Pastor, speaker and author Eugene Peterson has been a mentor to me for the past six years. Eugene and I have had a pen pal relationship, exchanging letters every few weeks as I ask him questions about life, God, faith, ministry and church. Each letter back from him is like Christmas morning. They are true gifts, very precious to me. He has shaped my understanding of true pastoral ministry and leadership like nobody else and I am humbled to be able to call him a friend and mentor.
Eugene and I have talked often about Renew and what it means to be a Jesus community and what it means for me to pastor of a counter-cultural, hope-filled Jesus community. I have thought often that I would love for Eugene to be with us and speak to us, challenging and encouraging us with sage advice as to what he would want us to know, to do, as we start this faith community. Since he can’t come and physically be with us in person I wondered if we could have the next best thing.
So I wrote him and asked if he would do us a favor: would he write a letter addressed, not to me, but to our entire launch team, giving us advice and encouraging us. I asked the question, “What would you want to say to a group of committed followers of Jesus who were starting a new faith community?”
And he answered.
Two weeks ago I read that letter to our team. It was such an honor to read these words from such a wise pastor, who has shepherded, taught, prayed and led others in the ways of Jesus much longer than I have been alive. As I read it out loud I was overwhelmed and got choked up, aware of what a gift this letter is and will continue to be for our faith community.
Here is an excerpt from the letter:
“...I have a strong conviction that one of the primary responsibilities of the pastors is to use language that is appropriate to living the gospel relationally on the ground, locally, in place with the people you are living and working with... The most conspicuous ways in which the gospel is communicated is by preaching (kerygma) and teaching (didache). They are essential. But pastor and congregation train one another in using a much more relational and personal, informal and unstudied language as we work wit people primarily not to proclaim or teach them about God but ot get it into their everyday, around the house, around the workplace lives. I call this language paracletic (from Paraclete, the Holy Spirit). It gets its content from preaching and teaching, but it gets its tone and syntax from this local and relational setting and encounter. This is the language of conversation - not telling people the truth of God and not explaining the things of God, but letting those languages be translated into the vernacular of our ordinary lives when we are not preaching and not teaching. Which is the way we use language most of the time and most naturally.
And the only way you can do that is with people whose names you know and whose stories you know. This is what is unique about the pastoral vocation. And this is the great opportunity of a newly developing church. You can preach from the pulpit and teach from the lectern but when you walk into the church parking lot or stand in the checkout line at Wal-Mart you are using the language of the Word made Flesh in the places where people spend most of their time, where you spend most of your time.
And now you are forming a congregation where that conversational gospel is possible. I am so glad for you.”
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