I Just finished Peterson’s Memoirs

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I just finished Eugene Peterson’s memoirs which will be available next Tuesday. A review is coming…actually I hope to write a non-review review. I hate book reviews. Suffice it so say, for now, I loved every page. It was far better than I even could have imagined. Actually a lot of people will hate it. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. And not doing.

It’s sad really. The young pastors in my world should be made to read it. But they won’t. They will read ‘how-to’ books and learn better how to sell Jesus. And update him. Make him cool. Palatable. Cool for a culture tyrannized by as much.

The non-review is coming next Tuesday. I’m about to read it again.

My Advance Copy of Peterson’s Memoirs Has Come In

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No need to be impressed. I simply contacted the Publisher, happened to get the right person and they said they would be glad to send me an advance copy. A first born child might or might not have been promised.

It was delivered today.

Blogging could be light over the next week or so as I intend to write a review for this blog. It may in fact show up elsewhere. I hate book reviews. But I love books and I love to write about them. Maybe I can eek one out.

It is late Wednesday evening. As of right now, it is sitting about 8 feet from me. Painful as it is to wait, I will not begin till the morning. Sleep would be impossible if it was begun now. My biography of Garbo will have to tide me over till the morning.

Missional: The Mercurial Shibboleth

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Irreligious Thought #3: The whole “what/who is missional?” conversation is weird to me. Shouldn’t we pick words that have been around awhile to get worked up about?

Let me start by saying I am not interested in criticizing those who use the term ‘missional’ per se. They are too respected by me. Too many sincere. And far too many worthy of emulation. The kind of men and women I’d prefer to point to other than myself. Plus I have used the term and will continue to use the term.

But I do think the discussion about who/what is missional is weird. Strange. Off-kilter.

And not because we should not care about the things people say we should be doing in order to be ‘missional.’ I just think it is weird I am being asked to be missional at all.

There seems to be disagreement on the meaning of the term. All of us who use the term ‘Trinity’ should be fine with the use of words not found in the Scriptures to describe those things we see in the Scriptures. But people do not argue about the word ‘Trinity.’ It’s been around a while. So people argue about whether there is a Trinity or not.

But ‘missional’ is pretty new. And hip. No one was using this term when I was in Seminary 10 years ago. We talked about church-planting alot. And we talked about missions, evangelism, apologetics and mercy ministry. But the term was yet to be en vogue.  Now it is used without definition and argued over fairly regularly. And what is mind-boggling is how it is now a descriptor for faithfulness. This is where it gets weird for me and I have trouble understanding it at all.

We have this descriptor – missional. It means different things to different groups of people. It is a new term in the history of the church. It is a litmus test for others – “They are not missional, therefore they are not faithful.” Inevitably, there are arguments about not only who is and who is not missional but what the actual term means.

Let me say, perhaps it worth getting to the bottom of. The subject – regardless of the meaning of the term – has some significance. This is not what is weird about the whole thing. What is weird is that it seems possible the term will move out of usage before we even get a handle on it. It’s got a mercurial quality about it.

Let me add a few closing thoughts:

– First, is ‘missional’ replacing another term? Is there a synonym? Are we describing something which already existed and had a term to describe it or does the word reveal some innovation?

– Second, Maybe we should stop using ‘missional’ as a litmus test. I see no harm in describing your church or ministry as such. But using it to downgrade the faithfulness of others seems rather presumptive while such a new term still unfamiliar to large swaths of the global church. It’s mercurial quality demands this also.

– Third, the word has already become a shibboleth. If you say it with confidence, you are good to go in some circles. Do we really want to trade in words this way?

– Fourth, we may already be there, but the word will soon be marketable. In other words, it will be used to sell books, music, tickets, curriculum, etc. (Prediction: T-shirt with ‘Got Missional?’ on the front.) We need to stop and think.

None of this means, we should stop using it. I should not look down on those who use it. Again, I use the term. But I have to use it knowing it is not a term everyone gets. It certainly cannot be term I would argue over.

Here is the entire list of Irreligious Thoughts.

All The Right Answers

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Other teachers will understand me when I talk of how I’m learning far more than my students. The 9th graders in my Practical Theology are smarter than they think are. But I’ve noticed something.

There are two kinds of students in my class. Those who are familiar with the Scriptures and those who are not as much. Not that one group believes more than another. One group just knows the Bible a little better. The problem? When they open it up, the group most familiar, does not see what is there.

They see what they think is supposed to be there. They see what they think they are supposed to say. But they miss what is really there. Not because it is complex or hidden. They just have not learned to see stop and see what is there. Why? They think they have all the right answers.

I can only assume this is the case for adults too. We listen to lots of sermons and read lots of books. We read furiously through the Bible in a year. But we rarely read the Scriptures in a way that causes us stop and think deeply about a passage.

To see what is there instead of having all the right answers.

Salinger and Merton

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In the past week I’ve read articles/blog posts about two people in particular: J.D. Salinger and Thomas Merton. Salinger wrote one of the most controversial books of the twentieth century. Merton was a monk in Kentucky.

I became interested in Salinger when I read about his reclusive life. Why would a cause celebre do this? This is what has also interested me in Great Garbo and Van Morrison. Why after so much success withdraw? In a culture hell-bent on celebrating celebrities? A new biography was released recently and I was hoping it would give me some answers. 
Thomas Merton keeps coming up. Eugene Peterson references him a lot. And I keep seeing quotes by him here and there. But I knew nothing about him. Then I read a post this past week. I got a little more interested. Not because I am interested in Roman Catholicism. Just interested in him. If he is good enough for Peterson, he is good enough for me. And Peterson did not let me down with Annie Dillard.
So this morning before I sat down in the library to study, I took a small detour to the biography section and looked for anything I could find on Merton. His autobiography was there. So I picked it up, sat down, opened it and saw enough to be interested even more.
After reading an article about Salinger today, I am less interested. His reclusiveness may have had a lot to do with his desire to be a cad. Anyway, gold lost its luster quick. And I was disappointed. But more than disappointed I was repulsed by this man’s life and its incongruence with his writing, which was supposed to be a compelling reaction to postwar America. And then I remembered something I had seen in the introduction to Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain – it was also a reaction to the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War.
And Merton also withdrew.

