He Ran With The Horses
With the deepest gratitude to a man of God who showed the world what being a pastor was meant to look like. Eugene Peterson died on Monday 22nd October, and after running with the horses all his life, he has now stopped for his eternal reward and rest. It is deeply symbolic for me too, that this... Continue Reading →
What the prophet does and why the lambs bleat
What is your notion of a prophet? I suspect the Western Protestant Church has made a right hash of this ministry. Reducing it to mere predictions. Either doom or glory, or vague hope & polite niceness. Reducing it to clichéd slogans that mean anything and everything ….and nothing. Reducing it the “wacky fringe of the... Continue Reading →
The Movements of Sin
"The people encountered in pastoral ministry today are sinners. But they don't look like it, and many of them don't even act like it. They rather look and act and feel like the youth they admire so much, struggling for "identity" and searching for "integrity." A quick theological eye that is able to pick up... Continue Reading →
Jesus – the Fisher of Men
Ballad to the Fisher King by Eugene Peterson (in Holy Luck, p.74-5): Pete and Andy and Jack and Jim, sailed in sturdy ships.They were fishermen who plowed the sea, while curses flowed from their lips.Heigh ho to the Fisher King, Heigh ho; Heigh ho to the Fisher Christ.The world for them was stuff to grab, the sea... Continue Reading →
Glimpsing Glory Through Palm Sunday Sentimentalism
Mark 11:1-11 In this well known passage read out all over the world this Palm Sunday, we catch a glimpse of a good and bad glory, a great biblical scene that is too often distorted by sentimentalism and likewise dismissed as a rather nice picture: the baby in the manger has grown up to be a... Continue Reading →
Congregational Inconsistency
Pastoral expectations, idealisms, fantasy's and fictions are often held by both pastor and congregation. Pastors have very high hopes (in God) for the church and often live with having these high hopes unrealised, unmet and often dashed upon the rocks of their own inflated ego. Congregations on the other hand, have very high hopes (in... Continue Reading →
A Growing Church
1 Cor 3:1-15; Col 2:19 and John 15:8,16 I distinctly remember it was Jesus who said, “I will build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!” (Matthew 16:18). Even so, we live in a global business age of organisation, efficiency and profit, and there are thousands of books on growth. ... Continue Reading →
Catching a glimpse of glory
More Eugene Peterson wisdom from Under the Unpredictable Plant: "What I object to most is the appalling and systematic trivializing of the pastoral office. It is part of a larger trivialization, that of the culture itself, a trivialization so vast and epidemic that there are days when its ruin seems assured. There are other days,... Continue Reading →
Say the word ‘God’ accurately
Once again I have been saved by the wisdom of Eugene Peterson. His book, Under the Unpredictable Plant arrived in the post today (thanks to Amazon and Royal Mail and Terry the postman), and just about became the Word of the Lord to me, and how I needed it as I began to spiral down into a... Continue Reading →
Gralefrit Theology 