Author EUGENE PETERSON
Publisher HODDER
ISBN 0-340-99518-1
This is one of the five books that make up Eugene Petersons Spiritual Theology series and this particular volume is sub titled “A Conversation on Growing up in Christ.” Let those looking for some neat ‘how to’ book note this sub-title carefully, and it would be well for those looking for an ‘ABC’ guide to church life and how to grow up in Christ to take note also. Peterson is a writer to ponder and contemplate and not simply read. There is altogether too much in the modern mindset looking for a tidy answer to life problems instead of submitting to the Holy Spirit as He speaks through the Scripture. It is clear that Peterson, over many years has been taught of God the Spirit as he has read and taught studies on the doctrine of the epistle to the Ephesians and this is his informal commentary on that wonderful letter, the greatest Paul wrote on the subject of the church and its people. Being an ‘informal’ commentary means that it is indeed a ‘conversation’ on growing up in Christ rather than a manual. Some damn Peterson for a word, they say he is too ‘wordy’ and meanders around the point he is seeking to make, but, therein lies the problem, he is not seeking to ‘make points’ but lead his reader into the atmosphere of the Triune God and it is in that atmosphere that the church and its people are to live and breathe and have their being. Those looking for a book on the church and its life would do well to obtain Practice Resurrection and read and re-read it as it comes from the pen of someone who made the revelation of the Church and its life found in the book of Ephesians his foundational understanding as he pioneered and pastored a congregation for more than thirty years and then covered similar ground as he took up a teaching post as a professor at Regent College in Vancouver. After an introductory chapter Peterson begins his informal exposition of the letter by showing how all church life begins in God and His work in Christ culminating in raising Him from the dead and then leads into a long section as to the creation of the church and its participation in the resurrection life of Christ. The last ninety pages or so cover issues of the practical outworking of all that God has done as these are revealed in the later chapters of Ephesians. All is interspersed with a discerning critique of where the church has been going astray from the doctrine Paul writes in his letter. Along with this there are a number of helpful illustrations from the pastoral experience of the author and he also introduces the reader to other writers who have been a particular source of help to him through his years of ministry. This book is a product of years of experience in spiritual life and combines a definite prophetic note as well as exposition and doctrine. Sounding through all is the note of the church as a creation of God fashioned to share in His life, but many will not hear and understand that note very clearly at only one reading, Perhaps this is a book to be returned to, by pastors and leaders, every three or four years.
