Winter 1988

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Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity by Eugene H. Peterson, Eerdmans, $7.95

Reviewed by James D. Berkley, associate editor, LEADERSHIP

Those of you who think you know Eugene Peterson, beware! Although he was described in Christianity Today as a Protestant contemplative, a "monk out of habit," somewhere the gentle pastor, meek and mild, found a set of verbal brass knuckles, which he uses with ferocity in his latest book, Working the Angles.

"American pastors are abandoning their posts at an alarming rate," he writes. "They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. … they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. … The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers. … They are preoccupied with shopkeepers' concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. … And there must be any number of shopkeepers who by now are finding the pottage that they acquired in exchange for their ordination birthright pretty tasteless stuff and are growing wistful for a restoration to their calling."

Why the brass-knuckles beginning? "I was mad," Peterson replied in a telephone interview. "I get so discouraged and angry when I see the abandonment of the essential pastoral tasks. And I suppose I'm still trying to make some sense of what I have chosen to do, what I've found essential in ministry."

...

Then what is our calling?

Peterson sets out a "trigonometry of ministry," complete with three sides and three angles. The sides are the pastoral tasks-preaching, teaching, and administration. These ...

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