Eugene H Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1992)

In Under the Unpredictable Plant, Eugene Peterson charts the subversive story of Jonah and how it can help pastors develop a spirituality adequate for their calling. He writes with personal honesty and with biblical insight, drawing on decades of pastoral ministry and thoughtful reflection on spiritual theology. He begins this book describing a pastoral crisis when he was 30 years old, ordained for 4 years, when he encountered a chasm between his faith and his vocation; his life as a Christian and as a pastor. In similar circumstances, many let go of their faith or of their vocation. Peterson determined to hang on to both. He did not want to merely hold on to his religious job, but retain the integrity of his calling as a pastor. He charts his prayer and journey into and out of the depths, following the subversive story of Jonah.

Buying passage to Tarshish

Jonah was my son Ben’s favourite Bible story. ‘Uh oh Jonah, you should’ve gone to Ninevah’ we sang almost every second night. It’s a story retold in Sunday Schools and dissected in theological colleges everywhere; the prototypical journey of the unwilling missionary. It also has lessons for pastors.

When Jonah is called to Ninevah, he responds by going – but going in another direction towards Tarshish. Peterson comments that Tarshish or any glamorous ministry can be a lie that draws pastors away from their calling. Pastoral work is not an idealised exotic role but more like farming filled with modest daily routines. Congregations are not normally ideal and glamorous workplaces. Some of the best advice I received was not to expect congregational life to make sense. But the talks of ‘successful’ pastors and the profiles of ‘attractive’ churches looking for a new pastor make pastors wonder. Sometimes this ‘ecclesial pornography’ (pictures of churches without spot or wrinkle) urges pastors to leave one church in search of a more attractive Tarshish-like option.

Peterson, though a long-serving pastor, was tempted to leave the church he served several times. But early in his ministry he had committed to stability, inspired by the Benedictine vow. At a time when monks were free to go from monastery to monastery, seeking the best feed, Benedict expected monks to commit to finding God in one place and working through any challenges there.

When I told my partner Jen about the Benedictine vow of stability, after moving with me 18 times through 8 different churches, she asked ‘Where do we sign?’ For me who often looks forward to the next challenge, and in a society that encourages moving for career advancement, stability is a countercultural discipline. I have often, like Jonah and even Peterson, gone to the travel agent in Joppa and looked for a way out to Tarshish. I am not denying my call to ministry, but trying to manipulate my option of choosing the location. I have dreamt of expressing my vocation by teaching theological students who are eager to learn, leading retreats for those who are passionate for renewal, or doing life deeply with an intentional community open to radical discipleship. But the door closes and I am reminded of my call to pastor locally. (Anyway, if all pastors who longed for theological education or dedicated retreat leading left their churches, many pulpits may stand empty.) I am heading to Ninevah, although not for want of checking out Tarshish on google-earth. Peterson’s caution is not to be like Jonah, who even in obedience got it wrong because he went angry and pouting, obedient in a professionalised way but resenting the people he was sent to serve and through whom God wanted to teach him so much.

Peterson has a refreshingly high view of congregation leadership and values long-term pastorates, suggesting they be the norm rather than the exception. He recognises God does call pastors to move, and sometimes a dysfunctional church or pastor means moving is the best option. But long-term ministry makes for the best conditions for church and pastor to grow to maturity. He encourages pastors to see a congregation as a place of growing in spiritual maturity rather than an opportunity to advance their career: ‘the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune’ (p.20). That is an inviting image to see pastoring not just as an opportunity to serve but as a context to grow.

Escaping the storm

Pastors do not belong in the religious ship voyaging to Tarshish. We realise this at different times and from different voices. I have had several wake-up calls to remind me of my call. One was when opportunities for service in Asia closed off, and I learned to love God independent of ministry and love my family apart from their capacity to follow me to the ends of the earth. Wake up Daz. Another was when my daughters have said to me ‘Come and play. You are always on the computer, or always have something else to do.’ Wake up O sleeper. The religious boat offers much to a pastor’s ego and demands plenty of activity. But it does not make for maturity or fulfil our essential calling. There come sag time to ask to be pushed off, or else gather up the courage and jump ship.

Peterson once told his leaders he wanted quit. He and his family were worn out by him ‘running the church’. One of the leaders wisely asked him, what do you want to do? He said he wanted to focus on God and people: “I want to study God’s word long and carefully so that when I stand before you and preach and teach I will be accurate. I want to pray, slowly and lovingly, so that my relation with God will be inward and honest. And I want to be with you, often and leisurely, so that we can recognize each other as close companions on the way of the cross and be available for counsel and encouragement to each other.” (p.39) The leaders told him ‘do that, and we’ll run the church.’ It was a turning point for repudiating Tarshish religious careerism and recovering his vocational holiness.

Chaim Potok’s mother pressured him to be a brain surgeon, not a writer, because he could save lots of people and make a lot of money. Potok responded, “Mama, I don’t want to keep people from dying; I want to show them how to live” (p.47). This resonated with Peterson. Through the parallel calling he discovered as pastor and writer, he wanted to enter into the mess of life and prayerfully point people to God. Parish and pencil were his Ninevah. Storms can lead us to that kind of vocational recovery. What is the storm on our horizon I wonder?

In the belly of the fish

The centre of the book is Jonah’s time of confinement and limits in the belly of the fish – his askesis. Like an athlete needs focused training for competition preparation, a pastor needs askesis for energy of spirit. The institutions and congregations pastors work with, as well as their own egos, are not always conducive to Ninevah-mission. To foster a spirituality ready for the task, pastors need an intervention to remind them they are not god. Peterson teaches the fundamental rhythms to cultivate awareness of God are:

1. Praying the Psalms over a month – rescuing us from self-absorption. Jonah’s prayer from the belly was full of Praises from the Psalms.

2. Weekly congregational worship – grounding us in revelation, community and service.

3. Recollected prayer through the day – disseminating prayer into the everyday.

These are the utensils of a pastor’s monastery without walls. Other disciplines are optional, like garden tools to pick up and put down as needed to tend the soil of our souls; for example, fasting, Sabbath, journaling, meditation, exercise, tithing and confession.

Peterson appeals to pastors to go to the depths as true contemplatives instead of using prayer merely as a consumer product or ceremonial gesture: ‘If we do not develop a contemplative life adequate to our vocation, the very work we do and our very best intentions, insidiously pride-fueled as they inevitable become, destroy us and all with whom and for whom we work’ (p.114).

Finding the road to Ninevah

Peterson did not grow up with pastors as positive role models. The book describes the wonderful influence of his mother and other mentors from his childhood church days, but his pastors did not capture his imagination. Until, after ending up in an academic teaching career but needing a second job, he worked alongside a pastor he respected. It was a vocational turning point as he saw, and experienced for himself, pastoral ministry as where the action was.

He realised pastoral work takes seriously where people are located. Jonah had to embrace the locale of Ninevah, and Peterson saw place as being intrinsic to being a pastor. James Joyce’s Ulysses narrates the everyday life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin. Peterson aspires to look at his people’s lives with the same imagination, to get the gospel story right but also exegetically get people’s stories right. Visitation is thus not just a duty but research into people’s stories of being shaped by Christ. Echoing Mark 16:6-7, he recites ‘He is risen and going ahead of you into [this home], there you will see him as I told you’.

Inspired by the farmer-writer Wendell Berry, Peterson sees church as physical as a farm, and a resource to care for rather than take advantage of. A congregation is not the enemy to be defeated, nor a defunct group to be rehabilitated according to a pastor’s ideal. Thomas Merton brilliantly said, “it is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not ‘what he ought to be.’ If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we will do away with him altogether.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, NY: Doubleday-Image, 1968, p.145, quoted by Peterson on p.135)

Peterson asserts pastoral work is geographic but also eschatological. It listens for what God is doing locally but also opposes what ignores God and points toward an alternative future.

