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The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call
Best-selling authors Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn offer encouragement to the leaders of today's counter-culture movement. Pastors are strategically placed to counter the culture. No other profession looks so inoffensive but is in fact so dangerous to the status quo. Their weapon? A gospel that is profoundly countercultural. But standing firm in today's world isn't easy. Powerful forces, both subtle and obvious, attempt to domesticate pastors, to make them, in a word, unnecessary. In this volume, two of today's most respected authors help pastors recover their gospel identity and maintain a pure vision of Christian leadership. Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn here reconnect pastors with the biblical texts that will train them as countercultural servants of the gospel. In his section of the book, Peterson explores Romans, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus, drawing from them the correct view of pastoral identity. In turn, Dawn looks to Paul's letter to the Ephesians for! instruction for churches seeking to live faithfully in today's world. Packed with encouraging insights from experienced practitioners, this book is must reading for anyone involved in church or parachurch leadership or for anyone now preparing for ministry.
260 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1999
57 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Marva J. Dawn
38 books51 followersMarva J. Dawn is an American Christian theologian, author, musician and educator, associated with the parachurch organization "Christians Equipped for Ministry" in Vancouver, Washington. She also serves as Teaching Fellow in Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dawn is generally perceived as a Lutheran evangelical.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 29, 2020
Read this back in 2003, and my general impression, if a few skimpy notes I made at the time are anything to go by, is that it was a pretty uneven book. Peterson's contribution was better than Marva Dawn's, but neither was at their best.
October 9, 2024
An unlikely collection of lectures. It definitely feels like they were given in 2000 though Eugene sounds timeless. Dawn's best work is on Ephesians 4 (Chapter 9). Every chapter written by Eugene is fire especially chapter 7 on Titus in Crete. In fact, that chapter may be the best short essay on pastoral theology I've read! I've wondered if Eugene believes in some sort of prescriptive polity given his quickness to get such scriptural principles for church leadership, but alas I found him to deny a particular polity (201).
My favorite quote without a doubt:
"There can be no community where there is no mutuality. Privilege is a breeding ground for pride. And once pride is given class sanction it corrupts every person. Class designation of any sort (Jew/Gentile, rich/poor, young/old, capitalist/worker, male/female, white/colored, clergy/laity, literate/ illiterate) is death of community. The frightening thing is that the moment we get our identity from a classification, we lose awareness of the other as person, and the gospel of Jesus is sabotaged at an unconscious level" (75).
My favorite quote without a doubt:
"There can be no community where there is no mutuality. Privilege is a breeding ground for pride. And once pride is given class sanction it corrupts every person. Class designation of any sort (Jew/Gentile, rich/poor, young/old, capitalist/worker, male/female, white/colored, clergy/laity, literate/ illiterate) is death of community. The frightening thing is that the moment we get our identity from a classification, we lose awareness of the other as person, and the gospel of Jesus is sabotaged at an unconscious level" (75).
August 6, 2020
I think I was expecting too much from this book. It is a good bible study on the Pastorals and Ephesians. Not completely life changing as some colleagues have experienced it.
April 19, 2012
Really good book, especially Peterson's chapters. Either I got used to Dawn's style or she got better as the book went along. She was a very difficult read at first. The intellect was very powerful but also kind of tedious. Perhaps the contrast with Peterson's style was too much for me. I also noted the difference in the length of their chapters and found Peterson's ability to get to the heart of the matter much easier to read than Dawn's protracted analysis.
Chapter Lengths:
1-Peterson-20
2-Dawn-20
3-Dawn-18
4-Peterson-20
5-Dawn-42
6-Peterson-18
7-Dawn-44
8-Peterson-22
9-Dawn-45
Total Peterson-80; Dawn 169
Remove Dawn's two shortest chapters and any of the two others exceed Peterson's entire contribution.
Quotes from the book:
p. 4-We are unnecessary to what congregations insist that we must do and be: as the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition. Congregations want pastors who will lead them in the world of religious competition and provide a safe alternative to the world's ways. They want pastors who lead They want pastors the way the Israelites wanted a king--to make hash of the Philistines. Congregations get their ideas of what makes a pastor from the culture, not from the Scriptures: They want a winner; they want their needs met; they want to be part of something zesty and glamorous...with hardly and exception they don't want pastors at all--they want managers of their religious company. They want a pastor they can follow so they won't have to bother with following Jesus anymore.
