GroshLink

Once again thank-you to Miller for passing along a thought-provoking article. I resonate with Eugene Peterson's responses to the questions posed in the interview Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons. As I've posted before, our daily walk in the Presence of God as the people of God is a gritty/prophetic/poetic endeavor and pragmatic, consumer-driven religion misses our deeper need for connection to the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. At InterVarsity's Mid-Atlantic Regional Staff Conference, Steve Tuttle, the regional director, passed along Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Eerdmans, 2005). I have greatly appreciated this gift (although I haven't finished it yet as I've been ploughing through a number of other pieces, including the very helpful Ecstasy and Intimacy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit by Pittsburgh Theological Seminary's Edith Humphrey).

Here is Peterson's response to the question How do we know when they have moved from merely adapting ministry to the culture to sacrificing the gospel?

One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can't do Jesus' work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it -- although you can be very successful.

One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I'm rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I'm somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.

Regarding Peterson's thoughts on being local, he focuses on rural/small town life. Having grown up in Lancaster County, PA, and married another native family, I do not deny the truth of these comments. But I have found intergenerational, multi-ethnic urban life grittier, messier and more complicated, something which everyone should have as part of their growth in wisdom and life skills (even if it is not their life calling). Disengagement whether in an isolated rural setting or a gated community does not surprise me as much as it did as a highschooler, as we long to find peace (if not heaven) on earth. But deeper community, connection, and sense of place only comes from Being in the Presence of God as an individual rooted in the People of God whether rural, small town, suburban, or urban.