Working the Angles

1. Pastoral Integrity is Eroding: The Shift from Calling to Shopkeeping

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches.

Abandoning calling. Many American pastors are forsaking their true vocational calling, not by leaving the church, but by transforming their ministry into something unrecognizable from its historical roots. They are abandoning their posts, engaging in activities that have little connection to the traditional work of pastors for twenty centuries. This shift is driven by external pressures and internal compromises.

Shopkeeper mentality. Pastors increasingly operate like religious shopkeepers, preoccupied with concerns like customer satisfaction, attracting new members from competitors, and packaging spiritual goods to increase financial contributions. This managerial approach prioritizes measurable success—large congregations, impressive budgets, media attention—over the deeper, less visible work of spiritual formation. Martin Thornton critiques this, stating that communities need saints, not just large congregations.

Loss of focus. This commercialization leads to a ministry focused on images, statistics, influence, and status, rather than on God, the soul, and Scripture. The biblical reality of churches as communities of sinners, gathered by the Holy Spirit and led by a pastor attentive to God, is being lost. This abandonment of core responsibility sparks "hot indignation" in those who recognize the defection from a sacred calling.

2. The Three Essential Angles: Prayer, Scripture, and Spiritual Direction

Working the angles is what gives shape and integrity to the daily work of pastors and priests.

Core acts of attention. Three pastoral acts are so fundamental that they determine the shape of everything else: praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction. These acts are quiet and often go unnoticed, making them easy to neglect in a clamorous world that values visible results and measurable outcomes. Yet, they are the foundational "angles" that give integrity to ministry.

God-centered focus. These three acts are fundamentally about attention to God, though in varying contexts:

• Prayer: Bringing oneself to attention before God.
• Scripture: Attending to God's speech and action throughout history.
• Spiritual Direction: Giving attention to what God is doing in another person.
  In each, the focus is God-in-relationship—with oneself, with his people, with the individual.

Resisting external pressures. Pastors face immense pressure from both ecclesiastical and community sources to engage in a ministry that is inattentive to God, prioritizing image, growth programs, and sociological impact. However, true professionalism, as in other fields, means adhering to standards of integrity that cannot be swayed by popular demand. Like the angles of a triangle, these three acts define the shape and integrity of ministry, ensuring it is God-given, not human-driven.

3. Prayer: Answering God's First Word, Not Initiating Our Own

Prayer is answering speech; it is not primarily “address” but “response.”

Dangerous speech. Prayer is a daring venture, bringing us into proximity with God's powerful, soul-piercing words. It's not religious small talk but an encounter that risks exposing our deepest selves and aligning us with God's will, often contrary to our own desires. The old masters wisely counsel caution: "Be slow to pray."

Always the second word. A common pastoral error is treating prayer as the "first word"—an initiating act to get God's attention or bless human endeavors. This diminishes prayer, turning it into a ceremonial starting pistol that legitimizes secularism. Biblically, God always has the first word, whether in creation ("God said, 'Let there be light'") or redemption ("In the beginning was the Word"). Our prayers are always a response to His prior speech.

Learning from the Psalms. To recover prayer's true nature, pastors must immerse themselves in the Psalms, the "university" for learning to answer God. The Psalms, arranged in five books mirroring the Torah, teach us a comprehensive, personal language for responding to God's word in all life's complexities. This "anatomy of all the parts of the soul" provides the vocabulary and syntax for mature, answering speech, resisting the cultural erosion of language.

4. Sabbath-Keeping: Re-aligning with God's Grace-First Rhythms

The single act of keeping a sabbath does more than anything else to train pastors in the rhythm of action and response so that the two sets of demands are experienced synchronically instead of violently.

Beyond a "day off." Sabbath is not merely a utilitarian "day off" for rest and efficiency, but a biblical command to "quit" and re-enter God's grace-first rhythm. The Hebrew concept of day, beginning with evening, signifies that God initiates His work while we sleep, inviting our participation in the morning. Sabbath extends this daily rhythm to a weekly one, reminding us that God's work is primary and our efforts are integrated into His.

