Eugene Peterson: The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers

Dennis Oppenheim:Device to Root out Evil

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s 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.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.”

From the introduction of Working the Angles written by Eugene Peterson    via

Comments

[Ian]

Thank you for remionding me of the path I agreed to follow when I became a pastor. I live on the edge of London England and you can easily insert England instead of America in Eugene Peterson's text above.
I discovered his work just in time to save me from becoming a shopkeeper eleven years ago in my last year of training. Since then, I have been pastor of a struggling village church that is surrounded by churches lead by people who are very good shop keepers and I have been tempted to adopt their methods to try to keep some of the 'customers' who move into the village, give my church a try then abandon us for the 'successful' church down the road.
Reading this has given me new hope.
Thankyou.

[J. R. Miller]

Yes, but is there not a bit of hypocrisy in what Peterson condemns and what he did with the Message?

[Kalapala.Sanjai]

Dear Brother,
Iam very happy about your Ministry. If God gives an Oppurtunity to you to visit India. we are mostly Welcomes to you to join with our Poor Ministry in Tribal and Rural Areas. we look for your positive response.

with regards,

your Brother In Christ,

Bro. K.Sanaji

[jeffery edionwe]

Dear Beloved,

If there was ever a time I needed help its now. We need your concern
on those that need our help. This people are in this for a long time
and
i stand to this that they should not be rejected because they are
humans
like us most of them are
Americans,Africans and in other part of the world so when i saw them
one
accord i decided to bring them in together as one.And for so long now
we
have been asking people to contribute to help them move on into life.I
so
dearly hope. I know that you will help to fight agaist it. because most
of them have been alited with some dangerous diseases such as (HIV,
MALARIA,
AND OTHERS).
Please order to help this ones.And Almighty God will bless you and your
family AMEN
I'm going to try to make them feel at home, and don't want them to
have any tought that while God created them at all.
If anyone has clothes of any kind of size either (Boy,Girl Baby clothes
that your child,children or your self ) and also that can assist us
financially
or materially.Please i want you to contact me via my E-mail incase of
any
assistance.
Thanks.
Name:mr jeffery edionwe,
Phone:+2348062120581
Address:33 emonvon sreet,
off akugbe street,
evbomodu quaters,
benin city ,
edo state,
nigeria,
zip postal:23452.

pass the information to every body.

[jeffery edionwe]

Dear Beloved,

If there was ever a time I needed help its now. We need your concern
on those that need our help. This people are in this for a long time
and
i stand to this that they should not be rejected because they are
humans
like us most of them are
Americans,Africans and in other part of the world so when i saw them
one
accord i decided to bring them in together as one.And for so long now
we
have been asking people to contribute to help them move on into life.I
so
dearly hope. I know that you will help to fight agaist it. because most
of them have been alited with some dangerous diseases such as (HIV,
MALARIA,
AND OTHERS).
Please order to help this ones.And Almighty God will bless you and your
family AMEN
I'm going to try to make them feel at home, and don't want them to
have any tought that while God created them at all.
If anyone has clothes of any kind of size either (Boy,Girl Baby clothes
that your child,children or your self ) and also that can assist us
financially
or materially.Please i want you to contact me via my E-mail incase of
any
assistance.
Thanks.
Name:mr jeffery edionwe,
Phone:+2348062120581
Address:33 emonvon sreet,
off akugbe street,
evbomodu quaters,
benin city ,
edo state,
nigeria,
zip postal:23452.

[jeffery edionwe]

Dear Beloved,

If there was ever a time I needed help its now. We need your concern
on those that need our help. This people are in this for a long time
and
i stand to this that they should not be rejected because they are
humans
like us most of them are
Americans,Africans and in other part of the world so when i saw them
one
accord i decided to bring them in together as one.And for so long now
we
have been asking people to contribute to help them move on into life.I
so
dearly hope. I know that you will help to fight agaist it. because most
of them have been alited with some dangerous diseases such as (HIV,
MALARIA,
AND OTHERS).
Please order to help this ones.And Almighty God will bless you and your
family AMEN
I'm going to try to make them feel at home, and don't want them to
have any tought that while God created them at all.
If anyone has clothes of any kind of size either (Boy,Girl Baby clothes
that your child,children or your self ) and also that can assist us
financially
or materially.Please i want you to contact me via my E-mail incase of
any
assistance.
Thanks.
Name:mr jeffery edionwe,
Phone:+2348062120581
Address:33 emonvon sreet,
off akugbe street,
evbomodu quaters,
benin city ,
edo state,
nigeria,
zip postal:23452.

[NORMAN OLSZEWSKI]

IS BRUCE LOGUE REACHABLE?
AN OLD FRIEND
NORMAN OLSZEWSKI

[Bruce Logue]

I'm a new church planter. I've been in my new town for a year now, untethered from a traditional ministry. Only now do I realize how much of a shopkeeper I was. I now consider myself "out there," and it is the best thing I ever did.

[paul merrill]

Wow!

Great words about much that is bothering the US church.

Here in Africa, we have other problems. But the root cause is the same - sin. Sigh.