What Christians do becomes a self-contradiction when it takes the form of a trained and mastered routine, of a learned and practiced art. They may and can be masters and even virtuosos in many things, but never in what makes them Christians, God's children. pg. 14 (Quoting Karl Barth in The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics pg.79)
Love, the commanded relation, gives way to abstractions of plans and programs, goals and visions, evangelism statistics and mission strategies. After all, we are ordained to do something beyond and more intense than simply "Christian"--we have work to do. These people, with whom we find ourselves place in a responsible position of leadership, need to be put to kingdom work, or at least church work. Loving neighbors recedes to the background as we go about making recruits, lining up allies, arguing the opposition into compliance, motivating the lethargic, and signing up participants to insure the success of a project or program. pg. 16
p. 17-But how does it happen, then, that being made a pastor so often has the effect of pulling us out of this immense world and putting us to work in a religious institution that carries on its business pretty much on its own terms and with its own agenda? From within the ordaining institution, it is easy to look out on the world that God loves and redesignate it as enemy, as competitor, as distraction. We who are ordained put them to work on committees and projects that leave us with neither time nor energy for the world and diminishing interest in it.
p. 42-If we know with assurance that what we are engaged in is the will of God, then we will not need to put on a glittering image of necessariness in order to hide our irrelevance to the world's ideas.
p. 73-The gospel for Paul is never a matter of getting ideas correct; he is concerned with persons in community in Christ. In 2 Timothy, the last of his letters, he names twenty-four men and women...Counting the persons mentioned in all his letters, there are over forty names.
pg. 183-Pastors have an extremely difficult job to do, and it's no surprise that so many are discouraged and ready to quit. Though it may not seem like it at face value, pastors are persecuted in North America, and I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that it is far worse than in seemingly hostile countries. Our culture doesn't lock us up; it simply and nicely castrates us, neuters us, and replaces our vital parts with a nice and smiling face. And then we are imprisoned in a mesh of "necessities" that keep us from being pastors.
p. 184-Contrary to popular opinion, pastors are not jacks and jills of all trades. We have been bullied long enough by well-meaning but ignorant demands telling us what we must do, telling us why we are necessary to this or that program, this or that life. Everybody and his dog has a job description for the pastor. Everybody knows what a pastor must do to be a real pastor.
pg. 195-Salvation is not merely a matter of eternity, getting to heaven, "getting saved" from eternal separation from God; it is a way of life in community. The "saved" are those we deal with, give leadership to, these baptized, image-of-God made men, women and children. We are "a chosen people, eager to do good." Salvation is not just a matter between the soul and God; it is the soul and God and house and kids and work and play--the works. The saved life is a way of life in which God is both present and the eternal substructure.
p. 200-If we identify people functionally, they turn into functions. We need to know our people for who they are, not for what they can do. Building community is not an organizational task; it is relational--understanding who people are in relation to one another and to Jesus and working on the virtues and habits that release love and forgiveness and hope and grace.
p. 203-Christian community is developed by the Holy Spirit using men and women who are mature in their relationships, who have acquired the habits of the heart that make it possible to live in faith and in faithfulness. What we call the "ability to lead" has almost nothing to do with it. If we want to develop community in Christ, we have to scrap most of what we are told today about leadership. Forget about charisma, go for character.
Chapter Lengths:
1-Peterson-20
2-Dawn-20
3-Dawn-18
4-Peterson-20
5-Dawn-42
6-Peterson-18
7-Dawn-44
8-Peterson-22
9-Dawn-45
Total Peterson-80; Dawn 169
Remove Dawn's two shortest chapters and any of the two others exceed Peterson's entire contribution.
Quotes from the book:
p. 4-We are unnecessary to what congregations insist that we must do and be: as the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition. Congregations want pastors who will lead them in the world of religious competition and provide a safe alternative to the world's ways. They want pastors who lead They want pastors the way the Israelites wanted a king--to make hash of the Philistines. Congregations get their ideas of what makes a pastor from the culture, not from the Scriptures: They want a winner; they want their needs met; they want to be part of something zesty and glamorous...with hardly and exception they don't want pastors at all--they want managers of their religious company. They want a pastor they can follow so they won't have to bother with following Jesus anymore.
