The Contemplative Pastor

1. Redefine the Pastor's Role Beyond Cultural Expectations

If I, even for a moment, accept my culture’s definition of me, I am rendered harmless.

Resist cultural definitions. The modern culture often dilutes the robust noun "pastor" with weakening adjectives, reducing the role to an encourager of goodwill or a priest sprinkling holy water on secular intentions. This amiable acceptance, however, renders the pastor ineffective, tolerated as a court jester rather than a transformative spiritual leader. The true essence of being a pastor demands constant redefinition, drawing insights and images from Scripture rather than societal expectations.

Rehabilitate the noun. Peterson advocates for a deliberate rehabilitation of the term "pastor" by refusing the definitions handed down by the culture. This involves reformulating one's life and ministry around biblical insights, ensuring that the pastor's identity and purpose remain rooted in divine calling, not popular opinion. Without this intentional re-centering, the pastor risks becoming a marginal figure, unable to challenge or genuinely impact the prevailing cultural narrative.

Embrace scriptural identity. The pastor's identity should be shaped by a deep engagement with Scripture, allowing its images and truths to define the vocation. This means moving beyond superficial cultural commendations for orthodoxy or evangelical practice, and instead focusing on the profound, often counter-cultural, work of spiritual direction. The goal is to be a person passionate for God and compassionate with people, as the word "pastor" originally implied.

2. Embrace Unbusyness to Prioritize Core Pastoral Work

The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker.

Busyness as betrayal. Peterson argues that busyness in a pastor is not a sign of commitment but of betrayal, stemming from vanity and laziness. Pastors become busy to appear important or because they indolently let others dictate their agenda, rather than resolutely deciding their own. This constant juggling of schedules prevents them from fulfilling their proper, called work.

Prioritize essential tasks. An unbusy pastor focuses on three core activities:

• Praying: Cultivating an intimate relationship with God and awakening others to prayer's centrality. This requires set-aside, disciplined time, free from inward rush or distraction.
• Preaching: Speaking the Word of God (Scripture) in the language and rhythms of the people, requiring deep immersion in biblical studies and reflective hours, not just sermon preparation.
• Listening: Having the energy and time to truly listen to people, offering unhurried leisure that conveys dignity and importance, rather than merely "punching the clock."

Create margins deliberately. To achieve unbusyness, pastors must proactively schedule time for these priorities using an appointment calendar. By marking out times for prayer, reading, leisure, silence, and solitude, they create the necessary margins for creative work. This strategic use of the calendar ensures that essential spiritual nourishment is met, allowing other administrative tasks to be handled without resentment or anxiety.

3. Cultivate a Subversive Approach to the "Kingdom of Self"

I am undermining the kingdom of self and establishing the kingdom of God. I am being subversive.

Challenge the status quo. Pastors often feel marginalized when their spiritual work is dismissed as less "real" than secular pursuits. Instead of asserting importance directly, Peterson suggests embracing a subversive mentality. This means quietly undermining the prevailing "kingdom of self" and its materialistic values, while establishing the kingdom of God through subtle, patient, and hidden actions.

Jesus, the master subversive. Jesus exemplified subversion through his parables, which sounded ordinary but lodged in listeners' imaginations like time bombs, exploding later to reveal God's invasion. He avoided direct confrontation until the end, allowing truth to penetrate defenses indirectly. This method honors integrity, allowing God's truth to grow from within rather than being imposed from without.

Tools of subversion. The primary tools for a subversive pastor are prayer and parable. Prayer, a quiet closet life, partners with the Spirit in a wrestling match of holiness. Parables, consciousness-altering words, slip past platitudes to invade the human spirit with Christ-truth. This "shadow work"—unpaid and often unnoticed—creates a world of salvation, meaning, value, and purpose, ultimately establishing the kingdom of God.

4. Adopt an Apocalyptic Vision for Urgent, Deep Ministry

Apocalypse is arson — it secretly sets a fire in the imagination that boils the fat out of an obese culture-religion and renders a clear gospel love, a pure gospel hope, a purged gospel faith.