So here I am – a protestant reformed pastor – reading Merton – the Roman Catholic Monk – while taking breaks from sermon work.

10 Reasons You May Not Want To Read This Blog

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This post is in celebration of having 50,000 hits on my little blog. Let’s see…Mom, you’ve probably clicked on here for about half of those.

1. I like the suburbs just fine.

2. I have read all of Jane Austen’s novels at least 5 times. P&P about 12 times.

3. I play with words and numbers in my head almost constantly. I mainly rearrange them. Think of it as grammatical and mathematical fung shei. This could prove I’m insane. Or just brilliant

4. I should have not graduated from HS. I needed a 65 in my 2nd attempt at Algebra 2. I got a 65 only because my teacher was tired of me.

5. I cry easily when watching movies.

6. My skin crawls more easily.

7. I listen to Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney. Loud.

8. Eugene Peterson saved my vocational soul.

9. I want to know why Paul never commands anyone besides pastors to evangelize.

10. I can and will go negative at any time – soli deo gloria.

The Pastor

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I honestly cannot imagine being more excited about a book:

In The Pastor, Eugene H. Peterson, the translator of the multimillion-selling The Message and the author of more than thirty books, offers his life story as one answer to the surprisingly neglected question: What does it mean to be a pastor?

When Peterson was asked by his denomination to begin a new church in Bel Air, Maryland, he surprised himself by saying yes. And so was born Christ Our King Presbyterian Church. But Peterson quickly learned that he was not exactly sure what a pastor should do. He had met many ministers in his life, from his Pentecostal upbringing in Montana to his seminary days in New York, and he admired only a few. He knew that the job’s demands would drown him unless he figured out what the essence of the job really was. Thus began a thirty-year journey into the heart of this uncommon vocation—the pastorate.

The Pastor steers away from abstractions, offering instead a beautiful rendering of a life tied to the physical world—the land, the holy space, the people—shaping Peterson’s pastoral vocation as well as his faith. He takes on church marketing, mega pastors, and the church’s too-cozy relationship to American glitz and consumerism to present a simple, faith-filled job description of what being a pastor means today. In the end, Peterson discovered that being a pastor boiled down to “paying attention and calling attention to ‘what is going on right now’ between men and women, with each other and with God.” The Pastor is destined to become a classic statement on the contemporary trials, joys, and meaning of this ancient vocation.

In addition: My most popular is this one about much of what I learned from Peterson last year.

HT: The City of God

Irreligious Thought #2: On The Unseen Work of God

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Irreligious Thought: George MacDonald said it is the unseen which has the most influence on us.

A few weeks ago I was in a book either written by C.S. Lewis or about him and he said that MacDonald thought what influences us the most is unseen. The context is unknown. And I’ve no idea what the implications or occasion for him saying is. But it immediately rang true.

I’ve always labored under the idea that what influences me the most is easily seen and delineated. Our spiritual lives are like mathematics or machines definable. I look at my life and add up the things I do plus the things I see God do for me and mine and I get the sum total of our spirituality. Then I point to it and say, “Here is God working (or not).” Worse yet, I do it to others.

I’ve been in ministry too long to think I am all alone in this. There are others, believers in the gospel of grace, who assume that if they cannot see God moving, he cannot be. But if we were to stop and think about our lives – all its parts and all the variables – we might think differently. We see so little.

Just as we cannot see the depths of our sin, mercifully, we cannot always see all the work of The Spirit in us. What makes us think we can? We cannot see The Spirit, himself. We cannot see our sinfulness in full measure. We cannot see our soul in all its glory. Why are we so quick to think the Spirit is not moving and changing, working and rearranging our self, just because we cannot always see it happening?

Maybe the very longing to see is the sign we need to know he is working.

Sure, we know there are outward manifestations of his work in works of holiness and the keeping of commands. Yes, there are affections bubbling up from thankful hearts. But all of that can be made counterfeit. Every man, chaste by a work of the Spirit has seen other men driven to the same by pride or tradition. Every gossip can be silenced by love for Christ or by simply being above it all. Either results in the eye seeing the same result.

In Romans 8:28 we are clearly told all things are working for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. OK, so far so good. Everyone loves this verse. But what about when you are cold towards God and his word for a season? Like Winter. The whole winter. Is he still working for your good? Is he still working for your good when your prayers fail to leave your lips? What about when anger is welling up inside you towards the one who i supposed to be working for you? What about when you can see nothing of his work in your life? Is he still working for your good when you cannot see it?

I would argue that even in the midst of committing sins, for which Christ had to die, the Spirt of Christ is rejoicing over us with songs of joy and influencing us for good. Sound like a stretch? Do you not think that God was working so as to influence for good those who were in the midst of killing Jesus? We see so little.

The good news here is not that we no longer need to manifest the works of light in a world of darkness. The good news is that God is working in us even when we cannot see it. Even in our dark nights with no dawn in sight. Even when we cannot feel the Spirit working…as if we always would know what the contours and curves and angles of his work would feel and look like.

The plumb line is not what we can see but what we know of God. And he has promised to work. He has promised to work through the preached word. He has promised to work through the sacraments and he has promised to work for our good even when we cannot see the good.

The original list of Irreligious Thoughts.