Eugene H. Peterson

This guide to Peterson's groundbreaking work enables study groups in schools or churches to delve deeply into his advice on how we should read scripture, leading through the four elements of lectio divina: lectio (we read the text), meditation (we meditate the text), oratio (we pray the text), and contemplation (we live the text).

This helpful study guide is designed to enable small groups in schools or churches - or even individuals - to delve deeper into the timely wisdom of "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places". Peterson's discussion is here broken up into fourteen "sessions," each of which contains a summary, key terms, quotations to consider, and questions for interaction, ending with suggestions for prayer.

Don’t just LEAD a small group, DIRECT it. Members of your small group look to you for answers. They bring their raw questions and intimate needs to you, looking for wisdom and understanding. How can you encourage your group to consider the Holy Spirit’s voice? “Spiritual direction is an ancient art of being with another person in relationship with God,” writes author Heather Webb. This time-tested practice requires that you remain attentive and open to divine interactions you might otherwise miss. Field-tested through the author’s years of experience, Small Group Leadership as Spiritual Direction will help you: - Avoid common small-group pitfalls - Take on difficult questions - Speak God’s words into others’ lives - Deepen your group’s desire for God The exciting discipline of spiritual direction allows you to create a space in which the Holy Spirit can move among your group. As you begin to discern Christ’s call in the lives of others, you will see your ministry with a new perspective and uncover new ways to direct your group, not just lead it.

A personal and practical guide to help pastors find Jesus as their mentor. For decades, Paul has been the model for today’s pastors. But Pastor John Frye says we must instead look to Jesus as our model. "While we may lift Christ up as Savior, as we bow down to him as Lord, as we marvel at his offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, as we walk with him as Friend, we seem to ignore him as the supreme Senior Pastor." Sharing thought-provoking, biblical insights and personal experiences, Frye calls other pastors to become apprentices to Jesus himself. He is the One who invites pastors to watch him in action and draw close so he can shape who they are and how they fulfill their ministry." Why have pastors and churches not been driven to Jesus as the central and controlling focus for the pastoral vocation and ministry in the local church? He’s been relegated to other dimensions of Christian and local church experience. Jesus is shoved into our shadows as we read our management books, do our cultural surveys, attend our leadership seminars, and applaud or criticize one another’s endeavors"--John Frye in Jesus the Pastor

An illuminating example of friendship as a vital way God answers our need for guidance, encouragement, affirmation, and correction. Most of the time, what we need to help us through the struggles in our lives is not the advice of an expert but the wisdom of a friend. Through this series of eloquent letters written to a life-long friend, author Eugene Peterson demonstrates friendship as a means to Christian maturity. The topics covered in this warm and highly personal correspondence are broad and varied, but one thing comes through with constancy and clarity: there is great value in a wise, experienced friend to help us see more clearly and to strengthen our growth in faith and godliness.

Rediscovering the Call

In this twelve-session LifeGuide(R) Bible Study on Psalms teaches you how to relate to God as you pray your doubt, fears and anger. They show you how to respond to God in praise. Here you find the best place to explore who you are and what God means to you. For over three decades LifeGuide Bible Studies have provided solid biblical content and raised thought-provoking questions--making for a one-of-a-kind Bible study experience for individuals and groups. This series has more than 130 titles on Old and New Testament books, character studies, and topical studies.

The power of story as God's word to the community of faith is never more clear than in the books of Samuel. Emotion, drama, complexity of character, and mystery fill the pages of these two biblical books. Eugene Peterson's commentary emphasizes the resonance and interplay between these stories of kings and prophets and the social and cultural issues that concern us today. Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.

Subversive Spirituality is a gathering together of articles written by Eugene Peterson over the past twenty-five years. Made up of occasional pieces, short biblical studies, poetry, pastoral readings and interviews, this book reflects on the overlooked facets of the spiritual life. Peterson captures the epiphanies of life with the pleasing pastoral style and inspiring depth of insight for which he is well known. Peterson describes his book this way: "The gathering of articles and essays, poems and conversations, is a kind of kitchen midden of my noticings of the obvious in the course of living out the Christian life in the vocational context of pastor, writer, and professor. The randomness and repetitions and false starts are rough edges that I am leaving as is in the interests of honesty. Spirituality is not, by and large, smooth. I do hope, however, that they will be found to be 'freshly phrased.'"

Spiritual reading has fallen on bad times. Today, reading is largely a consumer activity, done for information that may fuel ambitions or careers-and the faster the better. Take and Read represents Eugene H. Peterson's attempt to rekindle the activity of spiritual reading, reading that considers any book that comes to hand in a spiritual way, tuned to the Spirit, alert to intimations of God. Take and Read provides an annotated list of the books that have stood the test of time and that, for Peterson, are spiritually formative in the Christian life. The books on this list range from standard spiritual classics to novels, poems, and mysteries, and include an equally broad spectrum of authors-from Augustine and C. S. Lewis to William Faulkner and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Annotations following each entry offer Peterson's own significant insights into the power of each work.

Like Eugene Peterson's other books on pastoring, Under the Unpredictable Plant is full of stimulating insights, candid observations, and biblically grounded prescriptions. Yet this book emanates with a special poignancy out of Peterson's own crisis experience as a pastor. Peterson tells about the "abyss," the "gaping crevasse," the "chasm" that he experienced, early in his ministry, between his Christian faith and his pastoral vocation. He was astonished and dismayed to find that his personal spirituality, his piety, was inadequate for his vocation --and he argues that the same is true of pastors in general. In the book of Jonah-- a parable with a prayer at its center --Peterson finds a subversive, captivating story that can help pastors recover their "vocational holiness." Using the Jonah story as a narrative structure, Peterson probes the spiritual dimensions of the pastoral calling and seeks to reclaim the ground taken over by those who are trying to enlist pastors in religious careers. 'Eugene Peterson has done it again. Rare is the pastor who will not be moved by these thoughts. With honest, biblical eloquence, Peterson talks about what's needed to stay with pastoral ministry in ways that are both faithful and vital' - William H. Willimon

Whereas much of the current literature on pastoring stresses up-to-date training and new techniques stemming from the behavioral sciences, Eugene Peterson here calls for returning to an "old" resource--the Bible--as the basis for all of pastoral ministry. Originally published in 1980 and now being reprinted to meet continuing demand, "Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work"shows how five Old Testament books provide a solid foundation for much of what a pastor does: Prayer-Directing: Song of SongsStory-Making: RuthPain-Sharing: LamentationsNay-Saying: EcclesiastesCommunity-Building: Esther Pointing to the relevance of ancient wisdom, adapting Jewish religious tradition to contemporary pastoral practice, and affirming a significant link between pastoral work and the act of worship, this book opens up to pastors a wealth of valuable practical-theological insights."

Eugene Peterson issues a provocative call for pastors to abandon their preoccupation with image and standing, administration, success, and economic viability, and to return to the three basic acts critical to the pastoral ministry: praying, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction.

Any pastor who needs and wants to get back to basics will do well to absorb this book. Eugene Peterson, who has been gaining a growing reputation as "a pastor's pastor", here speaks words of wisdom and refreshment for pastors caught in the busyness of preaching, teaching, and "running the church." The Contemplative Pastor highlights the often-overlooked essentials of ministry, first by redefining the meaning of pastor through three strengthening adjectives: unbusy, subversive, and apocalyptic. The main part of the book focuses on pastoral ministry and spiritual direction "between Sundays": these chapters begin with poetic reflections on the Beatitudes and then discuss such themes as curing souls, praying with eyes open, the language of prayer, the ministry of small talk, and sabbatical - all with engaging, illustrative anecdotes from Peterson's own experience. The book ends with several meaning-full poems that pivot on the incarnation, the doctrine closest to pastoral work. Entitled "The Word Made Fresh," this concluding section is a felicitous finale to Peterson's discerning, down-to-earth reflections on the art of pastoring.

This is a bold book. It has to do with changing the life of American society, from the inside out, through -source action- of prayer. -I have written a book for Christians, - says Eugene Peterson, -who want to do something about what is wrong with America and want to plunge into the center, not tinker at the edge. I have chosen eleven psalms that shaped the politics of Israel and can shape the politics of America, and I have taken them seriously... I have written to encourage Christians to pray them both as children of God with eternal destinies and as American citizens with daily responsibilities in caring for our nation.- Peterson is concerned with the -unselfing- of our self-preoccupied, self-bound society through the action of praying together with other believers. He offers insightful, thought-provoking reflections on eleven select psalm-prayers that can help us overcome such things as self-centeredness, self-assertiveness, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, self-pity, self-service, and self-love. Originally published under the title Earth and Altar and now being reprinted for wider distribution, Where Your Treasure Is provides solid fare for any thoughtful, concerned Christian. But the book is especially suitable for group study and discussion: what Peterson writes here will serve to stir small groups of Christians to pointed reflection and prayer-action.