The Pastor as Gardener | Matt Erickson

In this episode of the The CPT Podcast, hosts Zachary Wagner and Joel Lawrence interview Matt Erickson about his path to pastoral ministry and the ideas behind his book The Pastor as Gardener. Erickson shares his conversion in high school, his formation at Wheaton College and Northern Theological Seminary, and how crises in ministry—including COVID-19 and church tensions—pushed him to rethink common leadership models. Drawing on Eugene Peterson and biblical imagery such as 1 Corinthians 3, he argues that pastors should see themselves as “gardeners” who cultivate conditions for growth while trusting God to produce the fruit, emphasizing spiritual formation, shared ministry, and long-term hope.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One of the biggest questions that I was wrestling with is, is my picture or image of what the pastor is about adequate for this moment? And my answer was no, I don't think it is. And eventually led me into the doorway of 1 Corinthians 3, where he says, I planted Apollos watered, but God is the one who gives the growth.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the CPT Podcast. I'm Zach Wagner. I'm joined by CPT President Joel Lawrence. Hello, Joel. Hello, hello. Good to see you, Zach. Good to see you. Uh we just finished a conversation with Matt Erickson, who is one of our newly minted fellows here at the CPT. He has joined the St. Hildegard Fellowship. And he serves as the senior pastor at East Brook Church up in the Milwaukee area. So just kind of up the road. I was going to say between you and me, Joel, but Milwaukee is very much not on the way to the Twin Cities. It's not quite on the way.

Joel Lawrence 0:59

It's you know, it's in the general direction from me.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Yeah, yeah. Um so great conversation. Getting to know Matt, uh, hearing a bit about his story, as well as talking to him about a new book that he has coming out on the pastor as gardener uh idea and a book that's very influenced by the work of Eugene Peterson, who comes up a lot in the conversation. What's one or two things that stuck out to you about uh this discussion with Matt?

Joel Lawrence 1:33

Yeah, I I think um it's always interesting how how people's journeys kind of feed into what they write, right? As we have these conversations with with our fellows and and other authors, books are never written in a vacuum. They they come out of certain set of experiences. And so hearing hearing Matt's journey, his journey of faith, his pastoral journey, and then how he came as he talks about comes to a couple of crisis moments in his pastoral journey that then uh kind of forced him back to the Bible to reflect more deeply on the pastorate, and out of that emerged this vision of the pastor as gardener in the agricultural language. And so I think the book's gonna just gonna be an excellent resource for pulling together themes across the scriptures to help us to reframe our vision of what it means to be pastors.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Yeah. Yeah, and I was struck by both his experience of coming to a genuine faith in the Lord and and as well as his calling to pastoral ministry. Uh it's always so encouraging to hear about those experiences. And I think um, yeah, Matt's is in some ways fairly standard, um, but also um I was just really encouraged by it. So it was great to hear the unique kind of texture of the way the Lord was working in his life as a young person and then working to call him to ministry as well. So um looking forward to you all uh hearing this conversation, dear listeners, and I hope it's as encouraging to you as it was to us, and we'll get right into the conversation now.