What Christians do becomes a self-contradiction when it takes the form of a trained and mastered routine, of a learned and practiced art. They may and can be masters and even virtuosos in many things, but never in what makes them Christians, God's children. pg. 14 (Quoting Karl Barth in The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics pg.79)
Love, the commanded relation, gives way to abstractions of plans and programs, goals and visions, evangelism statistics and mission strategies. After all, we are ordained to do something beyond and more intense than simply "Christian"--we have work to do. These people, with whom we find ourselves place in a responsible position of leadership, need to be put to kingdom work, or at least church work. Loving neighbors recedes to the background as we go about making recruits, lining up allies, arguing the opposition into compliance, motivating the lethargic, and signing up participants to insure the success of a project or program. pg. 16
p. 17-But how does it happen, then, that being made a pastor so often has the effect of pulling us out of this immense world and putting us to work in a religious institution that carries on its business pretty much on its own terms and with its own agenda? From within the ordaining institution, it is easy to look out on the world that God loves and redesignate it as enemy, as competitor, as distraction. We who are ordained put them to work on committees and projects that leave us with neither time nor energy for the world and diminishing interest in it.
p. 42-If we know with assurance that what we are engaged in is the will of God, then we will not need to put on a glittering image of necessariness in order to hide our irrelevance to the world's ideas.
p. 73-The gospel for Paul is never a matter of getting ideas correct; he is concerned with persons in community in Christ. In 2 Timothy, the last of his letters, he names twenty-four men and women...Counting the persons mentioned in all his letters, there are over forty names.
pg. 183-Pastors have an extremely difficult job to do, and it's no surprise that so many are discouraged and ready to quit. Though it may not seem like it at face value, pastors are persecuted in North America, and I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that it is far worse than in seemingly hostile countries. Our culture doesn't lock us up; it simply and nicely castrates us, neuters us, and replaces our vital parts with a nice and smiling face. And then we are imprisoned in a mesh of "necessities" that keep us from being pastors.
p. 184-Contrary to popular opinion, pastors are not jacks and jills of all trades. We have been bullied long enough by well-meaning but ignorant demands telling us what we must do, telling us why we are necessary to this or that program, this or that life. Everybody and his dog has a job description for the pastor. Everybody knows what a pastor must do to be a real pastor.
pg. 195-Salvation is not merely a matter of eternity, getting to heaven, "getting saved" from eternal separation from God; it is a way of life in community. The "saved" are those we deal with, give leadership to, these baptized, image-of-God made men, women and children. We are "a chosen people, eager to do good." Salvation is not just a matter between the soul and God; it is the soul and God and house and kids and work and play--the works. The saved life is a way of life in which God is both present and the eternal substructure.
p. 200-If we identify people functionally, they turn into functions. We need to know our people for who they are, not for what they can do. Building community is not an organizational task; it is relational--understanding who people are in relation to one another and to Jesus and working on the virtues and habits that release love and forgiveness and hope and grace.
p. 203-Christian community is developed by the Holy Spirit using men and women who are mature in their relationships, who have acquired the habits of the heart that make it possible to live in faith and in faithfulness. What we call the "ability to lead" has almost nothing to do with it. If we want to develop community in Christ, we have to scrap most of what we are told today about leadership. Forget about charisma, go for character.
June 28, 2017
I personally think that anyone thinking about going into ministry should read this book. Because of Dr. Peterson having the heart of a pastor and a mind of a teacher he writes from a perspective of a spiritual mentor. This book helped me gain perspective and inside during a time of ministry when I felt helpless and alone
August 20, 2019
The priesthood of all believers, humbly, joyfully, communally embracing and incarnating the completed work of Christ in the world.
For me, this book didn’t really get “cooking” until about halfway in, but was a real blessing, once it did. Worth pressing through!
For me, this book didn’t really get “cooking” until about halfway in, but was a real blessing, once it did. Worth pressing through!
November 25, 2019
A good book. Especially appreciated the chapters written by Eugene Peterson. Marva Dawn is also a great thinker and writer but her chapters felt a bit uneven and kind of made the whole book feel longer than it needed to be.
February 12, 2025
Some really good moments. Some that were just meh. Overall encouraging.
July 7, 2011
In an age where pastors are either self-help gurus, or just not important, this book comes as a call for pastors and baptized Christians to think carefully about their place within our culture.
Here's a few highlights:
-Marva Dawn's metaphor for the church: it's as if we found an uncompleted manuscript of a Shakespeare play, and we want to act out the rest of the story. We have Acts I-IV and a fragment of Act VI. By knowing Shakespeare's other works well, we might be able to improvise a faithful rendition of Act V of this new play. As the church, we have the story of God among his people, and we even have part of the ending. How do we perform Act V now?
-Dawn's recognition of the "Low Information-Action Ratio" within our culture. Because there is so much information available to us now - at our fingertips instantly and always - we rarely take action when we receive important information. Consider when you hear about another drought in Africa, or a bombing in the middle East. Are we moved to action? Can we be by so much information? What does this do to our response to preaching and the gospel that calls us to be the church in a broken world? This is an incisive observation - and one that I'm particularly indicted by.
