Letters to a Young Pastor
Timothy Conversations Between Father and Son
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Narrated by:
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Eric E. Peterson
About this listen
Have you ever felt in over your head? When Eric Peterson became the pastor of a brand-new church, he quickly and wisely turned to his dad for guidance. Eugene Peterson, author of more than 30 books, including his best-selling memoir The Pastor and his groundbreaking Bible The Message, here reflects on pastoral ministry in all its complexity - from relationships to administration to the sheer audacity of leading God’s people in a particular place. This is Eugene Peterson at his best - lifelong wisdom written with deep love.
As the listener, you will glimpse into the tender, witty, personal side of Eugene mentoring his own son. These intimate letters will be treasured by all and are applicable to church leaders around the globe.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2020 Eric E. Peterson (P)2020 Oasis AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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The world has changed in so many ways, and many of us no longer feel confident when it comes to evangelism, especially with the rise of hostility toward Christian points of view. Keeping quiet is becoming our default position. Yet the world has not changed in one way: It still needs Jesus. Renowned evangelist Becky Pippert draws on decades of conversations about Christianity around the world to call and equip ordinary Christians to share Jesus through their ordinary day-to-day conversations.
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Best book on relational evangelism I’ve read
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What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?
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J.D. Greear considers Jesus’ radical call to give your life away to the greatest cause of all. To view your life from the perspective of eternity. To start making decisions now that you’ll be glad you made. It’s time to put your “yes” on the table and let God put it on the map.
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A convicting read
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By: J.D. Greear
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The Unsaved Christian
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- Narrated by: Tim Lundeen
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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What to do when they say they’re Christian but don’t know Jesus. Whether it’s the Christmas and Easter Christians or the faithful church attenders whose hearts are cold toward the Lord, we’ve all encountered cultural Christians. They’d check the Christian box on a survey, they’re fine with church, but the truth is, they’re far from God. So how do we bring Jesus to this overlooked mission field? The Unsaved Christian equips you to confront cultural Christianity with honesty, compassion, and grace, whether you’re doing it from the pulpit or the pews.
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Me. Me. Me! That was me! I thought I was a Christian...
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By: Dean Inserra
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Pastors’ kids are often burdened by others’ expectations, but there is a wonderful solution, both at home and in the church: grace. In this revised, refreshed version of Barnabas Piper’s best-known book, the author candidly shares his own experiences as son of pastor and best-selling author John Piper, offering a challenge to our churches and to the families at their very heart: how to care for pastors’ kids and allow them to find their own faith and identity.
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Preachers’ Kid
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In Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, best-selling author Pete Scazzero combines three decades of wisdom with hard lessons from his own ministry journey. He lays out what is required for church leaders to multiply deeply changed people who are growing in relationship with God, themselves, and others. Scazzero begins with four beneath-the-surface, systemic gaps that undermine serious discipleship. He provides a clear vision for a church culture that deeply changes lives and then practically unpacks the seven biblical marks of emotionally healthy discipleship.
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It may sound simplistic, but it’s not. The genius of this book is how Rob Ketterling targets the problems all leaders face, deconstructs them, and wrote a book that will be a lifesaver for all who listen to it. This book is not just for leaders of churches, corporations, or organizations. The truths and concepts apply to all walks of life - including our homes.
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Super practical and helpful
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In Out of Sorts, Sarah Bessey, award-winning blogger and author of Jesus Feminist, helps us grapple with core Christian issues using a mixture of beautiful storytelling and biblical teaching. As she candidly shares her wrestlings with core issues - such as who Jesus is, what place the church has in our lives, how to disagree yet remain within a community, and how to love the Bible for what it is rather than what we want it to be - she teaches us how to walk courageously through our own tough questions.
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Sounded like a robot reading this!
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Drawing on the wisdom gleaned from thriving mega-churches and innovative business leaders while anchoring their vision in the Eucharistic center of Catholic faith, Fr. Michael White and lay associate Tom Corcoran present the compelling and inspiring story to how they brought their parish back to life. Rebuilt is a story of stopping everything and changing focus. When their parish reached a breaking point, Fr. Michael White and lay associate Tom Corcoran asked themselves how they could make the Church matter to Catholics.
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Don't Do What's Suggested Unless You Will OWN IT.
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Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith. At the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays.
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Orthodox but Boundary Pushing
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Learn about the five thresholds of postmodern conversion; how to open a conversation about faith and belief; how to ask thought-provoking questions and establish an atmosphere of trust, when to tell the great story of Jesus; how to help someone respond to God's call to intentional discipleship; and much more. And be prepared for conversion because when life at the parish level changes, the life of the whole Church will change.
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Valuable resource, required reading
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Philosopher of the Heart
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Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.
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Fatally flawed
- By Citizen M on 02-26-23
By: Clare Carlisle
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What listeners say about Letters to a Young Pastor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- gwen j russell
- 03-16-23
Refreshing
A very enjoyable read. Vulnerable, refreshing and delightful. It was nice to put a “face” to the writer of “The Message” Bible
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- Russ
- 05-24-23
Grounding and humbling
Eugene never desired to be a “big deal” in this world; however, he relentlessly fought to stay relational and grounded in the resurrection each and every day. There’s something to be said about a life lived with an astonishing biblical imagination, but the contentment to never strive for “success”. This book grounds me in my true identity and leaves me with an ambition to live a quiet, humble life.
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- Joe G.
- 06-23-22
wisdom from Eugene Peterson
Eugene Peterson writes letters to his pastor son, fairly openly sharing his disappointments and hopes as he observes the American church in his later years. it's quite good - quite Petersonian!
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- K.J. Ramsey
- 07-06-20
This is a healing book.
This is a healing book.
In these letters from Eugene Peterson to his son Eric, I encountered a love I long to receive and extend. These letters are a balm for shepherds who have been bruised and battered--because often in the American church when you choose to be a shepherd instead of a shiny leader to follow and applaud, you get kicked, or cast out, or neglected by the very system you are giving your life to nurture. Weary shepherds, I think you'll find that the hard choices you have made to seek integrity and love will be honored and affirmed by Peterson's kind, honest words to his son.
As a therapist and author, I view all of my work as pastoral, shepherding work--the work of paying attention to people as the holy and beloved children of God they are. In this peek into Peterson's life, I felt strengthened and renewed in the necessity and goodness of my own vocation. Whether hearing him talk about his writing process (he sometimes had a meager 500 words-a-day goal too!) or hearing him describe the slowness of change in the human soul, I was refreshed for the long road of obedience and joy ahead.
As a daughter, Peterson's love and respect for his adult son filled me with hope for the way family can be. The gap between what is and what could be can be a source of envy, or it can be a holy hope. Eugene's simple, consistent love for Eric felt like a foretaste of what God is creating between parents and their children as we choose to honor those we love with sacred attention for them as beloved, holy children of the living God.
I'm so grateful to have been given a glimpse into such a beautiful relationship and to have been given even more of a vision for what the body of Christ can be on earth today.
(My only negative on the audio version is that Eric’s diction felt a little unnatural. It was distracting at first, but I got used to it. And the final minute, getting to hear Eugene read from the last letter himself—that alone is worth having the audiobook. It’s beautiful.)
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-22-20
Casual and Helpful
If you’re looking for a more in depth review of being a pastor, read Eugene Peterson’s memoir. If you’re looking to casually read dialogue between a father and son on life and being a pastor, this is for you. Not every chapter is full of gold, but some definitely are.
Good supplement book to the memoir mentioned above.
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- Daniel J Lamonte
- 08-26-20
Should be on every young pastor’s bookshelf
The Peterson families challenges the current trend toward “celebrity pastor” culture through 37 letters of discipleship, encouragement, and simplicity.
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- Jason Laird
- 11-01-21
Beautiful
This book came at the perfect time for me as a pastor. I highly recommend every pastor lean in to this beautiful conversation between 2 pastors, father and son.
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- Adam Shields
- 12-01-23
humanizing
Summary: Thirty-seven letters of varying lengths from Eugene Peterson to his son Eric about being a pastor.
Eugene Peterson has strongly influenced me, and I definitely have a tendency to idealize Peterson. Peterson’s memoir and Winn Collier’s biography helped humanize Peterson. Eugene Peterson was not perfect.
Letters to a Young Pastors is equally good at humanizing Peterson in a different way. There is tension here because these were private letters (I assume Eugene approved of being turned into a book before he passed away), and the very nature of private letters has personal details. Regularly throughout this book, there are comments about looking forward to getting together or talking about personal details, similar to how Paul talks about bringing his books and cloak in 2 Timothy 4. The humanization of Peterson in Letters to a Young Pastor is partly the details of personal life discussed here. The reader knows from this book that the Petersons had their grandkids over regularly and that they went to a local church where Eugene liked the pastor but didn’t really like his preaching.
But the most important part of humanizing Peterson here is the open struggle expressed in the letters. Some of the struggle is trying to work through ideas that made it into his books, and if you have read a number of his books, it is easy to pick out those details even when they aren’t explicit. Even in later years, Peterson was grappling with his vocation and faith, not in the sense of doubting God, but in the sense of trying to figure out how to live his faith in public best. He grappled with the difficulties of aging, and if you listen to the audiobook, the last half of the last letters is read by Peterson himself, and he sounds very old at that point.
I also appreciate how well Eugene encourages Eric by saying that, in many ways, Eugene thought that Eric was a better pastor. Some of that is just the rose-colored glasses of fatherhood. But it isn’t all that; there are many specific examples in the letters of where, in his encouragement, he cites why and when differences in their ministry approach come into play. I am not sure that Eugene ever said or even understood, but it seems clear that in many places where Eric may have been a better pastor, it is because he was building on the foundation that Eugene laid. Good examples matter.
The 37 letters are of varying lengths, from just over a page to much longer. They started in 1999 and continued until 2010. Eugene passed away in 2018. His memoir, The Pastor, came out in 2011 and is mentioned in the last couple of letters. He has a book of poetry that came out in 2013. As Kingfishers Catch Fire was a collection of sermons that came out in 2017 and I think he was actively involved in the selection and editing of those. But the at least five books that have come out since then (not including the rerelease of several older books in new editions) were edited by others posthumously.
The introduction by Eric speaks about why he only included Eugene’s letters and not his own, and I have to respect his thoughts there, but it is less of a dialogue because we only get one side. There are moments of gold here. One reason there is a temptation to idealize Eugene is that he was wise and saintly. That isn’t to say perfect, but it is to say that he did develop character and wisdom throughout his life. It is also worth noting that at least part of what is valuable here is that many others did not show evidence of character or holiness in their later years.
Maybe I am just getting old, but Eric is about ten or so years older than I am. Letters to a Young Pastor was only published a couple of years ago. So, while I get the reference to the many other books that Letters to a Young…is referencing, Eric was in his late 30s and through to his late 40s when these letters were being written. There is value in them, but in some ways, the encouragement and detail are rooted in where he was at that point. These are letters to a pastor who is in the early stages of the middle of his career. There is a discussion of going on a sabbatical and the tendency for pastors to move to a different church when they are ten years or so into pastoring. And that type of advice is oriented toward the middle years of pastoring. The title is a good reference, but it may also be misleading. These are letters to a pastor in the middle of his career from a retired pastor near death. That is not a catchy title, but it would be more accurate.
I picked this up as an audiobook. It was the perfect length of chapters (letters) that I could listen to one or two on a walk with my dog. And that is what I would advise. Take one or two at a time and savor them. There is no perfection here. Some of the letters are far less interesting than others. But that is the way people are; we are not perfect, and our human limitations are the sign that we are just human. Those who never allow weakness to be seen are not showing us who they are.
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