Prayer

...walls are not the critical factor in praying or not praying.  What is critical is an imagination large enough to contain all of life, all worship and work as prayer, set in a structure (askesis) adequate to the actual conditions in which it is lived out...

If we do not understand the pastoral life vocationally as a life of prayer, then askesis will only be a cubbyhole for devotional narcissism.   To put it differently, if we understand the life of prayer as anything less than the comprehensive interior of the pastoral vocation, then any askesis we construct will be no more than a stage prop for a religious performance.

The reason this passage strikes me is two fold.  First, because a few years ago I realised (I mean really realised, not just thought I realised) that without consistency in prayer things were going to be hollow in church life.  And secondly, because I think I began to foolishly treat this first realisation as enough;  but now I have experienced being brought totally to the end of oneself, to truly realise one has no inherent resources for the situation.  And this means there is only prayer:  as the confession of one's utter dependence on God, and with it, the lack of sufficiency about everything in oneself.   

The question is:   can we truly hold onto this?  Can we hold on to it having confidence that it is enough for all things so we need not crumble?  Can we hold onto it, and not start to reassert ourselves in the wrong way....?

Askesis

The change is a direct consequence of a forced realisation of human limits.  Pulled out of the fantasy of a god condition and confined to the reality of the human condition, the person is surprised to be living not a diminished life but a deepened life, not a crippled life but a zestful life.  God-intensity begins to replace self-absorption; mature wisdom begins to supplant self-importance. (p89)

I couldn't count how many times I have heard the words "I must decrease that He may increase" spoken out in church, including by me - and not really understood them, or worse: didn't really mean them.   I'm beginning to think that I might have been saying "He must increase lots, and I must increase a bit too" - more of Him and more of me, good deal.   But this is a 'god-condition'. 

Fearfully, I ask:  I wonder if it is possible to deal with our pride, to even recognise it's magnitude and toxicity, without some crushing experience, without 3 days in the belly of the fish? I think this might be where Peterson is heading.    A god-condition must be self-idolatry - and, inevitably for me, that makes me think of Tim Keller, and his unnerving suggestion in the CT interview last October:

Q: Is it necessary to suffer disappointment before seeing that idols don't satisfy?

I fear you may be right. I don't want that to be true. Very often it's much stronger than disappointment. It's hard for me to look at a young person and know what their idols are, because usually something has to happen in their life to frustrate them for them to see that something has inordinate power over them. No one learned about their idols by being told about them.

staying with them

This neccessarily means taking seriously, and in faith, the dull routines, the empty boredom, and the unattractive responsibilities that make up much of most people's lives. It means witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain. It means living hopefully among people who from time to time get flickering glimpses of the Glory but then live through stretches, sometimes long ones, of unaccountable grayness. Most pastoral work takes place in obscurity: deciphering grace in the shadows, searching out meaning in a difficult text, blowing on the embers of a hard-used life. This is hard work and not conspicuously glamorous.

(p.86)

reading plan cont...

I'm in danger of losing my bit of paper I wrote this on, so here's the plan for the rest of the book:

Week 3  
Mon       80-88
Tues       88-99
Weds     99-110
Thurs    111-115
Fri        117-128

Week 4
Mon    128-137
Tues    138-148
Weds   148-153
Thurs   155-162
Fri       163-172

Week 5
Mon   172-182
Tues   182-190
Weds  190-197

a murderous pastor?

I found this passage about the most searching I've read in some time.

Suddenly, with a shock of recognition, I saw myself as Raskolnikov. Not murdering exactly, but experimenting with words on paper and parishioners in the congregation, manipulating them in godlike ways to see what I could make happen. Pushing words around on paper to see what effect they might have. Pushing people around in the pews, working for the best combination. Reducing words to their dictionary sense. Reducing people to the value of their pledge. Facility with words and facility with people carry a common danger: the hubris of contemptuous disrespect. (page 60)

It strike me that even the sacred act of preaching can be a subtle attempt to convince people to believe what I believe, to think and to act like I do (or at least to approve of how I think and act), rather than the moment when God speaks by his Spirit, through his Word, to his people, for the sake of his kingdom and their blessing in him.

Contemptuous disrespect: mea culpa.

from fyodor, with love

"...One can't start straight with perfection! To attain perfection, one must first of all be able not to understand many things. For if we understand things too quickly, we may perhaps fail to understand them well enough."

Prince Myshkin in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, quoted in Peterson p.54 (my emphasis)

redeeming the past

Peterson writes movingly about the eventual impact his mother's Christian example and ministry practice had upon him in his fledgling ministry (pages 40-46). I haven't got that kind of background to draw upon. And yet it slowly (and I mean slowly) dawned on me that my upbringing in a nominal, non-practising Christian environment, with all its complexities and sin-scars, was also capable of being redeemed by God and co-opted into his service and into my formation as a gospel minister.

I won't go into greater detail but in my ministry I've had several times when I was able, ultimately, to be truly thankful for my childhood experiences and influences, as God, in his infinite goodness, made something useful out of the most unpromising mess.

The cross of Jesus is truly amazing in its transformative power.

Sorry!

I forgot to put the next part of the reading plan on!

Week 2
Mon. 40-50
Tues.  50-60
Weds.  60-67
Thurs.  67-72
Fri.  73-80

pastor: what do you want to do?

