With this issue, we introduce a new approach to The Back Page. A variety of contributors will offer slices of life in ministry that reflect the essential nature of the task. We welcome your contributions.
It was at a West Coast pastors conference where I first met a Puritan, a seemingly joyful one at that. His name was Eugene Peterson.
I studied Puritans in college and had been thoroughly impressed They were vibrant, God-driven people who forsook family and familiar surroundings to embark across the threatening Atlantic to establish “a city set on a hill,” a Christian society that all the world would admire and emulate.
Weary of compromises the church had made through the centuries, they longed to see it purified. Despite popular misconceptions, they were characterized less by a studied dreariness than by a steady passion for Christ and his church.
I observed this same passion when Eugene spoke at the conference. The first thing I noticed was Eugene himself, thin as a man on a diet of locusts and honey. He hunches slightly, like he’s always pressing forward, and his weathered face, framed by beard and receding hairline, is set with steel eyes.
When he smiles, which he does a lot, his entire face joins in chorus and shows that this man knows joy.
In short, he looks like a pushover for a common mugger, but he’s a man you shouldn’t hear preach the Word unless you’re wearing a bullet-proof vest.
The first morning of the conference, he opened fire. He didn’t raise his voice or pound the lectern. In fact, he read from a manuscript, and, yes, grinned a lot. But as he spoke on the Book of Jonah, he castigated pastoral striving for Tarshish, the superficial longing for ecclesiastical success (see page 38).
His white-hot standards obliterated insipid church success formulas and the modern penchant for relevance (“a Nazi word,” he called it). He left the ecclesiastical and professional landscape of many of the pastors there a flat and empty desert, but now clean.
As pastor of First Tiny Presbyterian, clutching my empty dreams for megachurch stardom, needing to be affirmed simply for being a pastor to a small congregation, I was delighted. I repented of all desires for a socially acceptable career. I recommitted myself to a lifetime of quiet but faithful ministry to my small flock. Back home I fashioned two Jonah sermons decrying the superficial striving for Tarshish, and wowed my congregation. I think I even gave proper credit.
And then one day I was asked to consider joining the editorial staff of LEADERSHIP. I was invited to give up pastoral life in a small congregation and move to a position where I could write and edit articles about ministry, a subject I enjoy, where I also would enjoy the privilege of traveling around the country to meet some of the brightest and the best in ministry. It was Tarshish plain and simple.
And I went for it.
To this day, I’m convinced it was God’s will. Yet from the day of the invitation to move, Eugene became a thorn in my flesh. As a result of his talks and his writing, the decision to move became much more difficult, required much more soul searching, prompted much more prayer. I had better be sure this was God’s will. It was a purifying process.
Eugene has also done that since I’ve been here at LEADERSHIP. I’ve talked with him on a couple of occasions, once soliciting his opinion on books for a bibliography. Before the conversation was through, he somehow had turned the listing of books into a moral exercise. He didn’t condemn or manipulate the conversation; he just managed to show that what I was doing had a moral dimension.
Frankly, that irritated me. But once again, I thought forcefully about my vocation, and my heart was purified a little more.
I think the source of Eugene’s spiritual vision, which sees the godly in every dimension of life, is worship, more particularly the public worship he leads at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. I worshiped there about a year ago.
Just before the service began, Eugene entered the sanctuary from the narthex and marched quickly to the chancel, the skirts of his black Geneva robe bouncing and his associate hurrying to keep up. He wore tabs.
He sat at the front and pensively prayed before the service began. Then he stood and called us to worship. He didn’t announce that the service was beginning. He didn’t rattle off Psalm 100. He didn’t invite us to worship. We were called-calmly, with grace and joy, called.
For the first time in my life I saw the Presbyterian service, with its origins in Puritanism, led as it was intended to be led: with quiet energy, conviction, and clarity. Eugene carried within him, throughout the entire service-in the prayers, Scripture readings, even the announcements-a steady spiritual passion.
My mind did not wander to examine church architecture. I didn’t read the bulletin. I didn’t look at my watch. I worshiped. Frankly, I don’t remember the theme of the sermon. But I vividly remember that I worshiped that day as I had not worshiped in a long time.
In one sense, Eugene is an anachronism, a throwback to the days when those fierce Puritans dominated the theological and ecclesiastical world, when truth was the issue, when passion for God was not considered an extremist vice.
Then again, perhaps, in a morally sloppy age that is preoccupied with what works, in a church that is subject to the temptation of relevance at the expense of truth, an anachronism is most timely.
Mark Galli is associate editor of LEADERSHIP.
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