Zack Eswine, The Imperfect Pastor:
Discovering Joy in Our Limitations Through a Daily
Apprenticeship with Jesus
(Crossway, 2015)
(Updated shorter re-write of Sensing Jesus)
Some jottings for a pastors' book group
Did you find the American / anecdotal / personal aspects a help or a barrier?
Did you find it interesting / striking / usual?
Did you enjoy the somewhat poetic style?
Was it a useful reminder of Jesus the Perfect Shepherd as the model for under-shepherds?
Part 1: The Calling We Pursue
What are your desires (in / through ministry)? (Chapter 1, p17ff)
What do you want Jesus to do for you? (p29ff)
Do you want to do large things famously and fast if possible?
Would you be content to be an unnamed mountain – with faithful obscurity? (p20)
Are you worried that you might e.g. receive praise for a sermon but know little about how to follow Jesus in your living room? (p26)
Did it challenge your ideas of success / what the pastor’s vocation ideally is?
Do you agree our constituency has issues with celebrity pastors and success culture?
Are you tempted to be hasty and neglect mattering things? (p26)
What does it mean to be a pastor and a human being? (Chapter 2, p33ff)
Is there a risk of sacrificing our humanity to the pastor role / persona / identity?
Do you agree that “Christian life and ministry are an apprenticeship with Jesus towards recovering our humanity and, through his Spirit, helping others do the same” for, through, with in Jesus to the glory of God? (p35)
Do you need to recover your humanity? In what senses?
What about the bodily / physical and local?
How might you do that?
What in your background / home life has shaped you? (Chapter 3, p45ff)
How do you tend to relate to men and women?
What are your fears? Are you tempted to use your fists or to run?
Do you embrace the mundane, invisible, uncontrollable, unfinished work of the pastor? (p58f)
How are your private prayers?
Do you agree this seems ineffective?
Are you trusting Jesus or appearances or sub-Jesus methods?
Part 2: The Temptations We Face?
Do you feel the temptations to be:
Everywhere for all? (Chapter 5, p73ff)
Fix it all? (Chapter 6, p89ff)
Know it all? (Chapter 7, p103ff)
Immediacy? (Chapter 8, p117ff)
(In a way these are temptations to be God!)
Are you too quick to throw lots of Bible words at stuff? (p91ff)
Are you in a hurry? Would anyone ever think of you as patient?!
Augustine (p103): you only really understand any Scripture when it tends towards you loving God / your neighbour
Do you need the mantra “I am not the Christ!”? (p35)
Part 3: Reshaping Our Inner Life
How is your inner life?
Do you give attention to it?
How?
How are you with solitude / silence / quiet?
What are your main ambitions? (cf. Chapter 9, p135ff)
Are you seeking wisdom?
How is your walk with God?
Do you long above all things to behold the face of God in Christ from the Scriptures? (Chapter 10, p151ff)
Do you think your pace is healthy? (Chapter 11, p169ff)
How could it be better?
Do you normally manage to live in an appropriate day at a time kind of way? Does the past or the future press in unhelpfully?
How do you feel about emotions?!
Do you think about the emotional toll of different aspects of your work? What drains / energises you?
What are you most burdened from / for? (p170)
Portions of the Day (p169ff) – persuasive? Useful?
Do you “strategically rest in order to vigorously keen going?” (p183)
Part 4: Reshaping the Work We Do
Did you value what he said about:
Visiting the sick (chapter 12, p187ff)
Touch (p188ff)
Calling the elders to pray for the sick / James 5:14 (p194ff)
The care of sinners / church discipline (Chapter 13, p199) – was any of this applicable to the C of E?!
Local knowledge (Chapter 14, p213ff)
Slowing down
Leadership (Chapter 15, p229ff)
Ways of training other leaders
Do you think of these as important parts of your work?
Was what he said helpful?
Do we cause unintended harms which should be red flags to us? (p211)
Do you agree that “pastoral care is mostly presence, being with someone in the midst of what troubles them”? (p191) How are you at that?
What areas do you neglect / decisions do you leave to others / things you don’t sweat?
Are you good at really giving permission and living with the consequences?
Do you micromanage everything / some things?
Is leadership “mostly about trying to embody what we invite others to follow”? (p229) So what?
Useful to ask: is this the right thing? In the right way? At the right time? (p236ff)
Romantic realism – neither defeatist empiricist resignation nor total romanticism (Chapter 16, p245ff)
* * *
Did you find the Bible handling persuasive?
Might the book change how you carry on at all?!
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