What does it mean to understand our work as work that happens alongside God?

How do we understand our workplace (the campus) as God’s workplace?

Eugene Peterson describes this awakening in his own ministry in the coming together of a number of things — conversations with congregants, personal experiences and revelation within God’s Word — in this way:

It set off a long process of reunderstanding church, and specifically my congregation, as God’s way of being local and personally present to these people to whom I was pastor. My work consisted of being local and personally present to them in Jesus’s name. I had a lot of sorting out to do.

I had more or less taken church for granted, thoughtlessly, a kind of blurred background to a way people lived, whether in our out of church. Now that it was my workplace, I had to pay careful attention to this place and these people — and with appreciation — alert to how God was present and how God was working.

How does this passage from The Pastor (Peterson’s memoir) bring further shape to your ministry on campus with students?

What does it mean to be local and personally present given what we do?

I’d love to know what you think! Take a moment to share in the comment section below.

And if your interested in other posts inspired by Peterson’s The Pastor, you can read:

• Every Step An Arrival
• Helping Students to Identify A Call to Pastor
• Pastoring in North America