The Danger of Faking Pastoral Ministry

A sobering quote from Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity:

I don’t know of any other profession in which it is quite easy to fake it as in ours. By adopting a reverential demeanor, cultivating a stained-glass  voice, slipping occasional words like “eschatology” into conversation and heilsgeschichte into our discourse—not often enough actually to confuse people but enough to keep them aware that our habitual train of thought is a cut above the pew level—we are trusted, without any questions asked, as stewards of the mysteries.

May the Lord raise up pastors who are not satisfied with the vanity of superficial Christianity, but those who genuinely and relentlessly pursue the deep riches that are in Christ!

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