-Peterson on the "ministry of words." He says it best, "If you have any desire or aptitude toward teaching, embrace the life of pastor. The vocation of pastor is the best of all contexts in which to teach." Part of this teaching is the careful use of words in places as varied as pulpit proclamation and hospital visitation: "Words are important. Words and living are heads and tails of the same coin. When words are wrong - diseased - they cause illness; they infect the soul. Sound, healthy words equal godly living." (128-9)
-Peterson's take on language as the essence of community. "Language, the means by which we reveal ourselves to one another and develop responsibilities among one another, is essential to community" (199). Without language, there can be no common system by which to create and nurture community. As church, we have the common language that spans time and culture - a language that can even be translated into other cultures and languages. The beauty of the Bible is that it is a living language that translates into other languages. Jesus is the Word that underlies all other words; the bedrock that all other language streams babble over (see Lamin Sanneh on the "translatability of the gospel" if you want to know more about what I'm trying to say...and read "A River Runs Through It" to explore that last metaphor).
-Deep Symbols. Are there aspects of the Christian vernacular that we are losing? For instance, "sin" is an uncomfortable, burdened word. But if we replace it or euphemize it (for example, "I fudged on my tax return" sounds delicious rather than dishonest), it loses its true content. Words matter - a lot. They shape reality and give us the categories by which we understand the world around us. If the church loses its language, what language will we adopt instead? Probably not a language that can begin to express the mysteries of God...(of course, it would be a mistake to not accommodate to our culture at all and expect everyone to use the same words, even after they've lost power - this was at stake when the Catholic church switched over from doing mass in Latin during Vatican II).
So, a good book with lots of thought provoking content - a surprisingly "necessary" read.
Here's a few highlights:
-Marva Dawn's metaphor for the church: it's as if we found an uncompleted manuscript of a Shakespeare play, and we want to act out the rest of the story. We have Acts I-IV and a fragment of Act VI. By knowing Shakespeare's other works well, we might be able to improvise a faithful rendition of Act V of this new play. As the church, we have the story of God among his people, and we even have part of the ending. How do we perform Act V now?
-Dawn's recognition of the "Low Information-Action Ratio" within our culture. Because there is so much information available to us now - at our fingertips instantly and always - we rarely take action when we receive important information. Consider when you hear about another drought in Africa, or a bombing in the middle East. Are we moved to action? Can we be by so much information? What does this do to our response to preaching and the gospel that calls us to be the church in a broken world? This is an incisive observation - and one that I'm particularly indicted by.
-Peterson on the "ministry of words." He says it best, "If you have any desire or aptitude toward teaching, embrace the life of pastor. The vocation of pastor is the best of all contexts in which to teach." Part of this teaching is the careful use of words in places as varied as pulpit proclamation and hospital visitation: "Words are important. Words and living are heads and tails of the same coin. When words are wrong - diseased - they cause illness; they infect the soul. Sound, healthy words equal godly living." (128-9)
-Peterson's take on language as the essence of community. "Language, the means by which we reveal ourselves to one another and develop responsibilities among one another, is essential to community" (199). Without language, there can be no common system by which to create and nurture community. As church, we have the common language that spans time and culture - a language that can even be translated into other cultures and languages. The beauty of the Bible is that it is a living language that translates into other languages. Jesus is the Word that underlies all other words; the bedrock that all other language streams babble over (see Lamin Sanneh on the "translatability of the gospel" if you want to know more about what I'm trying to say...and read "A River Runs Through It" to explore that last metaphor).
-Deep Symbols. Are there aspects of the Christian vernacular that we are losing? For instance, "sin" is an uncomfortable, burdened word. But if we replace it or euphemize it (for example, "I fudged on my tax return" sounds delicious rather than dishonest), it loses its true content. Words matter - a lot. They shape reality and give us the categories by which we understand the world around us. If the church loses its language, what language will we adopt instead? Probably not a language that can begin to express the mysteries of God...(of course, it would be a mistake to not accommodate to our culture at all and expect everyone to use the same words, even after they've lost power - this was at stake when the Catholic church switched over from doing mass in Latin during Vatican II).
So, a good book with lots of thought provoking content - a surprisingly "necessary" read.
February 9, 2015
This was a fun book. Peterson makes Scripture alive and enlivening. Fun to hear his take on Ephesians. Dawna's early chapters were harder for me to get into, but later in the book became very engaging.
July 19, 2012
Simply put, I just love reading these guys. So thoughtful and artistic in how they state their points.
Read
October 1, 2018Peterson and Dawn together is so good. Everything I read by either of them has a formative impact on my vision of the Christian life and of pastoral ministry. The only depressing part is that most churches aren't wanting pastors such as Peterson and Dawn describe, so it is definitely a "going against the flow" lifestyle one has to embrace.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews