It wasn’t a promising beginning.
In the early years of my Iowa ministry I enjoyed the company of a small, ecumenical clergy group that met regularly for support, friendship, and shared learning. Someone along the way recommended that we read together a book by Eugene Peterson. I was skeptical. Through the years I have vetted authors unfamiliar to me by the publishing companies who promoted them. Peterson’s publisher at the time was one who raised red flags for me. I gritted my teeth, bought the book and read along. It was fine, but my prejudice got in the way.
Some years later I encountered his writing at a more receptive moment. I was growing sick and disenchanted with the state of the contemporary American church. It had less to do with the congregation I was serving at the time — which was pushing mightily against the tide — but the ecclesiastical milieu at-large was becoming suffocating to me. Seduced by the lure of success; hypnotized by the siren song of the marketing world’s emphasis on “bigger, better, more”; adopting the language of business, fixated on expanding market share and popular attention, we quoted “leadership” gurus as glibly as scripture, designed glitzy programs, gave away chocolate bunnies to the kids at Easter and advertised special guest appearances by “Sky Divers, Beauty Queens and Professional Quarterbacks for Jesus” to draw a crowd; installed cup holders in the theater seats, giant video screens in the chancel, and amped up the praise bands. Infatuated with flame and fizz, mock-turtlenecked or Hawaiian-shirted pastors waved platitudinal shiny objects and orchestrated constant frenetic movement through the worship space, while the “amazing technicolor dream church” slipped effortlessly into the lifestyle of religious prostitutes, willing to turn ever more unsavory tricks in pursuit of butts and bucks. I wasn’t any good at it, and it made me increasingly ill to feel the pressure to jump on. Besides, I looked stupid in a Hawaiian shirt.
And then Peterson quietly but forcefully spoke up from the pages of his current book. “The church is not called to be a purveyor of religious goods and services,” he cautioned. And I exhaled. Throughout that book and the subsequent volumes I hungrily consumed, he mapped a more integral path. He wrote of his own discovery of the nature of congruent pastoral work — one that led him away from “staying awake at night laying out a strategy or ‘casting a vision,’” and into the lives and souls of his parishioners. It was, for me, like being handed a cup of cool water. I found in him not only a life raft, but a literary conversation partner. Eventually, an actual conversation partner.
Always interested in writing, I was constantly frustrated with my inability to work the discipline into my ministerial life. Competing responsibilities, tasks and distractions were a constant. Peterson, I observed, hadn’t seemed to have that problem. Incomprehensibly to me, he had managed to publish dozens of books while serving as a local church pastor. How, I wondered, did he find the time and the mental focus? The only way I could think of to learn the answer was to ask. I tracked down an address, shared in a letter my frustration, and asked the question. By return mail I received a two-page, single-spaced reply, outlining first how he organized his daily work, and then how he and his congregation had come to understand and validate that work as an extension of their shared ministry. It was a beautiful, generous gift, closed with this contextualizing and nudging P.S.: “Through the years, the most important Christian writing has been done by local church pastors…like the New Testament.”
Some years later, while attending a small conference at which he was presenting, I had the opportunity to express my appreciation, though I almost squandered it. Finally overcoming my inhibitions late in the experience, I approached him with my copy of The Message. Usually surrounded by fans, he was in this moment uncharacteristically alone. I apologized for asking him to autograph a Bible, but confessed that it was the only one of his volumes that I had brought along. He smiled gently as he took my book, set it in his lap, and replied, “when it first came out, I refused. And then I thought to myself, ‘Oh, get over it.’” We both chuckled, and he handed back my now-inscribed Bible. But I couldn’t manage to say more, until a day or so later, on the crowded ferry back to the mainland, I found myself wedged against the railings next to Peterson. It wasn’t a perfect setting, but it was now or never. “I want to thank you for saving my professional life,” I blurted out, and then the rest of the story spilled out into the conversational, wave-sprayed opening. He patiently listened, smiled, and patted my arm, receiving with uncomfortable grace my gratitude. And that was it.
Until a few months ago. Hearing a replay of a broadcast interview with him from a couple of years prior, I felt again the full weight of my indebtedness. Rereading one of his more recent books, I once again tracked down an address, composed a missive again recounting his indelible fingerprints on my life, and dropped it through the mail slot. Truthfully, I had forgotten about it when, a few weeks later while collecting the mail, I shook out a letter with a Montana postmark. Inside was a preprinted card from Janice Peterson, Eugene’s wife, acknowledging my letter and noting that Eugene wasn’t corresponding much at this point. And then, in the white space remaining on the card she had handwritten, “I’ve shown him your letter and he has reread it multiple times. Thank you.”
Two weeks ago I learned that he had entered hospice care, and last night I learned that he had died. I’ll confess that it feels like a part of me has, too. And that the church has lost a critically important, steadying voice.
But only, I know, in a certain sense. The rest of that truth, perceived through my tears, is that every time I see chocolate bunnies being handed out during a children’s sermon, every time I see the liturgists swinging figuratively through the sanctuary in a tawdry performance of “Church du Soleil,” I’ll hear the humble music of his voice piping us toward a more faithful way. And he will be moving among us — at least alongside me — again.
Thanks, Eugene, for the metaphors, the theological poetry, the attention to spiritual integrity, and your rigorous ability to write it all down, through it all encouraging us to live “the Christ life in the Christ way.”
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