Joel Lawrence 3:19

Matt, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on. So great to be with you, Joel. Thanks for the opportunity. It's it's a great opportunity to have have a conversation with Matt. Matt's one of our newest fellows, and it's been fun getting to know him a bit over the last few months. And uh and we're excited about the opportunity to do two things on this uh on this podcast. One is to get to know Matt a little bit, hear his story, uh, one of our becoming a pastor theologian podcasts. And then the second is the opportunity to chat with him a little bit about a book that is coming out at at the end of March, March 24th is the official launch date. It's called The Pastor as Gardener, a renewed vision for ministry. So looking forward to hearing more about that. So, Matt, why don't we uh begin at the beginning and just tell us uh about your early life? Where were you born? Were you did you grow up in a in a in a church home in a particular denominational setting? Talk us through uh the early days of of Matt Erickson.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Happy to do that, Joel. Yeah, so I grew up in western Illinois in the Mississippi River Valley in a little area called the Quad Cities. Two cities in Illinois, two cities in Iowa. I grew up on the Illinois side of the river, and it was uh a great place to be and grow up. I did grow up in the church. Uh the church that I grew up in was a PC USA church, but I always describe it almost like it was uh like a Bible church in one sense, very committed to the words, so sort of a conservative church, evangelical church within a denomination that was increasingly becoming liberal. And uh I really came to Christ uh more in high school. I mean, I my parents had me do all the church sorts of things, uh, but it really didn't become, I think, like for many people, it didn't become real for me until I was about 16 and had a real transformational encounter uh with the Lord. But uh that growing up uh shapes my imagination quite a bit, ties in a little bit with my book as well, but it was a great place to be. How did that come about? Tell us a little more about that. Yeah, it's it's an interesting story because uh I would go to a week-long summer camp that our church had. It was a family camp, so intergenerational experience. And I pretty much just went there, probably like a lot of kids at that stage of life, middle school, high school, just to have a great time. And uh without going into all the details, um, when I was after my sophomore year of high school, a friend and I, we were there and we pulled a prank on a bunch of younger kids, and then somebody came in after we did that and made it even worse. And we were grounded to our room for the entire week, except for two things. We could go to the Bible classes uh that were for the high school students. What a drag, you know. And then we could go to the joint uh worship times. So we were really limited. And um, looking back on that, I almost feel like it was the grace of God to put me in a place where, by the Spirit's power, things I had heard all my life, which were pretty meaningless to me about the gospel, about my need for God, suddenly through those forced experiences just came alive. And I don't know how to explain it except for that the Holy Spirit sort of took these things and just put it all together. Sometimes I describe it like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are thrown into the air and they're floating around, and it's almost like the spirit just snapped all the pieces into the complete puzzle on the table as they fell down and changed my life. Changed my life. I came back home and told my parents I'd become a Christian, and they were shocked because they thought I was one, and it really just changed my whole life direction and ties in with my vocational journey as well, too. But it was a it was an amazing time in my life, and I'm just so grateful to God for that.

Joel Lawrence 7:15

So I I want to pick up on the kind of how that started to set your trajectory toward ministry in a second. But if you if you'd be willing, I'd I'd just love to hear a little bit like during that week, did you did you had a sense that the Lord was powerfully at work, that something was happening here? Could you take us a little bit into that experience?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Absolutely. There's so many things, Joel, um, that it's hard to know what to talk about and when not. But I do remember sitting at um one of the sessions that they had for students. You know, there's only maybe 12 of us there. It's not a huge group. Some volunteer leaders who are taking us through the basics of the gospel. And um, one time they played a song that was what was about Jesus' crucifixion. And for where I was coming from at that point, I thought this is kind of the the cheesiest music I've ever heard. So it wasn't like I was being moved by the power of the music, but it was a message about basically, even if there weren't nails, the love of God would have held Jesus at the cross. And it was as if through that song, yeah, you know, we we talk about the the word of God penetrating our soul like a sword. That was what happened. And I realized one, I'm a tremendous sinner because I was not walking with the Lord in a lot of different ways. And also that God's grace was meeting me powerfully for forgiveness and life, life transformation. And boy, that just really changed some things for me, obviously. And then another thing that started happening was it was an intergenerational camp. And um I don't know what everybody's view of the Holy Spirit is in some of these things, but we just saw some pretty amazing answers to prayer. We saw some pretty um striking, in-breaking movements of the spirit in people's lives across the generations. And so sometimes I almost describe it as a revival uh of the spirit breaking out in a Presbyterian summer camp, uh, which was clearly not something we were trying to manipulate our.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

You don't scream.

