the unnecessary pastor by eugene peterson and marva dawn

Eugene Peterson has had a profound influence on many pastors and members in mainline and evangelical churches. He is perhaps best known as the translator of The Message. He served for almost three decades as a Presbyterian pastor near Baltimore, Maryland. Marva Dawn is an independent scholar whose ministry has increasingly been among mainline churches around issues related to worship. Her best-known work is Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down. This book is a compilation of lectures given in Vancouver at Regent College. Here are some learnings:

1. Ministry and spirituality are always local.
2. The glittering image of ministry is the desire and compulsion to please people, and the corrective is to present our authentic self.
3. The application of ministry is to fill in or improvise the missing parts of a play that we have been given.
4. In jumping on cultural bandwagons we are tempted to give up our "deep symbols". We are called to recover our deep symbols and to pass them along to the next generation.
5. Paul is the church's first and most enduring pastoral theologian.
6. Scripture shapes the imagination and forms life. Biblical language evokes and regenerates, and its use of metaphor is accessible to a wide range of people, not just to the elite.
7. Privilege is a breeding ground for pride. Jew and gentile are a part of the community as a gift, and so are we.
8. The principalities and powers that stand against biblical ministry are technology, money and competition.
9. Sound teaching comes from the greek "hygein", or hygenic. Sound teaching cleans up the messes we make in our lives, and leads us to health.
10. Scientific knowledge depersonalizes. Wisdom personalizes and orders. Science teaches people how to fulfil expectations and pass exams. Wisdom teaches us how to live.
11. Our culture thinks organizationally and functionally. The gospel thinks personally and relationally.
12. Character is more important than charisma.

Next up: Ancient Future Evangelism by Robert Webber.