Quarreling with God under the unpredictable plant

The story ends with Jonah quarrelling and angry with God outside the walls of Ninevah. Anger is a helpful sign something is wrong, either inside or outside our self. For Jonah, it was inside. His lack of imagination could not allow for God’s plan being greater than his own ego. He could not envision God’s grace and hospitality extending to the Ninevites after he preached judgement to them.

One of Peterson’s vocational mentors in Fyodor Dostoevsky; from him he learned the poverty of an inadequate model of ministry. Actually the pastor’s role is to say ‘God’ into situations. It is not primarily about meeting needs. It is a role oriented to worship and service rather than market and career. It stands in awe and sees God in people rather than seeing people for how they can help the pastor’s ego. It treats people with dignity rather than seeing them as problems to solve. It is Ninevah rather than Tarshish. Pastors recover their vocational holiness as spiritual directors in rather than program directors.

The book Jonah ends in Ninevah, but with an uncertain ending about how the prophet Jonah will respond. Will he rise to the dignity of a spiritual companion to the people of the city, or revert to something less? And what will be our response?

Peterson says vocational holiness for a pastor is to clarify what a pastor is and then cultivate a spirituality adequate to support that. I find myself identifying with the bankruptcy and hope-for-renewal of Peterson and Jonah, and hope I will find myself at home inside the walls of Ninevah for a long time.

And as previously posted, here is my initial response to The Contemplative Pastor:

Eugene H Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1989)

Peterson has written my favourite book on parenting, especially preparing to parent teenagers (Like Dew Your Youth), one of my favourite books on vocation (Under the Unpredictable Plant), and my favourite book on pastoral ministry (The Contemplative Pastor). I am reading through them to get a fresh vision and passion for focused and healthy ministry.

The Contemplative Pastor offers healthy frameworks for being a pastor. The book has been part of a fresh call back into pastoral ministry for me. Peterson was pastor of Christ our King Presbyterian Church for 35 years, and longed to be local there in Bel Air and know two or three square miles of that neighbourhood, ‘just know it and keep on knowing it’. (p.12) He wanted to never pastor a church of more people than he could remember by name, and be with them to see what God is doing and help them become all God wants for them. That’s the vocation I have had my imagination grabbed by and now put up my hand up again.

Peterson elevates and affirms a pastor’s vocation, the use of Scripture and prayer, being passionate for God and compassionate for people, and the importance of everyday spirituality. To aspire to be a good ‘pastor’ though is not sufficient without helpful adjectives. Peterson suggests three. He re-defines pastoral ministry as unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic.

In a context where to be ‘busy’ is a badge of honour and importance, Peterson counter-culturally asserts ‘busy’ with pastor should sound to our ears like embezzling to banker or adulterous with wife. Peterson invites pastors to decide ourselves what we will give our time and priority to, refuse other demands, and focus on core work of prayer, preaching and listening. It is up to pastors to focus on God, the Word and people and not get caught up in a frenzy of busy work: ‘How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?’ (p.19) A pastor’s calling is unbusy.

In a society where a pastor’s role is marginalised and people think the goals they have for themselves are the same goals as God, Peterson claims pastoral ministry upends the status quo and points to another world. It is easy for pastors to be tempted to feel important when invited to be a chaplain to the culture or to trade in religious goods and services that people say they need. But with prayer and parable, a pastor frames the world and church differently: ‘If we can develop a sense that sacrificial love, justice, and hope are at the core of our identities – they go to our jobs with us each day, to our families each night – then we are in fact subversive. You have to understand that Christian subversion is nothing flashy. Subversives don’t win battles. All they do is prepare the ground and change the mood just a little bit toward belief and hope, so that when Christ appears, there are people waiting for him.’ (p.12) A pastor’s calling is subversive.