Joel Lawrence 9:24

Maybe the first time ever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Oh, come on. That's that's that's a little too mean. That's a little too mean. And so some of that for me was even just the interplay of things I I wasn't expecting God would do, and seeing that happen in some of the adults' lives uh as well just was powerful. And and so that whole community returning back to our home church, um we all had stories to tell of God. And for me, it was profound.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Matt, just a quick comment there as I'm listening to you talk. You've mentioned uh a few times as you're relating this that it was intergenerational. And I just want to linger on that for a moment and say I think there's something really instructive there. Um that a lot of times I wish churches did more kind of intergenerational ministry with kids and older folks and um adults, single adults, married adults, all of this. Um certainly feels to me like that's what's what's modeled in much of church history in the New Testament, and it's only recently that we've um kind of segregated by age, and there's a there's a place for that too. Um but I'm just struck, I there's not really a question, just I'm just struck by the way the Lord seems to have used the exactly the intergener generational dynamics of that space. And I imagine it's powerful for kids to see the Lord moving in powerful ways in adults' lives and the vulnerability of that, and they see that in the adults around them, and then likewise, man, I think there's a there's a special way that the Lord can meet, you know, young adults, even like high schoolers and and college age, but even even younger kids, and see um the way the Lord meets them, and that can be really instructive for adults as well. So I just wanted to I think name that as part of the story and say I think that's really um instructive and and powerful uh part of what what you've shared.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, it was I'm not sure how intentional that was or whether it was just by a default of we're gonna get everybody up there. Yeah but we would have individual, kind of kind of like age stage teaching in the morning, and then we would have an evening session that was everybody together, and we ended up having some profound prayer times at those evening sessions. And I remember being a high school student who probably I would say basically had just come to Christ, and we were invited to pray together around people. So we would form circles and pray around people, and I remember standing next to other adults, praying over other adults and just seeing an openness to God in the whole community. Yeah, it definitely had a profound impact. I think even that earnestness of longing for God, seeing others who were older than me have that, that was inspiring to me. Yeah, and it kind of modeled some things uh of us joining together as a community across the age, it was beautiful.

Joel Lawrence 12:14

So coming out of that experience, you went home, you told your parents that you're a Christian now. Um and you you you said a minute ago that that started to kind of shape your trajectory, a vocational trajectory. So take us through the next, the next season of life around, you know, finish high school, go to college. How's the Lord working in your life? And and at what point does a call to ministry really start to become clear?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

As I returned, I had always done a lot with music. And uh the pastor of our church at that time, we still had Sunday night services in the church. I didn't go, but he invited me in the summertime to help him lead the Sunday night services just by leading on piano a few praise choruses, you know, the language at that time. And that was fun. I had fun doing that and uh didn't know what I was doing. My older brother had been involved with Inner Varsity Christian Fellowship in college, and so he kind of showed me some of what he was doing with that, with music. And I just started getting more involved. I was invited in by people within the church to serve, and uh it was all new to me. And we did not have a student pastor or high school youth pastor at that time. We had a volunteer team who was pulling together a group of at that time, um, sometimes 30, 40, 50 kids in our church. It was a it was a lot that started happening there. And the mentor who, a couple who kind of led that, they um were talking with me one time, uh, the the husband Tim, and he just asked me, Hey, what are you thinking about for college? I was a junior at that point, and I said, you know, I'm not really sure. I might do what my older brother did and become an engineer. And he said, Have you prayed about it? And I said to Tim, I didn't know you could pray about those things. I thought we just prayed before a meal or prayed for God to open people's hearts to hear the message of Christ, or prayed before we read the Bible. And he said, No, God cares about normal things too and your life direction. And I started just praying, God, would you guide me into what I should do? And this sounds funny, but over the course of about a month, I had probably 10 different people from my home church ask me, Have you thought about becoming a pastor? And it got almost annoying because um I thought these people are talking behind my back. In fact, there was a couple who were involved with Young Life and I knew them really well. We did music together, and I said to the couple when I was getting together with them, they brought this up, and I just said, Hey, I really wish people wouldn't be talking behind my back about this life direction thing. And I've had so many people asking me this, and they said to me, We haven't talked to anybody about this. This is actually just something we felt God place on our hearts for you.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

And then I realized the Holy Spirit was talking behind everyone's back.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Exactly. And that really opened me up, and so I ended up um pursuing uh a different direction than I thought. I applied to some Christian colleges. I ended up going to Wheaton College thinking I was gonna study Bible and theology, which I did not end up majoring in. I ended up becoming an English major, and there's another story behind that with a minor in Christian ministry. Um, but that really the reason I went to Wheaton and in my future direction was really to pursue vocational ministry.

