“The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.”
Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987, page 2.
Gary Chorpenning's Notebooks 