Eugene H Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1993 [1989])

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

Peterson has written my favourite book on parenting, especially preparing to parent teenagers (Like Dew Your Youth), one of my favourite books on vocation (Under the Unpredictable Plant), and my favourite book on pastoral ministry (The Contemplative Pastor). I am reading through them to get a fresh vision and passion for focused and healthy ministry.

The Contemplative Pastor offers healthy frameworks for being a pastor. The book has been part of a fresh call back into pastoral ministry for me. Peterson was pastor of Christ our King Presbyterian Church for twenty-nine years, and longed to be local there in Bel Air and know two or three square miles of that neighbourhood, ‘just know it and keep on knowing it’ (p.12). He wanted to never pastor a church of more people than he could remember by name, and be with them to see what God is doing and help them become all God wants for them. That’s the vocation I have had my imagination grabbed by and now put up my hand up again.

Peterson elevates and affirms a pastor’s vocation, the use of Scripture and prayer, being passionate for God and compassionate for people, and the importance of everyday spirituality. To aspire to be a good ‘pastor’ though is not sufficient without helpful adjectives. Peterson suggests three. He re-defines pastoral ministry as unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic.

In a context where to be ‘busy’ is a badge of honour and importance, Peterson counter-culturally asserts ‘busy’ with pastor should sound to our ears like embezzling to banker or adulterous with wife. Peterson invites pastors to decide ourselves what we will give our time and priority to, refuse other demands, and focus on core work of prayer, preaching and listening. It is up to pastors to focus on God, the Word and people and not get caught up in a frenzy of busy work: ‘How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?’ (p.19) A pastor’s calling is unbusy.

In a society where a pastor’s role is marginalised and people think the goals they have for themselves are the same goals as God, Peterson claims pastoral ministry upends the status quo and points to another world. It is easy for pastors to be tempted to feel important when invited to be a chaplain to the culture or to trade in religious goods and services. But with prayer and parable, a pastor frames the world and church differently: ‘If we can develop a sense that sacrificial love, justice, and hope are at the core of our identities – they go to our jobs with us each day, to our families each night – then we are in fact subversive. You have to understand that Christian subversion is nothing flashy. Subversives don’t win battles. All they do is prepare the ground and change the mood just a little bit toward belief and hope, so that when Christ appears, there are people waiting for him.’ (p.12) A pastor’s calling is subversive.

In a time when churchgoers want pastors who can do God’s work for them, fix them up, help them bypass difficult paths and tell them want to do, Peterson finds focus with St John’s Apocalypse. He urges pastors to open up to God in prayer, ‘making a live connection between the place we find ourselves and the God who is finding us’ (pp.42-43), as John was at the beginning and end of Revelation (1:9-10, 22:20). He suggests pastors rediscover the creative speech of poetry, which is hard work but conducive to powerful communication. And he urges apocalyptic patience, persisting in Kingdom work for however long it takes, despite the mess and mystery of life: ‘Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land – a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost, and then abandonment in search of another place to loot. Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people, to parish – to place.’ (p.49) A pastor’s calling is apocalyptic.

In a second section, Peterson outlines frameworks for the pastoral task between Sundays, ‘practicing the art of prayer in the midst of the traffic’:

* The forgotten art of ‘curing souls’ and helping people cultivate prayer in the midst of everyday life, as opposed to primarily ‘running a church’.

* Praying with eyes open and appreciating nature and good literature as nourishment for the praying imagination.

* Teaching not for information retrieval or motivation but to help people be proficient in the language of intimacy and relationship in prayer.

* Partner and join in with God in the growth God wants to bring (rather than leave it all to God or make it all happen ourselves).

* Celebrating the ‘ministry of small talk’ and being attentive to the down-to-earth texture of people’s lives.

* Seeing people as fellow sinners to share grief and shortcomings with and keep an eye out for grace.

* Sticking at the vow of a pastor to minister the Word and Sacrament and grow in this craft, rather than being driven by the angst of showing we are doing the job professionally.

* To stay refreshed and in touch with God’s word and presence and to avoid codependence with a congregation through taking a sabbatical.

Peterson loves God, prayer, pastors and the church. He urges pastors to do their best and to look for the best in a congregation. Two paragraphs were especially challenging about viewing church and people with eyes hope-filled eyes: ‘If a pastor finds himself resenting his people, getting petulant and haranguing them, that is a sign that he or she has quit thinking of them as sinners who bring “nothing in themselves of worth” and has secretly invested them with divine attributes of love, strength, compassion, and joy. They, of course, do not have these attributes in any mature measure and so will disappoint him or her every time. On the other hand, if the pastor rigorously defines people as fellow sinners, he or she will be prepared to share grief, shortcomings, pain, failure, and have plenty of time left over to watch for the signs of God’s grace operating in the wilderness, and then fill the air with praises for what he discovers.’ (p.119) He drives this point home quoting Bonhoeffer: “A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.” (p.120)

Peterson introduces many of his chapters and wraps the book up with poetry, since poets and pastors both seek to use words reverently to unpack the commonplace and connect with people’s souls. My favourite, which summons me to be open to God’s timing and rhythm:

The Time

When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption . . . Galatians 4:4-5

Half, or more than half, my life is spent

In waiting: waiting for the day to come

When dawn spills laughter’s animated sun

Across the rim of God into my tent.

In my other clock sin I put off

Until I’m ready, which I never seem

To be, the seized day, the kingdom dream

Come true. My head has been too long in the trough.

Keeping a steady messianic rhythm,

Ocean tides and woman’s blood fathom

The deep that calls to deep, and bring to birth

The seeded years, and grace this wintered earth

Measured by the metronomic moon.

Nothing keeps time better than the moon.

I define ‘missional church’ without binding the term to some particular ’emerging’ or other style of church. Missional is a mindset that discerns what God is doing in mission and seeks to join in with that. In that sense, Peterson offers helpful postures for being missional.

Similarly I aspire to be ‘contemplative’ without limiting that term to withdrawal and quiet prayer. Contemplative is a posture that engages deeply with God and fully with the world in order to help bring the world more into sync with God’s dream for it. For pastors that welcome the invitation to be unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic; to help people pray in the midst of the traffic of everyday life; and to creatively and artfully use language as a medium of grace, then Peterson is a contemplative pastor to learn from.

Darren coordinates leadership training with the Baptist Union of Victoria and hosts a monthly Eugene Peterson lunchtime reading group.