Joel Lawrence 15:42

So, what was it at at Wheaton that you you said there's a story around the the English uh direction? Love to hear what prompted you in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, I was I was in a class with uh two professors, one from the English department, one from um the Christian education department. They co-taught together called Bible and Ministry. And um the English professor was a guy named Leland Riken, and Lee in the class said legendary. Yeah, he said, Absolutely, uh, you know, some of the best pastors I know are are were English majors, you know, we're all thinking he's making an advertisement. And then he listed all these, you know, pastors that he was recommending. And I got together with him afterwards and had a conversation. I had kind of meandered through different majors, thinking Bible theology, thinking philosophy, uh, thinking Christian education, and I just hadn't landed anywhere. And he basically, I mean, I I'll I'll trust God with it, but he convinced me to be an English major at Wheaton, and it was a fantastic decision for me. It really helped me to read well, helped me to know how to interact with text, helped me to understand context when reading, and also how to be a good communicator. Um, so I did that with a minor in Christian ministries, assuming that at some point I would pursue uh graduate studies to prepare me for being a pastor. But uh Wheaton in the English department at that time was just a fantastic place to study and uh really helped me uh open up in some different ways.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Any formative like classes specifically that stick out in your mind or things that you read during that time, favorite classic authors, anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yeah, I mean uh so many. I had a class on 17th century metaphysical poetry, uh, people like John Dunn, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell that just opened up the devotional life. Uh Jill Pele's uh Baumgartner taught that class, and then um had an opportunity. Um, my wife Kelly actually and I were both on this uh Wheaton in England summer project uh led by Wayne Martindale and Alan Jacobs. And uh just to get inside of the mind and heart of uh uh good literature there, but also C.S. Lewis, both of them had done a lot of study on C. S. Lewis, and that was formative for me. Um, so many people, yeah, great people to be able to study with and great topics of literature for further engagement. And uh also took a class when I was, it was more in the Christian ministries department, but a guy named Jerry Root taught a class called Story and Ministry, which was amazingly eye-opening for me and kind of brought those worlds together from a different viewpoint as well.

Joel Lawrence 18:21

So I'll I'll just do a brief uh commercial here for another book. We'll get to yours in a second, but um, there is a book uh around this kind of theme of pastoring and and classic literature uh that that Leland Riken and his son Phil Riken and CPT co-founder Todd Wilson edited called Pastors in the Classics, uh Timeless Lessons on Life and Ministry from World Literature. Uh and uh that's a really nice resource for people kind of thinking in this direction. Uh yeah. So in uh Absolutely. That that was, I mean, that came out probably that came out in 2012. Long time ago. Yeah, a while back. But it's a great resource. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

I was just gonna make one other very brief commercial. You mentioned George Herbert and John Dunn, and I'm kind of jealous that of you that you've spent a class on that. Just quick if you love Jesus and you're a little intimidated by poetry, but like the idea of poetry, um, Herbert and Dunn are really great. And I think a lot of pastors, if you're less familiar, like a lot of people have have um are familiar with like um death, uh Death Be Not Proud or something like that. And that's kind of the the limit of it, perhaps. Um, but man, beautiful, beautiful poetry that gets you to a different, different era of the English language and some really profound devotional and theological stuff there too. So we better we better keep keep the conversation moving. But I just wanted to give my hearty endorsement of the Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

We could do another podcast just to produce it in a pastor. It would be so much fun. Malcolm Guy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, so many more. Yeah.

unknown 19:58

Yeah.

Joel Lawrence 19:59

Yeah, we'll we need to we'll put that on the schedule. That'd be fun. Actually, yeah, we have a number of of our fellows who are kind of in this world. We should have a little round table.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

That'd be a that'd be a fun conversation.

