There are many people showing up in my life, but only some have influence on me like a stamp on the envelope. I have read many books over the years. I realize that there are only a few individuals I have constantly conversed with, like Eugene Peterson, Walter Brueggemann, N. T. Wright, John Calvin, etc…These people have judged me, corrected me, encouraged me, and affirmed me through the years. Most important of all, they have kept bringing me back to God in conversion, in prayer, in silence, in adoration, in thanksgiving, and in praise. How does the Holy Spirit guide us into all the truth? I believe one of the ways is to have conversation partners across the ages.
Peterson guided me through my pastoral ministry. He still does. Whenever I encountered problems or I felt downcast in ministry, I turned to his writings. He wrote four books for pastors: The Five Smooth Stones; Under the Unpredictable Plant; Working the Angles; and The Contemplative Pastor. In different periods of time, I read these four books at least 3-4 times. I gained wisdom from them. I got encouraged by his pastoral struggle, wisdom, and theology in his own ministry. I believe he is the first one to show me how to draw a connection between the Bible and the congregation. No one does it better than him.
Brueggemann is a radical biblical interpreter. He is not conservative in a lot of ways. The way he talks about the God in the Old Testament is filled with insights and passion. After reading his works, you don’t find the text as a static document. Rather, the word of God is dynamic, and the dynamic of God is fully revealed in his interaction with Israel. God’s involvement with human affairs is beyond human imagination. I think he got me interested in reading the Old Testament with a sense of anticipation as well as imagination.
I heard N. T. Wright delivering a lecture on Pauline theology at Gordon College while I was studying at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He only held a Greek Bible with his right hand while he was lecturing. He kept quoting the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, without notes. He just quoted them from his memory. Back in my mind I was thinking, “Paul is speaking right in front of me. If Paul were still alive, this person standing in front of me would be him.” He is bold with beard. I guess this is what Paul looked like back then.
John Calvin was 500 years old in 2009. I think his pastoral endeavor was insane. He accomplished more than he could have accomplished. I think what drew me to him in the first place is that I found out he wrote the Institutes in order to feed God’s people with God’s word and theology in a systematic way. He first wrote it in 1536 and revised it five times over the years until 1559. He expanded the Institutes because of his pastoral concern for the congregation. There is no room for theological speculation in Calvin’s theology. The goal of his theology is to bring glory to God by building up the church. Shawn D. Wright, Associate Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes about John Calvin’s pastoral theology in the Institutes:
Indeed, it may be its pastoral orientation that makes the Institutes so relevant for twenty-first century readers. I think that it is this pastoral focus, which gives the Institutes its “feet,” so to speak, and allows modern readers to connect so familiarly with Calvin, even though he inhabited a different world—several religious, political, social, and intellectual revolutions ago. In fact, I believe that Calvin’s “pastoral vision,” that is, his view of the priority of God and a relationship that all human beings must have with him in either friendship or judgment, permeates the Institutes and makes it intensely relevant for us.
In A Broad Place: An Autobiography, trans.
by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), Jurgen Moltmann writes:
