Eugene Peterson: Pastoral Ministry

For a long time, I have been convinced that I could take a person with a high school education, give him or her a six-month trade school training, and provide a pastor who would be satisfactory to any discriminating American congregation. The curriculum would consist of four courses.

Course
I: Creative Plagiarism.
I would put you in touch with a wide range of excellent and inspirational talks, show you how to alter them just enough to obscure their origins, and get you a reputation for wit and wisdom.

Course
II: Voice Control for Prayer and Counseling.
We would develop your own distinct style of Holy Joe intonation, acquiring the skill in resonance and modulation that conveys and unmistakable aura of sanctity.

Course
III: Efficient Office Management.
There is nothing that parishioners admire more in their pastors than the capacity to run a tight ship administratively. If we return all phone calls within twenty-four hours, answer all the letters within a week, distributing enough carbons to key people so that they know we are on top of things, and have just the right amount of clutter on our desk—not too much, or we appear
inefficient, not too little or we appear underemployed—we quickly get the reputation for efficiency that is far more important than anything that we actually do.

Course
IV: Image Projection.
Here we would master the half-dozen well-known and easily implemented devices that that create the impression that we are terrifically busy and widely sought after for counsel by influential people in the community. A one-week refresher course each year would introduce new phrases that would convince our parishioners that we are bold innovators on the cutting edge of the megatrends and at the same time solidly rooted in all the traditional values of our sainted ancestors.

(I have been laughing for several years over this trade school training with which I plan to make my fortune. Recently, though, the joke has backfired on me. I keep seeing advertisements for institutes and workshops all over the country that invite pastors to sign up for this exact curriculum. The advertised course offerings are not quite as honestly labeled as mine, but the content appears to be identical—a curriculum that trains pastors to satisfy the current consumer
tastes in religion. I’m not laughing anymore.)

From: Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, 7-8.
ht: Matt Chandler

Unemployment

This is a startling graphic concerning unemployment. Click the picture to watch the video:

And this:

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.

So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.

ht: Rod Dreher

What is Success?

It's too easy to dish on Carrie Prejean but I thought this was an interesting comment she made the other day. It's telling culturally that she thinks she has "accomplished so much" evidently by becoming famous. Or has she done something else I don't know about?

King: What are you going to do next?

Prejean: Oh, my gosh. I'm just so excited to be, you know, promoting this book. I'm so excited to be an author now. It's really great that -- I'm 22 years old, and I think that I've accomplished so much. And I think that there is definitely a message out there to spread to young women and that is, you know, never do anything that you wouldn't want your biggest fans to see or, you know, never do anything that, heaven forbid, your dad would see.
Link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/11/carrie-prejean-accuses-larry-king-of-being-inapproprate-and-then-fails-to-walk-off-his-set.html

Fort Hood Reaction

I pray that my interest in this side of the story not be taken as an indication that I feel no sympathies for the families of those victimized. May our prayers be for them today.

(edit) Another version of the story

From Pajamas Media

CNN (ditto the New York Times website) was considerably less useful than the tidbits I picked up online by following links on various blogs and in Facebook postings. They led me to (among other things) an AP story, a Daily Mail article, and a Fox News interview that provided telling details: Hasan had apparently been a devout Muslim; Arabic words, reportedly a Muslim prayer, had been posted on his apartment door in Maryland; in conversations with colleagues he had repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers; on Thursday morning, hours before the massacre, he had supposedly handed out copies of the Koran to neighbors. A couple of these facts eventually surfaced on CNN, but only briefly; they were rushed past, left untouched, unexamined; the network seemed to be making a masterly effort to avoid giving this data a cold, hard look. Meanwhile it spent time doing heavy-handed spin — devoting several minutes, for example, to an inane interview with a forensic psychiatrist who talked about the stress of treating soldiers bearing the emotional scars of war. The obvious purpose was to turn our eyes away from Islamism and toward psychiatric instability as a motive.

See also, Dreher, Ft. Hood killer's Islam matters -- but how?

David Frum reminds us to keep this in mind:

And others

Friends of CSNTM Newsletter

Fascinating story here about an Irish manuscript of Romans from the 9th century, Codex Boernerianus. Take special note of why the author changed "in Rome" to "in Love."

Argument from Art: Exposing the Sex Trade

This is an interesting story, an appropriate appeal to the arts to stir up consciences. Kudos to Emma Thompson for what she's doing. May more follow.

NPR Story