Joel Lawrence 20:10

All right. Now back to you, Matt. Um so Wheaton College, you're shaped by this uh vision of of uh of Engl uh this English major and the pastor with the call to ministry. So, so where do you go from Wheaton and how's your how's your vocation sharpening in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, I was very involved again, still with uh music side. So I kind of started envisioning myself as being a music pastor or a worship pastor, um, but I wasn't sure. By the time I finished Wheaton, I had some questions about um what vocational ministry was about. I was kind of wrestling with some of those things. And so a mentor in my life at that time said, um, borrowing some advice from Spurgeon, if you're not sure of the call, try to avoid it and see what happens. And so I graduated from Wheaton. I got a job initially at a bookstore. That's what English majors do. And then uh and then ended up getting a job with World Relief, which is a Christian relief and development organization. At that time, their international headquarters was still near Wheaton and Carroll Stream. Now it's in Baltimore. But I got a job as a glorified administrative assistant for the Africa Regional Director, and I worked there for about three years. And during that time, I was involved in serving within the local church. I was a worship leader doing different things, writing uh service music for the church we were at. And uh World Relief decided they were going to relocate their headquarters to Baltimore, and so I had two decisions. I could either choose to relocate our family to Baltimore, a place we didn't know much about, or I could get a very measly severance because I was so low in the organization and think about something else. And so I went into a time of discernment about whether it was the right time to pursue seminary. Kelly and I prayed about that. We had thought about it before. At this time, we had. A little boy, baby, and um uh went away went uh into discernment time and prayer and uh really sensed God's calling uh to ministry. So began exploring that. Another former professor of mine, uh Bob Weber, Robert Weber, had retired from Wheaton and gone to a seminary I'd never heard of called Northern Theological Seminary that was also in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. And Bob said, Hey, why don't you come over and do a tour of the campus? At that time, it's in a different location now. It was um an old aging campus. I was underimpressed uh in the tour. And then Bob introduced me to someone at the end of that tour who happened to be the president of the seminary. And um, he basically told me, if you apply, you'll be accepted, and we have some scholarships that may make this more real for you. And so that's what I did. I quit my job because of World Relief Relocating, and then went full-time to seminary and then worked part-time at the church we were involved in, did a Masters of Divinity degree with a specialty in worship and spirituality with Bob Weber, and it was a great experience for me. I think in a lot of ways, a great experience because I was able to stay rooted in a community that already knew us. And so I had a lot of built-in mentoring that kept me grounded through the seminary experience. And um, and and Northern was a great experience for me at that time. And but I think the combination of practical ministry experience with mentoring, right alongside of the great academic experience, really paired well for me at that time in my life.

Joel Lawrence 23:33

So then coming out of Northern, you're you're currently you're you're in Milwaukee and you've been there for a while. Did you go straight from from Northern to Milwaukee or or take us now through that part of the journey?

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah, halfway through seminary, I needed a practical um internship experience. And the pastor at the church where we were serving asked me to to basically pick up a college ministry that my wife Kelly had started. And so I stopped leading worship and got into college ministry, and that actually became the on-ramp for my role that I took after seminary. Uh, we moved up to Milwaukee in 2003, and for five years I was a college and university pastor downtown Milwaukee on staff at a church out in the suburbs, but I spent most of my time in downtown Milwaukee working with students at Marquette, University of Wisconsin and Milwaukee and other schools. Did that for five years, helped as an associate to plant a church for three years after that. And then in 2010, I came to the church where I am now where I was intentionally brought on staff to follow a founding pastor who'd been there for 30 years. And we made that transition in a year, and by God's grace, we were able to get through that well. Um, and I've been there as the senior pastor then since 2011. Um so it's a long, it's been a long run. I'm surprised sometimes even just saying that out loud, it's hard to believe 15 years of being here as the senior pastor and uh Eastbrook Church in in the city of Milwaukee.

Joel Lawrence 25:02

And and during that time, you uh did your doctoral degree through Western Seminary in the the Peterson Center up there. So so tell us about how that came about and and what the what your what your doctoral journey was was like, particularly connecting with the the Peters the Peterson Center for Prophetic Imagination. Tell us a little bit about that time.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, I I had applied to a couple different doctoral programs while I was in ministry and got accepted, but the timing and some of the demands of what that would mean just didn't seem right. So I almost gave up on doing that and I created for myself a an Excel spreadsheet of all of Peterson's recommended writings, both in take and read and at the end of each of his volumes in a spiritual theology. And I created what I jokingly referred to as the Eugene Peterson Doctor of Ministry program. And it's it, yeah, you can, I mean, this is ultimate pastor nerd moment, right? So I literally had an Excel spreadsheet that I was moving through with that thing. And my wife Kelly was getting her master's at uh Portland Seminary, George Fox, in a spiritual formation and spiritual direction. That's what she does now as a spiritual director. And she ended up being in a uh triad group uh with someone who said to her, Does your husband know that there actually is a Eugene Peterson Center that's starting with doctoral work? And I didn't know about it. And so um through that connection, I was able to apply to the Peterson Center and get into one of the inaugural cohort groups, and uh it was an amazing experience with Wyn Collier and all those who are part of that. Uh so I did uh my doctoral studies there, and then the book really flowed out of those doctoral studies, both um through the through the center, but also what I was working through in my own sense of calling and vocation at that time.

Joel Lawrence 27:04

That is an excellent segue into the book. Um, as I mentioned, you've got a a book coming out uh toward the end of March uh called The Pastor as Gardener. So as we have conversations about books on the podcast, it's always fun to kind of hear the the backstory and uh the seed ideas, and that that metaphor seems even more appropriate for this book. So so take us through the the thought process, both how your pastoral ministry was shaping your thinking around this theme and how your doctoral studies were feeding into that that is now kind of emerged in this upcoming book.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think there were three crises, so to speak, that led me into what I ended up studying in my doctoral studies, and that sort of laid the foundation for the book. One was a crisis with a friend I had who went through a major fallout in his ministry, a moral failure, that raised some questions about how kind of a family of churches as part of how we were thinking about ministry. And that led me into some deep, deep reflection on my own life as a pastor and where I was at. Um, a second crisis was COVID. Um that time, obviously, for anybody who's a pastor, was so destabilizing and confusing. What does it mean? What do we do? How do we gather? How do we pastor congregation well? And then the church that I serve in is a multiracial church in the city of Milwaukee. And, you know, shortly after the time of COVID, obviously there were some significant tensions around race, ethnicity, racial justice. Not that those things didn't exist before that time, but it just was hyper accentuated. And our church went through some really tough times with that, some divisive times in our midst. And so I was sailing through these like currents of crisis, and it really led me into deep reflection about the ministry of the pastor. And then the doctoral studies at the Peterson Center provided a great incubation community for me to wrestle with some deep questions. And I think one of the biggest questions that I was wrestling with is is my picture or image of what the pastor is about adequate for this moment? And my answer was no, I don't think it is. Um it was I was grappling with some things which led me back to scripture, led me back to some classic text on pastoral ministry, and eventually led me into the doorway of Paul the Apostle's writings in 1 Corinthians 3, where he says, I planted Apollos watered, but God is the one who gives the growth. And that really became a doorway for me into this agrarian imagery for uh the pastor, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. We'd know these, you know, I'm not I'm talking to people who are pastor theologians from the garden in Genesis 1 to the Garden in Revelation, but specifically through some of these views of ministry through um farming or gardening images just became very grounding for me. I say that intentionally, right? It just helped me find roots in what I'm doing so that in all the winds that were whipping around, I didn't feel like I was getting blown away.

Joel Lawrence 30:19

So I'm I'm curious, Matt, you you mentioned, you know, this interrogation of yourself and the image of the pastor that you had. What, like if you could say in a in a couple of different or you know, a sentence or two, like what was that image that you had? Did you did you kind of be able to could you identify that as a as a particular image? Was it just a set of images? What did you have that needed to be replaced by the gardener imagery, by the agricultural imagery?

SPEAKER_00 30:48

I think if you would have asked me that, Joel, at the time, I would have said, Oh, I believe the pastor's a shepherd. And I think that's still a really important image. I'm not trying to set that aside or downplay that. But I think at the same time, what had crept in for me, even though I would have said, no way, was there was a little bit of the CEO image kind of breaking in. And then I think there was also an aspect of just American individualism, seeing the pastor as the person who is leading the charge. And this is some of where the pastor's shepherd imagery wasn't helping me. Here's the pastor as a shepherd, kind of either getting ahead of the flock and calling them forward, or the pastor behind as the shepherd kind of in the midst of the flock. And it it had become, and I think this is actually an American thing, not the reality of ancient Near Eastern shepherding imagery, but it just became very individualistic. And so those were things I needed to pull away. And I think that a part of that was what can I accomplish in this day, in this time, in my life. I want to make my life count. Some of that had actually I think made me center myself in ways that I shouldn't have been. And um that that all of those things were kind of factoring in. And so the the journey became a recovery of a more long-term generational view. And I can come back to why the pastor's gardener maybe touches on that as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah, I'm struck just even listening to that juxtaposition. Because I think it's easy for us to say, you know, pastor is CEO bad, and especially kind of among pastor theologian folks, that that kind of vision of what the ministry looks like uh will receive a lot of critique and pushback. And I don't hear you critiquing like the image of pastor as shepherd, which of course is what the word means. Right. But it is really fascinating to me. You know, I've heard you talk about this a little bit before, and even in the course of this conversation, I always am struck by the way our favored metaphors shape our thinking, even if they're kind of biblically authorized metaphors. And I was really compelled by what you were saying about how even the pastor, in a way that's pretty maybe or like the shepherd image, what I mean, in a way that's not dissimilar to the CEO image, centers the pastor in the image, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