Two biblical reasons:

• Exodus (God's rest): God rested after creation, setting a divine precedent for us to internalize being over doing.
• Deuteronomy (humanity's dignity): Israel's ancestors in Egypt were slaves, dehumanized by perpetual work. Sabbath preserves the image of God in ourselves and others, preventing us from seeing people as mere "work units."

Combating Pelagianism. Pastors often preach Augustinian theology (grace first) but practice Pelagianism (human effort first) in their daily work, leading to workaholism and a disregard for Sabbath. This reversal of rhythms makes it seem impossible to stop working. Sabbath-keeping, however, is a physical/spiritual technology that counters this, providing uncluttered time and space to:

• See what God has been and is doing.
• Quiet internal noise to hear God's voice.
• Detach from people so they can deal with God directly.

5. Scripture: Turning Eyes into Ears for God's Living Voice

The common practice is to nurture a listening disposition—the involving ear rather than the distancing eye—hoping to become passionate hearers of the word rather than cool readers of the page.

The peril of reading. Pastors, despite spending much time with Scripture, often fail to truly listen to God, instead merely reading about Him. This insidious shift from listening to reading is exacerbated by three factors:

• Movable type: Gutenberg's invention transformed reading from an oral, communal act into a silent, private, visual exercise, detaching words from the living voice.
• Schooling: Modern education trains us to read for information, facts, and utility, rather than for relationship or nuance, making us impatient with metaphor and ambiguity.
• Consumerism: A customer-driven society encourages pastors to treat Scripture as a source of "useful" information or "goods" to deliver, rather than a living word to be heard and obeyed.

Restoring the ear. The biblical mindset is overwhelmingly oral; God speaks, and we are called to listen. The Psalmist's cry, "ears thou hast dug for me," highlights God's active work in opening us to hear His voice, transforming reading into listening. This involves recognizing that words are fundamentally sounds, events that reveal and involve us, not inert print.

Jesus, the living Word. Jesus, the Word made flesh, consistently brought people into conversation with God, not just reading about Him. His parables, especially the Sower and the Soils, emphasize hearing as the primary mode of receiving God's word. Pastors must resist reducing Scripture to a textbook and instead facilitate an alive listening, recognizing that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

6. Contemplative Exegesis: Listening to Scripture's Shaping Story

Exegesis, if it is to serve the church’s life and be congruent with the pastor’s calling, must be contemplative exegesis.

Beyond surgical technique. While technical exegesis is crucial for understanding Scripture's historical, cultural, and grammatical layers, it is insufficient if it fails to recognize Scripture as the living word of God. Like Dr. Cuticle, the surgeon who expertly operates on a dead patient, pastors can apply superb exegetical technique without comprehending that the church's concern is with a living, speaking God. Contemplative exegesis is a recovery of the church's historical practice of engaging Scripture as revelation.

Words as revealing sounds. Contemplative exegesis begins by appreciating words as sounds that originate in an interior and are directed to another interior. Unlike sight, sound involves us in the personally alive, signaling interiority, mystery, and holiness. This means resisting the academic tendency to treat Scripture as a mere textbook of information. The paradox of a living word conveyed by dead letters is resolved by returning to the originating context of worship, where God's word is heard anew.

Stories as shaping forms. The way words are given is as important as what they say. Biblical words come primarily in story form, the most basic and adult form of language. Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, presents a unified narrative: a good beginning, a catastrophe, a plotted salvation (battle and journey), developing characters, and the significance of every detail. Contemplative exegesis means opening our interiors to these revealing sounds and submitting our lives to the shaping power of this overarching story, resisting the temptation to distill it into abstract principles or moral lessons.

