The Huge Interior of Our Lives

Quick Review: Gene Peterson’s son told his dad he only had one sermon. He meant that his was one message presented in a myriad of ways.

Getting me out of the way for a moment, here’s more from The Gospel Coalition —

Peterson saw pastors moving from church to church, often in exhaustion, and identified the problem—a sense of pastor as program director for a church that often viewed the gospel as a way to success, or at least avoidance of suffering.

His answer was a paradigm shift, but not the kind found in ministry self-help bestsellers.

“The paradigm shift is not accomplished by a change of schedule, attending a ministry workshop, or getting fitted in a new suit of spiritual disciplines—although any or all of these might be useful,” he wrote.

“It is the imagination that must shift, the huge interior of our lives that determines the angle and scope of our vocation.

“A long, prayerful soak in the biblical imaginations of Ezekiel and St. John, those antitheses to flat-earth programmatics, is a place to start.”

— Is this encouraging or disheartening to you?

As always I’d love to hear from you about this.

(And don’t you absolutely love thinking of Ezekiel and St. John as “antitheses to flat earth programmatics“ like Peterson does here?!)

See you tomorrow.