I want to study God's word long and carefully so that when I stand before you and preach and teach I will be accurate. I want to pray, slowly and lovingly, so that my relation with God will be inward and honest. And I want to be with you, often and leisurely, so that we can recognise each other as close companions on the way of the cross and be available for counsel and encouragement to each other.

(page 39)

Through the eyes of others

It is interesting to listen to the comments that outsiders, particularly those from Third World countries, make on the religion they observe in North America. What they notice mostly is the greed, the silliness, the narcissism. They appreciate the size and prosperity of our churches, the energy and the technology, but they wonder at the conspicuous absence of the cross, the phobic avoidance of suffering, the puzzling indifference to community and relationships of intimacy.

(page 37)

Nailed.

Another telling quote

But in this life of obedience it turns out there is a steady attrition of ego satisfaction, for as I carry out my work I find that people are less and less responding to me and more and more responding to God.   They hear different things in my sermon than I have so carefully spoken, and I am offended by their inattention.  They find ways of being responsive to the Spirit of God that don't fit into the plans thast I have made for the congregation - plans that, with their cooperation,  would not only serve to glorify God but would redound to my credit as one of his first-rank leaders. (p30)

Its fascinating how Peterson is already turning the everyday frictions of ministry into the warp and woof of what God requires...

Minty on p.19 - a good question

If someone you know is thinking of moving on from one ministry to another, why not point them to the question Peterson raises:

...was it really more of God they were after, or were they avoding the God who was revealing himself to them?

So much!

I found so much in today's passage I don't know where to start - I don't think my comments could match up to it, so here a few quotes I want to think through by writing them out:

The pastor has come to the parish to escape the illusory Christian identity proposed by the world; ...to see the roots of illusion within, in the longing to be dramatically and satisfyingly in control of life, the old familiar imperialism of the self bolstered by the intellect (quoting Rowan Williams quoting St Benedict, p21)

The congregation is the pastor's place for developing vocational holiness...we dare not separate what we do from who we are... (p21)

Ordinary congregations are God's choice for the form church takes in locale, and pastors are the persons assigned to them for ministry... (p23)

Minty on p.18 - pastoral abandonment

Every time a pastor abandons one congregation for another out of boredom or anger or restlessness, the pastoral vocation of all of us is vitiated.

I have to say I feel that, I really do.

Minty on p.16 - not a glamorous vocation

I'm grateful to Peterson for stating so plainly that "the pastoral vocation is not a glamorous vocation, and...Tarshish is a lie." And I think there's so much wisdom in the words that follow,

Pastoral work consists of modest, daily, assigned work. It is like farm work. Most pastoral work involves routines similar to cleaning out the barn, mucking out the stalls, spreading manure, pulling weeds. This is not, any of it, bad work in itself, but if we expected to ride a glistening black stallion in daily parades and then return to the barn where a lackey grooms our steed for us, we will be severely disappointed and end up being horribly resentful.

Routine and realism. Both invaluable insights, it seems to me.

Minty - with a quotation from Barnes

I realise it wasn't especially illuminating to simply comment that Barnes says something on that topic, without giving any idea of what he says, so I decided to try to track something down.

What I'm quoting below is not all he says but an interesting segment of it.

Since their souls are a sacred meeting ground, it is crucial that pastors know how to expose themselves to God. It is not enough that they have learned as minor poets how to peer into the subtexts of the Bible and the congregation. They also have to attend to the underlying holy space of their own lives.

It's not the most important subtext, and pastors have to constantly guard against making their personal issues the issue for the congregation. Nothing is more dangerous to a church than for its pastor to manipulate it into a means of working out his or her own anxieties, hurts, anger or unfulfilled yearnings. That reduces the priestly arena into a therapeutic couch for the pastor...Not everything about the pastor belongs to the congregation, and that would certainly include the wounds that the pastor has collected along the way in life...The pastor maintains a conversation not between the congregation and the pastor but between the people and the God in whose image they are made. Often this holy discourse cannot occur unless the pastor brackets out the personal issues that keep interrupting it.

While mindful of this caution, it is still critical that the minor poet knows how to stand before God with an open soul. That's the place where sermons, counselling, and the best leadership of the church finally occur. After the ears, the eyes, and even the mind are done, and there are no more appointments left in the day, a pastor has to retreat into the soul to wait for holy words.

(M Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, pages 108,109)

Badger on p1-8 - the chasm

Gosh, I can relate to those opening paragraphs, especially in previous years when life had not been overtaken by other 'chasms':  how to unite or differentiate between personal Christian faith and pastoral work was sometimes a constant undercurrent.   And at the other end of this, chronologically speaking, I remember reading Lloyd-Jones saying it worried him how many ministers retired and then their spiritual life evaporated because it was entirely bound up with pastoral work.  And of course the danger can run the other way: that we remove our personal life from it completely and do an impersonal job.

The Plan......

Our first book to trial this on is Under the Unpredictable Plant by Eugene Peterson.   I've carved the book up into 23 readings, and I'm assuming we're going to (try to) read them Monday-Friday.  We may get a bit behind here or there, but that's the plan anyway.   I've tried to divide the readings at paragraph headings in the book, so when it says a reading finishes on p38 (or whatever) it's at the break on that page.  If there are two breaks on that page...we'll work it out somehow.

So here's next week's set (and we need to be a bit flexible because we don't know what might crop up to derail it):

WEEK1
Monday        p.1-8
Tuesday        p.9-18
Wednesday   p18-25
Thursday       p.25-32
Friday           p.33-40

Is that OK?