7. Spiritual Direction: Attending to God's Work in the Ordinary

Spiritual direction is the task of helping a person take seriously what is treated dismissively by the publicity-infatuated and crisis-sated mind, and then to receive this “mixed, random material of life” as the raw material for high holiness.

Beyond the spectacular. Spiritual direction is the ministry of devoutly attending to the "specific detail of everyday incidents" and "everyday occurrences of contemporary life," countering the cultural pressure to focus on the big, the glamorous, or the crisis. It helps individuals recognize God's active grace in the mundane, transforming ordinary life into material for holiness. This involves a disciplined attention and imagination.

Three core convictions. Spiritual direction operates on three foundational beliefs:

• God is always active: Grace is continually shaping a life towards mature salvation.
• Guidance is available: The Christian community offers centuries of wisdom.
• Each soul is unique: Wisdom must be discerned and applied to individual particulars.
  This work, often occurring in unplanned, brief moments, is instinctively recognized by pastors as central to their vocation, even if culturally marginalized.

Naming and discerning. Being a spiritual director means noticing the familiar and naming the particular. It involves moving beyond vague awareness to specific discernment of temptations and graces. Like a bird-watcher learning taxonomy, a spiritual director cultivates a disciplined imagination to identify the unique nuances of spiritual experience. This practice resists the "devotional help" industry's sentimentality and platitudes, instead bringing fierce intelligence and spiritual maturity to the soul's journey.

8. Pastors Need Spiritual Directors: Guarding Against Pride and Self-Deceit

Everybody should know this truth that no one is gifted with such prudence and wisdom as to be adequate for himself in the guidance of his own spiritual life.

Peril of authority. Pastors, constantly exercising authority and receiving deference, are in unique spiritual peril. Their position can inflate pride and foster self-deceit, making it difficult to practice the necessary obedience and submission of faith. The widespread absence of spiritual directors among pastors today leads to spiritual wreckage: prayerlessness, stagnation, faddishness, and arrogance.

Indispensable guidance. Just as a doctor needs a doctor, a spiritual guide needs a guide. Self-love is a blind guide, and no one possesses enough wisdom to navigate their own spiritual life objectively. Historically, having a spiritual director was an assumed part of a pastor's job description, a safeguard against the "ambushes and deceits of the wicked one" and the inherent complexities of the soul.

Overcoming reluctance. Seeking a spiritual director often means confronting deep-seated pride and a desire for control over one's inner life. The journey to finding a director can reveal hidden resistances, such as the unconscious pleasure of spiritual loneliness or the fear of sharing what is most essential. Overcoming this reluctance is a crucial step towards genuine spiritual growth and freedom, allowing for increased spontaneity and a deeper engagement with the "unproblematic" ordinary.

9. Practicing Spiritual Direction: Noticing the Familiar, Naming the Particular

The more public, exhortational, motivational aspects of ministry have always been more attractive.

Beyond the glamorous. Spiritual direction is often unglamorous, obscure work, resisting the cultural pull towards public, exhortational, and motivational aspects of ministry. It requires bringing the same disciplined prayer and discerning attentiveness to the ordinary, boring, and uneventful parts of life that are typically reserved for crises or celebrations. This work is about putting a "full spotlight of prayerful concern" on overlooked areas.

Resisting generalizations. Spiritual direction resists generalizations and formulas because each soul is unique. It's not about applying universal truths but discovering particular temptations and actual graces in individual lives. This requires moving beyond casual judgments to a disciplined imagination and prayerful attentiveness, recognizing that "heaven will show much more variety than hell" in the forms of grace.

The "unimportant" is important. Often, the most significant spiritual direction occurs spontaneously and informally, in "just right" moments that are unplanned and seemingly unimportant. These quiet, low-profile encounters can be critically formative, guiding individuals to attend to their unique spiritual journey within the larger context of God's grace. Pastors, as "people set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live forever," must cultivate this awareness and skill, refusing to let this essential work be pushed to the sidelines.

Last updated: December 6, 2025