Pastoring in the twentieth century requires two things: One, to be a pastor, and two, to run a church. They aren't the same thing.
Eugene H. Peterson

The pastor is not precisely like any other leader — not ceo, not physician, not attorney, not social worker. The pastor rightly marches to a different drumbeat.

And that's the challenge for pastors who lead. They cannot march lockstep with the methods of corporations and secular nonprofit organizations. No one outside the pastorate fully understands its own unique cadence.

In his twenty-four years as pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, Eugene Peterson has done a lot of thinking about pastoral work: What is it? What keeps us from it? How is it done?

The answers? Eugene doesn't know if there are hard and fast answers, but he agreed to talk about the problems.

Eugene developed his approach to pastoring from scriptural study and personal experience, and he explains it in his well-crafted Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral ...