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Transparent lives by Eugene H. Peterson
Forty years ago, I found myself distracted. I was living 20 miles northeast of Baltimore in a small town that was fast becoming a suburb. Assigned there by my denomination to start a new congregation, I started out with a fair amount of confidence and energy, and with strong personal, organizational and financial support. But as time went on, I found myself increasingly at odds with my advisers on the means and methods used for ensuring the numerical and financial viability of the congregation.

It wasn't long before I was in crisis. A deep chasm had opened up between what I was preaching and the way I was leading our congregational development. My attitude toward the men and women I was gathering in the congregation was silently shaped by how I was planning to use them to succeed, with little thought to feeding their souls with the bread of life. I found myself thinking competitively about the other churches in town, about how I could beat them at the numbers game.

I never wavered in my theological convictions, but I had to get a church up and running, and I was ready to use any means to do it: appeal to people's consumer instincts, use abstract principles to unify enthusiasm, shape goals through catchy slogans, create publicity images to provide ego enhancement.

Then one day my wife and I attended a lecture by Paul Tournier, who showed me another way of being. Given my distracted condition, the timing was just right. The lecture provided a fine image, shaping my life personally as a follower of Jesus, and vocationally as a companion to other followers of Jesus, in the role of pastor and writer. ...