Revelation and urgency. The term "apocalyptic," meaning "revelation," brings a sense of catastrophic urgency and crisis to the pastoral role. It uncovers reality, revealing the side-by-side splendors and terrors of heaven and hell, stripping away the veneer of cliché from everyday routines. This vision prevents pastors from settling into a role of religious consumerism or sales.

Simplify into core practices. Embracing an apocalyptic imagination simplifies the pastor's life into three essential practices:

• Apocalyptic Prayer: Engaging in prayer as a pivotal, thoroughly present, and energetic act, joining visible and invisible realities. This counters the tendency to become a "messiah" figure, fixing problems instead of bringing people into God's presence.
• Apocalyptic Poetry: Treating words with reverence, using language not just to convey information but to create relationship, beauty, and truth. This involves shaping the praying imagination before the gospel, resisting prosaic communication for communion.
• Apocalyptic Patience: Cultivating "hypomone"—patient endurance—in ministry. This is not passive acquiescence but a passionate commitment to witness and work in God's kingdom, regardless of how long it takes or what it costs, scorning fast-food religion for deep time.

Resist cultural diseases. American religion often exhibits pretentious energy, banal prose, and hustling ambition—none of which are biblical. An apocalyptic perspective acts as a powerful prophylactic, defining and shaping the pastor's life to resist these spiritual diseases and remain faithful to the profound, unhurried work of God.

5. Rediscover the Ancient Art of Curing Souls

The cure of souls, then, is the Scripture-directed, prayer-shaped care that is devoted to persons singly or in groups, in settings sacred and profane.

Beyond "running a church." Peterson argues that while Sunday ministry (proclaiming gospel, teaching Scripture, sacraments) remains consistent, weekday pastoral work has defected from its historical purpose. Instead of "running a church," the essential between-Sundays work is the "cure of souls"—a Scripture-directed, prayer-shaped care focused on the essence of human personality. This is not a specialized ministry but the core pastoral task.

Three areas of contrast:

• Initiative: Instead of seizing initiative to "get things going," the cure of souls cultivates an awareness of God's prevenience—His initiative already at work. Pastors discern God's ongoing action and participate appropriately.
• Language: Moving beyond descriptive and motivational language, the cure of souls prioritizes personal language ("to and with")—the spontaneous language of love, conversation, and prayer. This fosters intimacy and recognizes individual sanctity.
• Problems: Rather than merely solving problems, the cure of souls explores life as a mystery. It resists reducing existence to what can be managed or fixed, asserting the priority of the "beyond" and guiding people through the complexities of grace and human sin.

Reclaiming proper work. This vocational reformation requires pastors to work in tension with secularized expectations, negotiating and adapting while remaining committed to the guidance of souls. It means seeing weekday tasks and encounters as raw material for teaching prayer, developing faith, and preparing for a good death, thus desecularizing both themselves and their parishioners.

6. Master "First Language" to Teach People How to Pray

Prayer is Language I. It is not language about God or the faith; it is not language in the service of God and the faith; it is language to and with God in faith.

The church as a worship center. Peterson initially approached ministry with an academic mindset, seeing the church as a learning center for facts and theology. However, he realized its primary identity is a worship center, where people hunger to pray and grow in Christ. This shifted his primary educational task to teaching people to pray, recognizing prayer as the central and shaping language of the church's life.

Three types of language:

• Language I (Intimacy): The first language learned, rich in meaning but not necessarily articulate. It builds trust and expresses profound love, using names and pet names. This is the language of prayer.
• Language II (Information): Language that describes the world, naming objects and making connections. It is the primary language of schools, orienting us in an objective environment.
• Language III (Motivation): Language that makes things happen, moving people to action. It is predominant in advertising and politics, using words to persuade and influence.

