn’t it tempting to relate it to your people?
Peterson: Yes, but I want to preach the Word of God. Scripture is the only text that’s important to me when I preach. I want my congregation to know what the Scriptures have to say about what they’re living through. I start my sermon on Tuesday, choose the Scripture, and all week long I’m in dialogue with that Scripture, not just personally, but communally.
When I stand in the pulpit on Sunday, I hope the people hear themselves being addressed in the sermon because I’ve listened to them; I’ve asked their questions, cried out their doubts, gone through their boredom.
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