Writing was harder to tell. I was mostly self-taught. I was always interested in learning in a culture that didn’t value learning. So I was always pushing the edges of reading and then – as I discovered a vocation and an interior vocation for writing – I just started reading a lot and saying: how do they do this? I never took a course in writing, but I think I taught a lot of courses.
There was a woman at Regent who I liked a lot and we had a good relationship. She was there four years and she never took a course from me. When she graduated I said to her, “I am really quite offended that you never took a course from me.” She said, “Eugene, I have been taking a course from you for four years.” I said, “Yeah, but you never paid for it!”
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She is now a chaplain at a university theological school in Canada. She writes to me, these marvelous letters, and she did take a course from me. We have a really intimate correspondence over the way she does her pastoral work. So I think I did that with people also; I would pick out and read their things over and over and how they do what they do.
Preaching: Is there any additional word you would like to say to preachers?
Peterson: The thing is, I really care about pastors, I think pastors are just a beleaguered people these days. What I’ve really been trying to do is to restore dignity to the pastoral vocation; seriousness, too. This is important work. We have been so inundated with success models, consumer models and survival models; pastors ask, “How do I keep this congregation going? Half my congregation is going down the street to the church that has all these great things going.” So it is really tough.
It is hard to do that – to say, “How does God want me to pastor?” and not compare ourselves to anyone else. I think being a pastor is a very unique vocation. You know doctors pretty much have to do what doctors do. Lawyers have to do what lawyers do. But pastors – there are more ways to be a pastor then there are ways to be a doctor or a lawyer, a general or even a professor.
When we live in a culture when such little dignity is given to a pastor, the temptation is try to manufacture some worth or significance on other grounds, or not know what your grounds are. I hope my writing has provided some vocational identity – not how to be a pastor, but who you are as a pastor.