{"id":1600,"date":"2022-04-28T08:35:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-28T12:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1600"},"modified":"2022-04-28T08:35:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T12:35:01","slug":"an-unhurried-life-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/28\/an-unhurried-life-3\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unhurried Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


\u201cI\u2019m tired of running this damn church.\u201d<\/em>
\u00a0
If you\u2019re a pastor who desperately wants to get the attention of your elders, try using a turn of phrase they aren\u2019t expecting.\u00a0
\u00a0
That\u2019s what Eugene Peterson did about 10 years into his efforts to launch a new congregation in suburban Baltimore.\u00a0 They had survived their first few difficult years.\u00a0 Pastor and people had worked together to build a brand-new building. \u00a0Along the way, however, Peterson had become exhausted.\u00a0 His heart for God was flat-lined.\u00a0 \u201cI tried to slow down,\u201d he later reflected.\u00a0 \u201cI tried to relax, but I was afraid of failing.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help myself.\u201d
\u00a0
Things came to a head after dinner one evening when his five-year-old daughter Karen said, \u201cDaddy, read me a story.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Karen,\u201d he replied, \u201cbut I have a meeting this evening.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThis is the 27th<\/sup> night in a row in which you\u2019ve had a meeting,\u201d she said.\u00a0 She had been counting<\/em>.\u00a0
\u00a0
It just so happened that evening\u2019s meeting was a gathering of the church\u2019s elders.\u00a0 Peterson was distraught.\u00a0 He set aside everything on the docket except for one subject \u2013 his own sense of failure as a father and church leader.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve tried to work so hard,\u201d he began, \u201cbut I can\u2019t do it.\u00a0 I resign.\u201d
\u00a0
His frustrations spilled out.\u00a0 \u201cI haven\u2019t been a pastor to this congregation for six months.\u00a0 I pray in fits and starts.\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019m in a hurry all the time\u2026 My sermons are thrown together.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to live like this, either with you or with my family.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0
Peterson, stumbling on, declared that he wanted to be someone who actually prays.\u00a0 Who reads.\u00a0 Who reflects.\u00a0 Who listens to God.\u00a0 He knew he couldn\u2019t do that on the run.\u00a0 Then he sighed, \u201cI want to be an unbusy pastor.\u201d \u00a0He had never said that before.\u00a0 It seemed to surprise him and everyone at the meeting.\u00a0 And then, \u201cI\u2019m tired of running this damn church.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0
After a long silence one of the elders, a retired colonel, said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just do it?\u00a0 What\u2019s stopping you?\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you let us<\/em> run the church?\u201d
\u00a0
Before that meeting came to a close, Peterson had taken back his resignation.\u00a0 He and his elders revamped the organizational structure of Belair Presbyterian Church. \u00a0He stopped attending every meeting.\u00a0 He stayed home more often to spend time with Jan and their three children.
\u00a0
As Winn Collier reports in his 2021 Peterson biography, A Burning in My Bones<\/em>, the man who would go on to write almost three dozen books \u2013 including The Message<\/em>, his unique translation of both Old and New Testaments \u2013 would take a long time to become an unbusy pastor.\u00a0 Deeply ingrained habits did not die easily.\u00a0 But he finally began to experience something of the joy of becoming himself<\/em>.\u00a0
\u00a0
It\u2019s an uphill battle for all of us.\u00a0 American culture applauds over-functioning.\u00a0 Doctors, teachers, accountants, homemakers, lawyers, and landscapers are supposed to do it all \u2013 or wrestle with the specter of failure.
\u00a0
Most pastors are tormented by the feeling that they have 100 jobs to do, and \u201ca real leader\u201d should be able to muster the time and the gifts to tackle every one of them.\u00a0 It\u2019s impossible, of course.\u00a0 Most of those 100 jobs will be done haphazardly, if at all.\u00a0
\u00a0
But what if a healthy church could be defined as a place where 100 people \u2013 all of them gifted differently \u2013 each accepted the responsibility, in an unhurried way, to do just one of those jobs with care and love?
\u00a0
Hurry is the great enemy of our souls.\u00a0 Hurry is what hinders us from doing the two things that Jesus valued above everything else: loving God and loving each other.\u00a0
\u00a0
Eugene Peterson gradually found the grace to slow down \u2013 to become an unhurried version of himself.
\u00a0
If you\u2019ve reached the point where you\u2019re ready to resign from your frantic life, ask God to help you go forward in a new way:
\u00a0
Instead of resigning, re-enlist.<\/em>

Ask for the grace to become a less hurried version of you<\/em>.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m tired of running this damn church.\u201d\u00a0If you\u2019re a pastor who desperately wants to get the attention of your elders, try using a turn of phrase they aren\u2019t expecting.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s what Eugene Peterson did about 10 years into his efforts to launch a new congregation in suburban Baltimore.\u00a0 They had survived their first few difficult years.\u00a0 Pastor and people had worked… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[282,218],"class_list":["post-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hurry","tag-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1602,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions\/1602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}