Eugene Peterson has a Thing or Two to Say to the American Church

Here is an excerpt from The Pastor by Eugene Peterson. In this excerpt Peterson is responding to interview questions from The Wittenburg Door:

DOOR:  “So spiritual direction is a slow process that looks idle and inefficient.”

PETERSON:  “It’s subversive.  I’m a subversive, really.  I gather the people in worship, I pray for them, I engage them often in matters of spiritual correction, and I take them on two really strong retreats a year.  I am a true subversive.  We live in a culture that we think is Christian.  When a congregation gathers in a Church, they assume they are among friends in a basically friendly world (with the exception of pornographers, ect.).  IF I, as their pastor, get up and tell them the world is not friendly and they are really idol worshippers, they think I’m crazy.  This culture has twisted all of our metaphors and images and structures of understanding.  But I can’t say that directly.  The only way that you can approach people is indirectly, obliquely.  A head-on attack doesn’t work.  Jesus was the master of indirection.  The parables are subversive.   His hyperboles are indirect.  There is a kind of outrageous quality to them that defies common sense, but later on the understanding comes.  The largest poetic piece in the Bible, Revelation, is a subversive piece.  Instead of being a three point lecturer, the pastor is instead a storyteller and a pray-er.  Prayer and story become the primary means by which you get past people’s self-defense mechanisms…

If the church member actually realized that the American way of life is doomed to destruction and that another kingdom is right now being formed in secret to take its place, he would be pleased at all.  If he knew what I was really doing and the difference it was making, he would fire me.

True subversion requires patience.”

DOOR:  “This sounds so… well … opposite of what most people think a successful pastor should do.

PETERSON:  “Pastors should not give people what they want just because it brings in customers–which it does.  The biggest enemy to the Church is the development and proliferation of programs to meet people’s needs.  Everyone has a hunger for God, but our tastes (needs) are screwed up.  We’ve been raised on junk food, so what we ask for is often wrong or twisted.  The art of spiritual leadership is not to tell people that they can’t have what they want, but to give them something of what they’ve asked for and not let it go at that.  You try to shift the dimensions of their lives slowly towards what God wants.”