The witness of Eugene Peterson
Peterson never delivered a formula for success. He just wrote about pastoral work and how to live it.
In one of his early books on pastoral ministry, Eugene Peterson referred to his experience of being a pastor in “soggy suburbia.”
The people who gathered to worship God under my leadership were rootless and culture-less. They were marginally Christian. They didn’t read books. They didn’t discuss ideas. All spirit seemed to have leaked out of their lives and been replaced by a garage-sale clutter of clichés and stereotypes, securities and fashions . . . It was a marshmallow culture, spongy and without substance. No hard ideas to push against. No fiery spirit to excite. (Under the Unpredictable Plant)
But Peterson’s response to this marshmallow culture was not to spurn it; he chose, instead, to dig into it. He sought to reclaim the spiritual disciplines that had been trivialized and marginalized by consumer-driven culture with its love of technological efficiency and its market-driven notions of success. It was in the crucible of congregational life, he contended, that a spirituality could be forged, and it was there that ministry could be done with integrity and even “holiness.”
