140 - Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

By Eugene H. Peterson

Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1987. 131 Pp. $7.95.

American pastors, says Eugene Peterson, are "abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate." Peterson sounds the alarm with an urgent call for pastors to return to the pastoral role that served the church so well for most of twenty centuries, that of those whose primary task is to help the people attend to the word of God through prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction.

In Working the Angles, Peterson argues that these three pastoral disciplines are the creative core activities that determine the integrity of every other pastoral act. Just as the angles of a triangle determine the placement of the lines and hence the shape of the triangle, so the three basic tasks of pastoral ministry determine the proper alignment of all the tasks and the shape of one's whole ministry. Thus, the pastoral craft at its heart, according to Peterson, is a matter of "working the angles."

Prayer, says Peterson, is "the one central and essential act that keeps pastoral work true to itself." But pastors have inherited both a secular and a scholarly bias against the importance of prayer and prefer to view themselves as prophets or managers rather than persons set apart to lead the people in prayer.

Peterson calls pastors once again to return to the Psalms, the "great and sprawling university that Hebrews and Christians have attended" to learn to pray. He also counsels the claiming of a time and space where pastors will be free to listen to the voice of God apart from the many voices that make demands. What is needed is not, he says, a "day off" but a Sabbath day on which one may pray and play in tune with the ancient rhythm of covenant life: God speaks and we answer.

Scripture, Peterson reminds us, must be not only read but heard. If engagement with Scripture is to shape faithfully the contours of pastoral practice, it will include a dimension of contemplation. In addition to careful and critical analysis of the text with the best available tools, pastors must cultivate the habit of waiting before the text in expectation of hearing the living word of God, of which the Holy Scriptures are the written representation. They must come to the text with "a poet's respect for words, and a lover's responsiveness to words."

Spiritual direction, according to Peterson, takes place "when two persons agree to give their full attention to what God is doing in one (or both) of their lives and seek to respond in faith." As spiritual guides, pastors help persons link their own stories with the Story of redemption. As well as acquiring skill in listening to the Scriptures, they must learn to listen for the evidences of sin and grace in the common places of a person's experience and know how to name these in a way that leads a person on in the pilgrimage.

141 - Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity

Peterson speaks about pastors' needs to be guided themselves. He acknowledges that this matter is difficult for pastors. But pastoral authority derives from obedience to God, not from knowing all and being all. And obedience to God is well served by opening one's struggle to another who is able to help name one's experiences.

Working the Angles is a provocative book. Peterson offers a stimulating challenge to much current pastoral practice. His call to return to basics cannot be dismissed as hackneyed or simplistic. Peterson's literary style commends him as does his careful exegetical work. His long experience in the parish gives him the credibility of one who speaks from alongside. Yet, he is angry in this book, and his anger, particularly in the introduction, seems at times overblown. Peterson appears to show little sympathy for those clergy who are caught between the managerial model for ministry and something closer to what he envisions, but are finding it difficult to reverse momentum. Be forewarned. There is a threat in this book. Peterson is kicking at the foundations. He is demanding change. And most uncomfortable of all, his writing has the unmistakable ring of truth.

J. MARK BARNES

Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church
Louisville, Kentucky