Nathan Vonnahme

Mission & Spirituality Weekend

Regent College

29 April 1999

The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders: in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, for covetousness, for lust, or so many excellent disguises at hand to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account (15).

          I first became significantly acquainted with Eugene Peterson's writing over this last Christmas break. Reading Subversive Spirituality challenged me to think more about the tendencies toward technicalization and professionalization of the spiritual life that have crept in to my thinking, partly as a result of coming to Regent for graduate theological training--it's hard not to think in terms of being a "professional" Christian after this, or shake the impressions of others who think that way. Under the Unpredictable Plant incorporates several of the previously published articles that are collected in Subversive Spirituality, and so the two books have some redundancy, but Under the Unpredictable Plant puts them together around the theme of vocational holiness. Peterson sums up the difficulties prompting the book in his introduction:

I was a pastor vocationally; I was a Christian personally. I had always assumed that the two, "pastor" and "Christian," were essentially the same thing and naturally congruent. Now I was finding that they were not. Being a Christian, more often than not, seemed to get in the way of working as a pastor. Working as a pastor, with surprising frequency, seemed to put me at odds with living as a Christian (2).


          Basically, all I am doing is trying to get it straight, get straight what it means to be a pastor, and then develop a spirituality adequate to the work. The so-called spirituality that was handed to me by those who put me to the task of pastoral work was not adequate. I do not find the emaciated, exhausted spirituality of institutional careerism adequate. I do not find the veneered, cosmetic spirituality of personal charisma adequate. I require something biblically spiritual--rooted and cultivated in creation and covenant, leisurely in Chirst, soaked in Spirit (5).

          I have never heard a call to pastor as such, but this book made me think a lot more about the pastoral vocation and the elements of it that have been present in my life. As I prepare to return to my currently pastorless home church for the summer, this book has helped me to think about how I can assist my church in their pastoral search and how my roles in the church as a deacon and youth leader can be shaped by Peterson's vision of pastoral care, leadership and spiritual direction. I have realized, too, that his observations about the pastoral vocation apply equally to almost any other vocation I can think of, especially that of a theology student. There is enormous pressure on all sides toward "vocational idolatry," the temptation to divinize our work and let it hinder our relationship with God rather than draw us closer to him. It is possible to worship God through the work of our hands if we constantly devote our attention to him, but a slight shift in our attitude results in idolatry, worshiping the work of our hands, putting it in the highest place in our lives.

          This book is structured around the narrative of Jonah, and Peterson begins his reflection on the nature of pastoral ministry by contrasting Jonah's flight to Tarshish, an exotic and adventurous-sounding port in far-away Spain, with his actual call to Ninevah, an ancient and difficult city.

If I succeed in getting anyone's attention, what I want to say is that the pastoral vocation is not a glamorous vocation and that Tarshish is a lie. 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 (16).

The temptation to pursue a false dream of idyllic pastorship in a perfect congregation is bad theology:

Every time we open up a church door and take a careful, scrutinizing look inside we find them there again--sinners. Also Christ. Christ in the preaching, Christ in the sacraments, but inconveniently and embarrassingly mixed into this congregation of sinners (24).

And a failure to accept the congregation as it in fact is leads to resentment and restlessness, as the pastor dreams of finding a better, more compatible station somewhere else. This is nothing but the religious consumerism of church shoppers practiced on the other end, by the pastor.

I had to revise my imagination: these were the people to whom I was pastor. They were not the ones I would have chosen, but they were what I had been given. What was I to do? "Master, someone sowed tares in the night." I wanted to weed the field. The Master's response was targeted to me: "Leave them to the harvest. Let them grow together." Wise counsel, for my untrained eye could not then have discerned the difference between a young weed and a young grain. After all these years, in most instances I still can't tell the difference (26).

          For Peterson, the turning point came when the elders of his church took away his administrative responsibilities so he could "abandon religious careerism and embrace the pastoral vocation" (40-41) and focus on his pastoral responsibilities to pray, preach and spend time with the members of the congregation.

Another elder said, "Why don't you let us run the church?" I said, "You don't know how." He said, "It sounds to me like you don't know how to be a pastor either. How about you let us learn how to run the church and we let you learn how to be a pastor?" (39)

This is a wonderful example of pastoring which supports and develops the members of the church instead of ruling them or making them dependent on the specialized skills of the pastor. It raises some questions for me in the context of my home church, though. We have never had a full-time pastor because the congregation is too small to support one, and right now are in the middle of a building project and a search for a new part-time pastor. In the meantime, the leaders of the church are overwhelmed with the business of the church. The challenge of the elders' board is the same as that of the pastor: there is much mundane work to be done, yet somehow we need to find time to engage in the spiritual practices of being church--prayer, study of the Word and loving each other--which seem so much less vital than the business of budgets, buildings, and finding a new pastor. We also need to perform our administrative duties worshipfully and not out of resentful obedience, and we need to find time to evaluate the worth of what we are doing and not just do things the way they've always been done for no reason. I don't know what the answer here is, but Under the Unpredictable Plant has helped clarify some of the problem for me.

          Central to Peterson's picture of the pastoral vocation is the practice of what he calls "spiritual direction" but which he wishes he could simply call "pastoring." The pastor's role is not to somehow manage or save people, but to repeatedly draw their attention to God, not to change them but to lead them into worship and trust God to do the changing. He reflects, "Who are the people who have made a difference in my life? Answer: The ones who weren't trying to make a difference" (55). Spiritual direction includes real friendship with individual people and sensitivity to their needs, but the focus is never shifted away from God and what he is doing in each situation.

Reuben [Peterson's first spiritual director] assumed a stance of wonderment. In his company, I also began to enter into wonder. For his attentiveness was not to me, as such, but to God. Slowly his attitude began to infect me--I gradually began to lose interest in myself and got interested in God in me (185).

The practice of spiritual direction is applied not only to individuals but to the congregation as a whole, and the pastor, like a farmer before a field, stands in reverent respect before the congregation because God is growing things there. "We are typically full of ambition for God, but we are not reverent before God, and the irreverence before God has its corollary in an irreverence of congregations" (136). The shift from pastoring as management or Messiahship to spiritual direction is a paradigm shift akin to the Copernican revolution.

Following the paradigm shift, the place occupied by the pastor is no longer perceived as a center from which bold programs are initiated and actions launched but a periphery that faces a center of clear kerygma and vast mystery. . . . In program direction, the pastor is Ptolemaic--at the center. In spiritual direction, the pastor is Copernican--in orbit to the center (176).

Peterson sums up his thoughts about spiritual direction succinctly:

          All the same, it seems to me that a stance of spiritual direction is the center out of which pastors need to move in order to be in appropriate gospel response to the people we serve in Jesus' name. Not compulsively telling others everything we know, making ourselves professors and them students. Not busily figuring out what is wrong with others so that we can help solve their problems. But looking for God in others--listening, worshiping, loving, attending.
          Sometimes I need a teacher, someone to explain the scriptures, to clarify the Christian belief in some circumstance or relationship. But mostly I do not: I need to become what I already know.
          Sometimes I need a helper, someone to assist me out of a jam, someone to keep me accountable to my commitments. But mostly I do not: I need to enter into the reality that is already God in and around me (189).

          This focus on what God is doing in each other is essential to the life of Christians together. I pray that at Regent and in my home church we will learn to abandon our vocational idolatry and lay hold of the integrity that Peterson exemplifies in our study and work.