Convert language to prayer. Modern culture is dominated by informational and motivational language, leaving Language I (intimacy) to languish. Peterson realized his ministry was mirroring this, focusing on explanation and exhortation. His essential educational task became the "conversion of language"—to develop and articulate the personal word, teaching people to speak "I to Thou" with God, making prayer the primary mode of communication.

7. Embrace "Willed Passivity" in Work, Language, and Love

Every act of intimacy, whether in work or language or marriage or prayer, suppresses willfulness and cultivates willingness.

Beyond breaking or asserting will. Peterson grappled with the tension between "breaking the will" and "exercising willpower" in Christian development. He found that true spiritual growth involves neither simple submission nor aggressive assertion, but a nuanced "willed passivity"—a conscious, active participation in what is already being done by another, particularly God.

Insights from everyday experience:

• Work (Negative Capability): Learning to respect the material at hand (e.g., a beef carcass, wood, clay) and submitting one's will to its conditions. This "negative capability" (Keats) is the suppression of self so the work can take place on its own, echoing John the Baptist's "I must decrease, but he must increase."
• Language (Middle Voice): In Greek grammar, the middle voice describes the subject participating in the results of an action initiated by another. This mirrors prayer, where we neither control God (active voice) nor are passively controlled (passive voice), but willingly engage in His action.
• Love (Willed Passivity): In marriage, love develops not by imposing one's will but by sensitive responsiveness to the will of the other. This "willed passivity" is a voluntary crucifixion of self-will, analogous to Christ's kenosis, allowing for mutual enhancement and glorification.

Cultivate willingness. This approach distinguishes between willfulness (ego-driven imposition) and willingness (humble, bold freedom). It recognizes that the largest part of life is received, not actively created. By cultivating willingness, we enter into a sane, robust freedom that finds its most expressive and satisfying experience in prayer to Jesus Christ, who wills our salvation.

8. Find Ministry in the Ordinary Through "Small Talk"

If we avoid small talk, we abandon the very field in which we have been assigned to work.

Specializing in the ordinary. Pastoral work, by its nature, specializes in the ordinary—the everyday texture of people's lives, from mundane tasks to casual conversations. Peterson learned that dismissing "small talk" as subspiritual or worldly vanity means disengaging from most of what happens in people's lives, losing the conversational context for living by faith in the everyday.

Beyond big-talk priorities. Pastors often rationalize impatience with small talk by prioritizing "big-talk" issues like sermons or apologetics. They may feel obligated to manipulate conversations towards "spiritually important" topics. However, this approach bullies people, fails to take them seriously where they are, and overlooks the "tiny shoots of green grace" that God allows to grow in their ordinary lives.

The art of presence. Engaging in small talk is a pastoral art that requires conversational humility, staying close to the ground of everyday life. It means being present and attentive to what is there conversationally, respecting the ordinary as much as the critical. This art is not about making something happen or controlling the conversation, but about creatively participating in what is happening, trusting that the Holy Spirit is "beforehand" in all encounters.

9. See People Theologically as Sinners, Not Just Morally Flawed

To see a person as sinner, then, is not to see him or her as hypocritical, disgusting, or evil. Most sinners are very nice people.

Theological designation. Pastors must view people in theological terms—as sinners separated from God—rather than merely human and moral terms (having needs or deficiencies). "Sinner" is not a moralistic judgment but a designation of their relationship with God, meaning they need forgiveness and grace, regardless of their virtue or happiness. This perspective prevents pastoral anger and resentment when people inevitably disappoint.

Grace as the main subject. When pastors understand people as sinners, they are saved from constant surprise at human failings. This allows them to focus on God's action in Jesus Christ, making grace the main subject of pastoral conversation and preaching. It shifts the ministry from lamenting human badness to announcing God's great action "for sinners," proceeding with joy.

Discern sin's particular forms. While a theological understanding of sin is foundational, pastors must also discern its particular forms in individual lives. Today's generation is "unwell in a new way," often experiencing sin through "episodes of adolescence," such as a pervasive sense of inadequacy or historical amnesia. Pastors must respond to these specific manifestations of sin by kindly presenting the living God and reinserting people into a community with a history, rather than offering psychological fixes or cultural lessons.

