The Pastor: A Memoir
Ebook
Overview
"A must read for every person who is or thinks they are called to be a pastor and for every person who has one." —William Paul Young, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Shack
Eugene Peterson never wanted to be a pastor. That’s why in 1962, when Peterson was asked by the Presbyterian Church USA, to begin a new church outside Baltimore and he accepted–no one was more surprised than he.
And so was born Christ Our King Presbyterian Church. Peterson quickly learned that he was not exactly sure what a pastor should do. He needed to figure out a way to measure what the heart of the job really was and whether he was living up to his calling. And that was what he set out to do.
After twenty-nine years in that one pulpit, two decades as a professor and writing thirty books on the church, spirituality, and the Bible, Peterson decided to offer his life as an example and guide to others for what he discovered it means to be a pastor.
In The Pastor, Peterson challenges convention wisdom regarding church marketing, mega pastors, and the church’s too cozy relationship to American glitz and consumerism to presents a simple, faith-based description of what being a minister means today. In the end, Peterson discovers that being a pastor boils down to “paying attention and calling attention to ‘what is going on now’ between men and women, with each other and with God."
"In our clamorous, celebrity-driven, entertainment culture, his life and words convey a quiet whisper of sanity, authenticity, and, yes, holiness." —Philip Yancey, New York Times–bestselling author of What Good is God
"A subtle manifesto of hope for our time." — Christianity Today
- Title: The Pastor: A Memoir
- Author: Eugene H. Peterson
- Publisher: HarperOne
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 339
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780062041814, 9780061988202, 0061988200, 0062041819
- Resource ID: LLS:9780062041814
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-12-20T03:31:48Z
Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) was a pastor, scholar, author, and poet. He wrote more than thirty books, including his widely acclaimed paraphrase of the Bible, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, his memoir, The Pastor, and numerous works of biblical spiritual formation, including Run with the Horses, also available in a commemorative edition. Peterson was founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he served for twenty-nine years before retiring in 1991. With degrees from Seattle Pacific, New York Theological Seminary, and Johns Hopkins University, he served as professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, until retiring in Lakeside, Montana, in 2006.