We Need Good Guides
Finding a new way to pastor in confusing times
[Today is a commemoration day for St. Gregory the Great, author of the renowned Pastoral Rule or Pastoral Care. What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry in which I mention Gregory and others as good guides for pastors today.]
In The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, we learn of a powerful enchanted ring threatening the collective peoples of Middle Earth. After the ring’s discovery, representatives of various peoples eventually agree it must be destroyed by traversing torturous difficulties to cast it into the fiery depths of Mount Doom, where it was forged. Among that great council, no one steps forward to undertake this arduous task. It is only when Frodo Baggins, perhaps the most unexpected figure among that great gathering, shatters the tense silence with his small voice that a plan begins to take shape: “‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’”[1] The way forward for pastors in this current time is confusing, dark, and fraught with vast difficulty. Many understandably throw in the towel and step away from the burden of pastoring. If we are to embark on the perilous journey toward a new way as pastor-gardeners, we will need worthy guides to show us the way.
The good news is that such guides are available. To find them, however, we will need to push through a crowded room echoing with the cacophony of contemporary, unproven voices to find wise sages in quiet chambers who have weathered many years of ministry. Many of them are long dead, yet their voices speak with greater clarity and power than the thin voices of the living. C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to Saint Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, speaks to this very point:
Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. . . . The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.[2]
Many writers have endeavored to compile for contemporary readers a selection of trustworthy, classical guides for the art of pastoring. Thomas Oden seeks to draw together various strands of pastoral practice across a wide historical spectrum, mentioning in one work eighteen “principle classical works on pastoral theology”[3] but leaning “most heavily on the eight ‘great doctors of the church’: Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom from the East and Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great from the West.”[4] In another four-part work, Classical Pastoral Care,[5] Oden assembles wisdom around key areas of pastoral ministry, while providing an invaluable fifty-page appendix with biographical summaries and bibliographical details on just over two hundred pastoral figures from church history.[6] Andrew Purves suggests five vital guides for contemporary pastors: Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Martin Bucer, and Richard Baxter.[7] In their Christian Women in the Patristic World, Lynn Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes offer an important complement to Oden’s and Purves’s works, bringing attention to the influence of women ministers within the first five centuries of church history.[8] Renowned preacher and seminary professor Will Willimon supplements his own volume on pastoral ministry with a companion reader including topically arranged excerpts from twenty-four pastoral writers across the history of the church.[9] We could reference numerous other historical surveys of pastoral ministry,[10] but what is critical here for the pastor-gardener is to consider time-tested guides who will help set the direction of a contextually new and yet decidedly ancient approach to the form and practice of pastoral ministry.
In his memoir, The Pastor, Eugene Peterson, himself a guide to many contemporary pastors, mentions how he chose three mentors to guide him in his own pastoral ministry: John Henry Newman, Alexander Whyte, and Baron Friedrich von Hügel. “The three, though long dead, were no strangers—I had been in prayerful conversation with them for a long time—but now I embraced them as colleagues, not just as admired ancestors.”[11] Photos of these three graced the wall of Peterson’s study, serving as guiding pastoral voices for him. While I often reach out to many guides—both friends and authors, ancient and modern, female and male, and across diverse backgrounds—inspired by Peterson, three have become significant in my own journey as a pastor: Saint Gregory the Great, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Eugene Peterson. Gregory the Great shows me how to approach my calling with humility and total abandon, facing into both the exciting and mundane aspects of pastoral ministry.[12] His book Pastoral Care stands as one of the greatest guiding works for pastors even to this day.[13] Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls me into deep engagement with God through Scripture, bringing powerful implications for my life, church, and the surrounding social context.[14] My first reading of Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship deepened my own apprenticeship to Jesus, but his work with pastors in community, as reflected in Life Together, has forever changed my approach to pastoral ministry. Transformed while studying at Union Theological Seminary through his worship at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and his friendships with African Americans, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany with a new pastoral imagination for facing into the threat of National Socialism.[15]Eugene Peterson teaches me what it means to pastor rooted in ancient tradition yet engaging with my context. His continual return to Scripture as a source for fresh engagement in the present moment, including The Message, models a meaningful approach to pastoral ministry in the North American context.[16] Every pastor needs guides. With all the options before us, it may help each of us as pastors to choose a smaller group, even a trio, of pastoral mentors who have stood the test of time to guide us. While we all will choose different guides, their life and ministry must speak powerfully into our own life and context.
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[1] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 284.
[2] C. S. Lewis, in his preface to Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 10.
[3] Oden, Pastoral Theology, 15.
[4] Oden, Pastoral Theology, 7.
[5] The four volumes of Thomas C. Oden, Classical Pastoral Care (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1987) are: vol. 1, Becoming a Minister; vol. 2, Ministry Through Word and Sacrament; vol. 3, Pastoral Counsel; and vol. 4, Crisis Ministries.
[6] Oden, Classical Pastoral Care, vol. 4, Crisis Ministries, 193–245.
[7] Andrew Purves, Pastoral Theology in the Classical Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 6–7.
[8] Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).
[9] William H. Willimon, ed., Pastor: A Reader for Ordained Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), which accompanies his Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016).
[10] Examples include John T. McNeill, A History of the Cure of Souls (New York: Harper & Row, 1951); William A. Clebsch and Charles R. Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective: An Essay with Exhibits (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend: Spiritual Direction in the Modern World, rev. ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001); and Carl A. Volz, Pastoral Life and Practice in the Early Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990).
[11] Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 224.
[12] On Gregory’s life, see George E. Demacopoulos, Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). On his importance for pastoral ministry, see Thomas C. Oden, Care of Souls in the Classical Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1984). For my personal reflection on Gregory’s life in relation to my own calling, see Matt Erickson, “The Disturbing Temptation of Pastoring in Obscurity,” Christianity Today, March 13, 2019,https://tinyurl.com/5n6nzhe6.
[13] Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. Henry Davis, Ancient Christian Writers 11 (New York: Newman, 1950).
[14] On Bonhoeffer’s life, see Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). Within the authoritative editions of his work, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (DBW), published in the USA by Fortress Press, of particular importance for me are Discipleship, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey, trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, DBW 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) and Life Together and The Prayerbook of the Bible, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness, DBW 5 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996).
[15] See Reggie Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), and James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 41–42.
[16] Along with Peterson’s memoir, The Pastor, Winn Collier’s biography is a gift: A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2021). On Peterson’s importance to me personally, see Matt Erickson, “Remembering Eugene Peterson: 10 Ways He Shaped My Pastoral Ministry,” Preaching Today, October 25, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/4cu4bxct. I cannot more heartily recommend Peterson’s “pastoral library”: Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989); Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992); The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); and Under the Unpredictable Plant.