10. Remain "Lashed to the Mast" of Word and Sacrament

With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of Word and sacrament so you will be unable to respond to the siren voices.

Beyond satisfying expectations. Pastors can easily impersonate their role, satisfying congregational expectations without truly being a pastor. This leads to inner restiveness, as the core vocational commitment to God and the "great invisibles" is compromised. The danger lies in doing a "job" (completing assignments) rather than a "profession" (pursuing the nature of reality, like health for a physician or justice for a lawyer). For pastors, this reality is God.

Resist secularizing pressures. The constant influx of human needs and secular mindsets creates pressure to readjust the pastoral conviction. People often seek recommendations or advice, not God, tempting pastors to "sprinkle holy water on Cabbage Patch dolls"—doing things that seem harmless but don't lead to deeper participation in God's realities. Maintaining professional integrity means refusing requests that encroach on this primary commitment to God's grace and mercy.

Fidelity to core calling. The church ordains pastors to be ministers of Word and sacrament, responsible for articulating and acting out beliefs about God, kingdom, and gospel. This is a vow to stick to foundational realities, even when people's desires change or the pastor's own emotions waver. Like Odysseus lashed to the mast, pastors are bound to Word and sacrament to resist the siren voices of cultural demands, ensuring the basic story of God's action is continually told.

11. Prioritize Sabbatical for Spiritual and Creative Renewal

The sabbatical was provided to deepen and continue our common ministry.

Restoration and replenishment. Peterson's sabbatical was born from spiritual fatigue and a desire for time to write. He viewed it as a biblically based provision for restoration, akin to a farmer's field lying fallow to replenish nutrients. This time apart was crucial for recovering spiritual and creative energies, preventing him from "going through the motions" and substituting professional smoothness for personal grappling with the Spirit.

A joint enterprise. The sabbatical was conceived as a shared venture, addressing a spiritual need in both pastor and congregation. Through monthly "Sabbatical Letters" and shared photos, Peterson and his wife maintained intimacy with their church, ensuring the geographic separation did not lead to spiritual distance. This communication fostered a sense of common ministry, even while away.

Profound mutual benefits. The sabbatical yielded profound benefits: Peterson returned with renewed energy and delight for ministry, feeling deep reservoirs of compassion and creativity. Unexpectedly, the congregation also thrived, discovering its own maturity and independence. This mutual freedom—neither pastor nor people neurotically dependent on the other—allowed for a deeper appreciation and reception of ministry gifts, strengthening the community's overall health.

12. Pastors as Poets: Revere and Re-create Language

Poets are caretakers of language, the shepherds of words, keeping them from harm, exploitation, misuse.

Shared vocation with poets. Pastors and poets share a common vocation: they use words with reverence, immerse themselves in everyday particulars, spy out the glories of the commonplace, warn of illusions, and attend to the subtle interconnections between rhythm, meaning, and spirit. Peterson emphasizes that biblical prophets and psalmists were all poets, highlighting the intrinsic link between spiritual leadership and poetic expression.

Language as sacred. Poets are caretakers of language, recognizing that words not only convey information but are entities with their own sound and rhythm. This reverence for language is crucial for pastors, as the Christian gospel is rooted in language—God spoke creation into being, and the Savior was the Word made flesh. Pastors, like poets, must treat words as sacred, realizing that language itself partakes of the divine.

Making truth fresh. The pastor's task is not merely to communicate information but to foster communion—the healing and restoration of love relationships. Poetry, as original speech, creates faith and shapes the praying imagination. It brings into being new perceptions and relationships, transforming loneliness into love. By embracing the role of a poet, pastors can make truth fresh, resisting the careless and cynical use of language prevalent in society, and instead using words for communion and creation.

Last updated: March 12, 2026