In a time when churchgoers want pastors who can do God’s work for them, fix them up, help them bypass difficult paths and tell them want to do, Peterson finds focus with St John’s Apocalypse. He urges pastors to open up to God in prayer, ‘making a live connection between the place we find ourselves and the God who is finding us’ (pp.42-43), as John was at the beginning and end of Revelation (1:9-10, 22:20). He suggests pastors to rediscover the creative speech of poetry, which is hard work but conducive to powerful communication. And he urges apocalyptic patience, persisting in Kingdom work for however long it takes, despite the mess and mystery of life: ‘Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land – a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost, and then abandonment in search of another place to loot. Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people, to parish – to place.’ (p.49) A pastor’s calling is apocalyptic.

In a second section, Peterson outlines frameworks for the pastoral task between Sundays, ‘practicing the art of prayer in the midst of the traffic’:

. The forgotten art of ‘curing souls’ and helping people cultivate prayer in the midst of everyday life, as opposed to primarily ‘running a church’.

. Praying with eyes open and appreciating nature and good literature as nourishment for the praying imagination.

. Teaching not for information retrieval or motivation but to help people be proficient in the language of intimacy and relationship in prayer.

. Partner and join in with God in the growth God wants to bring (rather than leave it all to God or make it all happen ourselves).

. Celebrating the ‘ministry of small talk’ and being attentive to the down-to-earth texture of people’s lives.

. Seeing people as fellow sinners to share grief and shortcomings with and keep an eye out for grace.

. Sticking at the vow of a pastor to minister the Word and Sacrament and grow in this craft, rather than being driven by the angst of satisfying people that we are doing the job professionally.

. To stay refreshed and in touch with God’s word and presence, and to avoid codependence with a congregtaion, through taking a sabbatical

Peterson loves God, prayer, pastors and the church. He urges pastors to do their best and to look for the best in a congregation. Two paragraphs were especially challenging about viewing church and people with eyes hope-filled eyes: ‘If a pastor finds himself resenting his people, getting petulant and haranguing them, that is a sign that he or she has quit thinking of them as sinners who bring “nothing in themselves of worth” and has secretly invested them with divine attributes of love, strength, compassion, and joy. They, of course, do not have these attributes in any mature measure and so will disappoint him or her every time. On the other hand, if the pastor rigorously defines people as fellow sinners, he or she will be prepared to share grief, shortcomings, pain, failure, and have plenty of time left over to watch for the signs of God’s grace operating in the wilderness, and then fill the air with praises for what he discovers.’ (p.119) He drives this point home quoting Bonhoeffer: “A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.” (p.120)

Peterson introduces many of his chapters and wraps the book up with poetry, since poets and pastors both seek to use words reverently to unpack the commonplace and connect with people’s souls. My favourite, which summons me to be open to God’s timing and rhythm:

The Time

When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption . . .

Galatians 4:4-5

Half, or more than half, my life is spent In waiting: waiting for the day to come When dawn spills laughter’s animated sun Across the rim of God into my tent.

In my other clock sin I put off

Until I’m ready, which I never seem

To be, the seized day, the kingdom dream

Come true. My head has been too long in the trough.

Keeping a steady messianic rhythm,

Ocean tides and woman’s blood fathom

The deep that calls to deep, and bring to birth

The seeded years, and grace this wintered earth

Measured by the metronomic moon.

Nothing keeps time better than the moon.

I define ‘missional church’ without binding the term to some particular ‘emerging’ or other style of church. Missional is a mindset that discerns what God is doing in mission and seeks to join in with that. In that sense, Peterson offers helpful postures for being missional.

Similarly I aspire to be ‘contemplative’ without limiting that term to withdrawal and quiet prayer. Contemplative is a posture that engages deeply with God and fully with the world in order to help bring the world more into sync with God’s dream for it. For pastors that welcome the invitation to be unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic; to help people pray in the midst of the traffic of everyday life; and to creatively and artfully use language as a medium of grace, then Peterson is a contemplative pastor to learn from.

Darren Cronshaw

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