Church: Where everybody knows your name...

I've taken the bait and jumped into another book that tickled my fancy even though I have a couple very good ones already on the go and a pile of "books to read" left on my shelf that I have promised myself I'll get to sooner or later. This time the fuel for my addiction is the fairly recently released memoir of Eugene Peterson, simply called The Pastor.

Peterson is a name that is familiar to many evangelicals as the man behind The Message paraphrase of Scripture, but he also has a distinguished career as an author, speaker, scholar and most importantly - Pastor. In this book he tells the story of the evolution of his understanding of that role, falling in love with the calling of pastor and relating that journey to his experiences growing up in small town Montana (at least that's what he's done so far - I'm only about a third of the way through!!!). What struck me in the sample chapter that I read online (and what prompted me to click purchase on the Kindle store) was the resonance his story has with my own - or at least my journey to this early juncture in my life and career.

Like Peterson I grew up and entered ministry training and immediately became enamoured with Christian academia. I loved to learn, I loved the atmosphere of the Bible College and I operated under the idea for quite some time that the greatest thing I could do for the Kingdom of God with the gifts he had given me was to study, learn, and one day teach. My goal from the day I graduated was to get  into ministry, get some experience in the field and one day return to seminary to complete my training and preparation for the real good work the Lord had called me to. I had it all planned out - but as time has marched on I realize that I had misunderstood my calling completely. Somewhere along the way God showed me something - it wasn't a damascus road sort of encounter - it wasn't writing on the wall, it was a slow and gradual changing of my heart toward a calling that for me has become the greatest job in the world. God called me to be a Pastor, to work among, within, alongside, for, and through the people of the local church. To live life with a local family of God and to experience alongside them the highs and lows, victories and defeats, celebrations and struggles and joy and despair of life this side of Christ's immanent return. What I have loved about Peterson's story as I have read it so far is that he (in his wonderful way with words) gives voice to and articulates the feelings that I have been so far unable to nail down in my experience.

For certain his life and mine are far from a direct correlation - he was well on his way to a PhD before he understood his call to be a Pastor and has leveraged his considerable education into quite the scholarly career that I will likely never experience but he speaks of his heart for the office of Pastor in a way that gives me goosebumps. Consider this quote form his introductory remarks:

I wonder if at the root of the defection is a cultural assumption that all leaders are people who “get things done,” and “make things happen.” That is certainly true of the primary leadership models that seep into our awareness from the culture — politicians, businessmen, advertisers, publicists, celebrities, and athletes. But while being a pastor certainly has some of these components, the pervasive element in our two-thousand-year pastoral tradition is not someone who “gets things done” but rather the person placed in the community to pay attention and call attention to “what is going on right now” between men and women, with one another and with God — this kingdom of God that is primarily local, relentlessly personal, and prayerful “without ceasing.”

I resonate with the rejection of the church business model of ministry even as I struggle with pressure (both internal and external) to pragmatically do what works to produce the results that are expected from a worldly definition of "success". Peterson goes onto reject that idea of leadership instead putting forth the idea of a Pastor being called to be with the people and in the community. 

Later on in recalling some formative experiences from his childhood in small town Montana he talks about his years of working in his father's butcher shop - wearing his own priestly ephod (he draws a beautiful paralel between his experience the experience of young samuel growing up in Shiloh) building community with the customers that came in week after week. Getting to know their names, their quirks, their favourites, their lives and bestowing on each one of them a sense of dignity - from the civic leaders to the lonely women working across the street at the brothel. He describes that sort of community in this way:

Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them. A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged. It must never be a place where a person is labeled. It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated. Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus’s name. A place where dignity is conferred.

That sounds to me like the type of community we are trying to build at Estevan Alliance. A place of belonging that resembles Cheers more than a country club. Where everyone from the greatest to the least is named, and dignified and welcomed. I don't want to run a successful business, I don't want to provide the best services or put on the most exciting events - my desire is to be a Pastor; to encourage the type of community that Peterson describes - and to contend with the people of that community (including the man in the mirror) who's failings and struggles slow it's development into reality -  in love.

It's not that I never get that twinge in my spirit drawing me back to the world of academia - I do frequently, and I'm terribly envious of my friends and colleagues who have taken the plunge into masters or dortorate level studies - - but Peterson has given voice to the feelings of certainty that I have that the local church is where I belong.
Well that's all I have to say for today - I'm sure I'll have more insights as I get further through the book - but that was just burning on my heart today and I needed to blog it out.

Blessings on your Monday and I hope to see many of you bright and early for prayer tomorrow morning.

Chris