Forgettable, Failed, and Formative

The Surprising Early Ministry Years of Eugene Peterson, Timothy Keller, and John Wesley

Hello, my Substack friends. My writing rhythm is a little bit, well, nonexistent. I plan to get back into the rhythm soon. This past month has been a time of transition for Laura and me. We moved to Belgrade, Montana, two weeks ago. We moved here so that I could pastor an incredible community called The Table. We have been received with open arms. It is a gift.

In the midst of this, I am learning all over again what it means —and what it looks like—to be a pastor. I’ve been a pastor for a few years now. My doctoral work focused on pastoral theology and the development of future pastors. And yet, this is the first time I’ve been the lead pastor. My “ministry career” (to use a word I loathe and a word Eugene Peterson advises against) has been within a couple of large church organizations, with me not in a lead pastor role. Now, I am serving a small church. This time, I am the lead pastor. Much of the work is the same. And there is much that is different.

In these early days, I’ve pondered the lives of three of my pastoral heroes: Eugene Peterson (if you’ve read my work, there’s no surprise there), Timothy Keller, and John Wesley. In the midst of my own internal angst, ambition, and high expectations—common symptoms of being a young pastor—these stories reorient me to take a non-anxious, unrushed, long-term perspective. Saturating one’s imagination in these stories is crucial for a new or aspiring pastor. For in doing so, the immune system of one’s pastoral soul is fortified against selfish ambition and the illusion (and eventual disappointment) of instant, easy, fail-proof ministry “success.”

Eugene Peterson: The 18-Hour Pastorate

Peterson is known for being a prolific author, best known for The Message translation, and an authoritative voice in pastoral theology and practice in North America. His biography, A Burning in my Bones¹ by Winn Collier, is on my bedside night table. I’ve read through it four or five times.

Reading Peterson’s biography exterminates any previous misconception that he was a hot-shot pastor with a big, cool church. He pastored for 29 years in Bel Air, Maryland. His congregation never grew beyond three hundred. His writing career was hardly an instant success. Numerous publishing houses rejected him in his early years. But he kept his hand on the plow. He pastored his community through the good days, the bad days, and the boring days. He continued to work and hone his literary craft in those hidden years.

One story in particular has stuck in my mind. After graduating from college, he returned home and returned to working in his father’s butcher shop. He decided to go into ministry. He connected with the Montana Assemblies of God Supervisor (fun fact: he was the father of the renowned NBA coach of the Bulls and Lakers, Phil Jackson). This supervisor recommended a couple of small towns in Montana to start an Assemblies of God church. The young Peterson chose Townsend. After securing a basement to rent and a butcher job, Peterson arrived in Townsend. He began knocking on doors to inquire if anyone wanted to learn more about the church he was starting. Door after door was shut. He went through the whole town. Defeated and deflated, he slept in Townsend, woke up the next morning, and left. Collier points out it was an 18-hour pastorate. An ironic start for someone who would later write, “the norm for pastoral work is stability. Twenty, thirty, and forty-year-long pastorates should be typical among us (as they once were) and not exceptional.”²

Timothy Keller: The Blue-Collar Town Pastor

We know the late Timothy Keller as a respected speaker, writer, and intellectual giant in the American church. He planted and pastored a remarkably influential church, Redeemer Presbyterian, in the tough soil of Manhattan, New York. The place of his pastorate was at the center of cultural action—a place and position admired (and a little bit envied) by church leaders. This is how we remember Keller.

And yet, in reading Collin Hansen’s biography of Keller, I was struck by the overlooked yet deeply formational chapter of his life: pastoring the small, blue-collar church in Hopewell, Virginia, for nine years. Unlike Manhattan’s cultural epicenter of the world, Hopewell was the “chemical capital of the South.”³ Keller, a natural intellectual and a voracious reader, learned to pastor and preach to the people of West Hopewell Presbyterian, who viewed the world of academia with suspicion. In this, he learned to love and connect with people who were very different from him.

In this small, hidden, unsexy town and church, he preached more than 1,500 sermons. And yet, despite the vast catalog of sermons, when the Kellers returned to Hopewell for a reception years later to celebrate Tim’s 25 years of ordination with the PCA, the folks who gathered shared stories of Tim’s time as their pastor with not a single mention of his sermons. It all had to do with his visitations.⁴ These hidden years were deeply formative for Keller.

If there were no West Hopewell Presbyterian, there would have been no Redeemer Presbyterian.

John Wesley: The Failed Missionary and Lover

Few leaders have made a lasting impact like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Last fall, I read a biography⁵ of the great British evangelist. Hoping to find the secrets of revivalism, instead, I read about a life of hardship, resistance, and even failure.

In Wesley’s early ministry years, he sailed off for America. With aspirations for effective ministry, Wesley, long story short, left a heartbroken, failed missionary. Here’s a summary of those tumultuous years:

His experience in the colony became difficult after his relationship with Sophia Hopkey, whom he met soon after arriving in Georgia, turned sour. Hopkey was the niece of Thomas Causton, the chief magistrate known for his corrupt dealings with the Moravian settlers in colonial Georgia. Hopkey married another man after Wesley stopped courting her on the advice of some Moravian elders. Further complicating matters, Wesley refused to give her the sacrament of Holy Communion in the church, thereby marring her reputation in the colony. A warrant was issued against Wesley for defaming Hopkey in public without due cause. He was brought before a bailiff, but believing the matter to be ecclesiastical, Wesley did not acknowledge the court’s power. As a result he lost his good standing with the people of Savannah, which precipitated his return to England.⁶

He was in his mid-thirties at the time of his departure.

I’m thirty-three. I’ve had some embarrassing moments and failures. I made a decently stupid comment to a congregant this past Sunday…Easter Sunday…my second Sunday as the pastor. But I have never been run out like Wesley.

Fortunately, Wesley’s failure was not the end. This is something I have had to remind myself of often.

I find these stories necessary as I begin this new chapter of pastoral ministry. It is a reminder to take the long-term perspective, and push through inevitable moments of failure. I am saturating my mind in these stories. Though I wish I had done so earlier in my twenties. My hope is that stories like these will shape the minds of the next generation of pastors as well.

1. Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message (Colorado Springs, Colorado: WaterBrook, 2021).

2. Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Leominster, England: WBEerdmans ; Gracewing, 1992), 28.

3. Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation, 1st ed (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023), 107.

4. Ibid., 121.

5. John Pollock, John Wesley (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1989).

6. Frederick Mills, "John Wesley," New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Jul 23, 2018. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/john-wesley-1703-1791/