Conversations with Rev. Eugene H. Peterson
[1932 – 2018]
Pastoral care is difficult. It involves careful attention to both the Scriptures and the people we care for. But we don’t learn it alone; we need to cultivate the company of other pastors, living and departed.
In May 2015 the Fellows of our DOXOLOGY Collegium traveled to Kalispell, Montana to sit down with Rev. Eugene Peterson, noted pastoral theologian and author of more than 20 books on pastoral care, for a discussion on our favorite topic: the classic heritage of the cure of souls and its contemporary application.
We invite you to sit in on that lively conversation. Here you can access any one of the six segments in turn. Perhaps you can watch them together with a colleague or use this as a resource for your Winkel meetings. Each of the six videos has a short clip that introduces its subject matter.
Part 1: On Being a Pastor
Eugene Peterson argues in this 2015 collegium conversation that genuine pastoral work requires knowing parishioners by name, and that the megachurch model produces entertainers and fundraisers instead of pastors. He draws on his formation at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, including a sabbatical year during which the congregation grew without him, to illustrate the difference between cultivating lay imagination and fostering dependence on the pastor. The conversation also covers congregational criticism, hospital visitation, the pastor’s need for his own pastor, and the vocational loneliness built into parish ministry.
1. Conversations with Rev. Eugene H. Peterson[1932 – 2018]
Eugene Peterson argues in this 2015 collegium conversation that genuine pastoral work requires knowing parishioners by name, and that the megachurch model produces entertainers and fundraisers instead of pastors. He draws on his formation at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, including a sabbatical year during which the congregation grew without him, to illustrate the difference between cultivating lay imagination and fostering dependence on the pastor. The conversation also covers congregational criticism, hospital visitation, the pastor’s need for his own pastor, and the vocational loneliness built into parish ministry. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
2. On Listening & Patience
Eugene Peterson argues that listening is the foundational pastoral act, recounting two formative encounters: a new-age parishioner who had never been heard, and “Uncle Sven,” a mentor who simply sat with Peterson in a prayer room and let him talk. Peterson also describes stepping back from a psychiatric training program after a hospitalized woman asked him to teach her to pray, recognizing prayer as the pastor’s distinctive work. The session closes with Tomas Halik’s book “Patience with God” and Peterson’s account of an obnoxious atheist who attended for twenty-five years without singing or professing the Creed, then came forward asking to be baptized. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
3. On Preaching
Eugene Peterson describes his weekly sermon preparation discipline: lectionary-based meditation Monday through Wednesday, a full manuscript written Thursday and then set aside, Sunday morning spent walking the pews and praying through the congregation by name. He argues that preaching is sacramental, not educational, dealing in the stuff of ordinary life under the Word to install an incarnational imagination in a congregation. The conversation turns to Nathan’s confrontation of David as a model for indirect proclamation, and Peterson’s insistence that storytelling by hints and guesses is what faithful preaching requires, against the entertainment mode he regards as fatal to parish life. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
4. Poetry and the Psalms
Eugene Peterson argues that poetry trains pastors in attentiveness to the invisible dimensions of human life, reads Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sonnet “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” aloud, and commends George Herbert, Wendell Berry, and Mary Oliver as poets worth memorizing. The conversation addresses how cliche corrupts preaching and why a preacher who cannot read metaphor flattens Scripture into literalism. Peterson grounds this in Psalm 18’s dense figurative language as a model for how the Psalms hold together sensory and spiritual perception as a school of prayer. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
5. Prayer & Sabbath for the Pastor’s Family
Eugene Peterson recounts how a silent Quaker retreat led him and his wife Jan to establish a Monday Sabbath, morning silence in the woods followed by afternoon conversation, and how he negotiated that practice with his congregation. He distinguishes cataphatic from apophatic prayer, drawing on a Carmelite nun’s direction, and describes learning to sit rather than perform during a period of decline at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church. The session closes with Peterson on Jan’s hospitality ministry and her shift in visibility when they moved from parish to Regent College. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
6. The Influence of His Writings
Peterson recounts how his early pastoral writing went largely unnoticed and how publisher pressure to rename A Long Obedience in the Same Direction failed to move him. He identifies small-congregation pastors as the primary audience his work reached, and offers a cautious assessment of the state of pastoral ministry. The session closes with a stanza from Martin Franzmann’s hymn “O Spirit, Who Didst Once Restore” and a benediction. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →