The Preacher's Toolbox: Eugene Peterson on Preaching – The Continuing Conversation

I never heard him preach, but he has influenced my preaching as much as anyone.

The late Eugene Peterson, who would have turned 90 on Sunday, has formed me in my pastoral and preacherly identity in more ways than I can number. A quick glance at my bookshelves, I count ten of his books, although I know there are more buried in boxes and scattered at home. Through his writings, Peterson has helped me to see the congregation as a story-formed community, and the preacher as the one with the holy vocation of connecting its story with the Story of God.

In honor of the legacy of Pastor Pete (as he came to be called by his parishioners), I want to share with you a particular insight about preaching from Peterson which I have been ruminating on of late, in addition to the “dirty little secret” of his own sermons.

The continuing conversation

As a young preacher, I wanted every sermon to be unmistakably memorable. I would agonize over any given message like it was my last. For much the same reason, I would include just about every last exegetical insight or illustrative anecdote. As a result, very little was left on the cutting room floor. I had to pack it all in.

I still want my sermons to be memorable. I still want the message to stick in the heads and hearts of the hearers, so they can carry it with them in their everyday lives. After all, no preacher aims to be forgettable. Moreover, I am as committed as ever to preaching like my life (and the lives of my hearers) depends on it.

Peterson has helped me to learn the limitations of memorability, however. More to the point, he has helped me come to grips with the fact that, while memorable messages are well and good, in the overall context of congregational ministry they are not the goal. The goal is the formation of God’s people into the mind of Christ and likeness of Christ.

This being the case, no single sermon is the be-all, end-all. Rather, the Sunday-by-Sunday preaching ministry is the centerpiece of the continuing conversation between the Word of God, the people of God, and the pastor.

+ Rather, the Sunday-by-Sunday preaching ministry is the centerpiece of the continuing conversation between the Word of God, the people of God, and the pastor.

“There is no way that I can preach the Gospel to these people if I don’t know how they are living, what they are thinking, and talking about,” Peterson writes in his memoir The Pastor. “Preaching is proclamation, God’s word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become Gospel.”^[1]

Consider how this perspective runs counter to the contemporary trend among churches to treat sermons as stand-alone “content,” with the preacher a “content-producer.” Choice clips are excised, wrapped up in neat sixty-second packages, and peddled on social media. Such methods and language, borrowed from the worlds of marketing and branding, invariably evoked Peterson’s ire.

Instead, Peterson would have us see each sermon embedded in the community of the faithful. No sermon stands alone because its context is not merely the liturgy, much less an online livestream, but the life together of God’s people. Proclamation from the pulpit is reinforced over coffee during fellowship hour. A stinging word of Law on Sunday elicits an impromptu counseling visit on Tuesday. Themes resound from one year to the next, ringing in the ears of the hearers like catchy jingles.

When we recognize the character of preaching as a continuing conversation in the congregation, it raises the stakes for our overall preaching ministry because it is forming the faith of the faithful over the long haul, but lowers the stakes for any given sermon, because another Sunday is coming. There is always more to be said. It is okay if I do not get it all out, or all right, right now.

Only one real sermon

Truth to tell, though, Pastor Pete knew that the continuing conversation tends to circle back around to the same old story. At Eugene’s funeral in November 2018, Leif Peterson let the assembly in on his dad’s dirty little secret. “It’s almost laughable how you fooled them,” Leif professed in his eulogy. “How, for thirty years, every week you made them think you were saying something new.” In fact, Eugene had “only one real sermon.”

And what was that? “God loves you. He is on your side. He is coming after you. He is relentless.” That beautiful message is so simple, ever ancient, ever new. Yet, it takes an eternity of conversations and coffee to work out... maybe more. That is okay. As Eugene now knows firsthand, when we’ve been there 10,000 years, there’s no less days to sing (and sermonize) God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.