Pastoral Language

As a pastor, I realize that I deal with language a lot. Teaching, praying, pastoral conversations, and preaching all deal with language. Different languages are used in different contexts with different people. I tend not to dominate daily conversations with words. Rather, I try to have a di-alogue. The language of prayer is different. For me, prayer ought to be conversational. Our voices need not to be raised to get God’s attention. God can hear even though we whisper. The language of prayer is about sincerity and direct-ness. The form is secondary; the heart is the matter. The language of teaching and preaching should be firm and direct as well as conversational. I think that one of the main elements in teaching and preaching is personal narration. I narrate my micro-saving story in His marco-redemptive Story as the first person. I narrate how the I-Thou relation becomes mature and grows deeper. In teaching and preaching, I point others to see the God who gets involved with my life: my happiness, my struggle, my breakthrough, my sins, and my commitments. It’s my personal-being-saved story that speaks. The language of narration is one form of teaching and preaching. Learning to articulate who I am to others is the language of the heart. It’s the language of the heart that transforms the hearts of others.

“I began to understand the sacred qualities of language. My work as a pastor was immersed in language. There was hardly anything I did that did not involve language: the Word of God provided not information but revelation. Jesus told stories and taught and prayed, not to entertain us or inspire us but to draw us into a participating, believing, listening, loving way of life that was, above all, local and personal: prayerful. I wanted to do that too…And I began to understand that the way I used language involved not just speaking it and writing it, but listening to it—listening to the words written in scripture, but also listening to the words spoken to me by the people in my congregation” [Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir (New York: HarperOne, 2011), p. 239.].