And there's just a different feel to your point when it's a gardener. It kind of like takes the focus off of this guy or this person who is kind of standing tall above everything. And there's something about the garden image that puts the focus on really the congregation and the seed and the growth that is outside of our power. I'm sure these are things you've thought much about. But I just want to say this is like the the again, pun intended, the fruitfulness of this metaphor as a reflective exercise and what it means to be a pastor is striking me even in this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah. And I think, Zach, I mean, part of that for me was to realize there were things that I think I believed I was in control of as a pastor that I really wasn't. And so the gardening image really puts you in touch with there are certain things that I can do, and there are other things I absolutely have no power over.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

I can't make it rain. I can't actually make the crop come up. I can till the ground, I can prepare the soil, I can do the best practices, so to speak, I can get a community around me, um, but I can't make some of those things happen. And that was a helpful chastening of maybe pastoral ego or pride that I really needed at that time. And also what's very freeing, um, is very freeing for me as a pastor to say, oh, I I can't control these things. I can do this, but I can't do that. And that's part of what was helpful about the image, um, just to resonate with what you're saying there.

Joel Lawrence 35:06

So, so take us through uh the book, kind of give us a high-level overview of of what you're doing in the book. You mentioned the kind of garden to garden, but but take us through the structure of the book and and um the way that that this image has been has played out in your thinking around pastoral ministry.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Absolutely. The high level is is really that exploration of the image. And so there's I devote a chapter in the book to Jesus as the gardener, picking up the themes in uh the Gospel of John where Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener. I don't think that's an accident. I think John is very intentionally connecting that with some of the Genesis 1 and 2 imagery, just like he does in the prologue to the gospel. And so I use that as a window into what might the gardening work of Jesus be through his people as the spirit works in pastors and all those in ministry. And then I spend some time exploring specifically four aspects of how that happens. I talk about um the context in which we do the gardening or pastoral work, really in terms of North American philosophical context, interact a little bit with uh Charles Taylor in that. And then Andrew Root has done some great work related to the pastor in the secular age. And so bringing some thoughts around that, and even if nobody really wants to say, you know, we like Charles Taylor or not, the the themes of what I'm trying to do there are saying, hey, we have to kind of exegete the context, just like a gardener knows the context and the growing zone in which they're doing the work, then I spend time talking about the soil, the soil as the as the church, to Zach's point before the soil as the ecclesial context if we're in a denomination, the soil as the ecclesial context in terms of what's happening in the church in North America, which we have to pay attention to as the church is in decline. What does that mean for us? So, church as soil. And then I talk about um the community of ministry and how important it is to not be just isolated ourselves. So, how do we form a community around what we do as pastors for collegiality, almost like what you guys are doing with the CPT and other environments like that, but also more locally? And how do we view the church as a community in which ministry happens, that the pastor has a role, but is not the entire thing? And then what are, uh fourthly, what are the practices that are time tested both in scripture and the history of pastoral ministry that we want to pick up and carry with us? So I spend four chapters on each one of those things, you know, a chapter on each one of those things context, soil, community, practices, and then some time talking about seasons, seasons in the life of the pastor, seasons in the life of the church. And then I close the book out with uh with a long chapter on hope and the difference between hope and optimism and making a case that hope is the defining virtue of the pastor as gardener because we're planting, not knowing what may come. And we're also planting not just for our moment, but for generations to come, being part of this work that is not just intergenerational, but multi-generational, and we're hoping to be part of God's planting uh oaks of righteousness that will grow up way after we're gone and entering into that. So that's kind of a high-level overview of what's happening in the book, and there's just so much in each one of those chapters. But it's been a it's been a wonderful experience for me to walk through it.

Joel Lawrence 38:41

So as we kind of move to to conclude the the conversation here, I would love just to hear you drill down maybe a little bit more into the impact of this on your maybe your day-to-day as a pastor. How has this writing this book, engaging with this theme? You mentioned there are some crises that you were that you went through that that that opened up into this imagery for you. Tell us about how it's changed the way that you shepherd or tend to the garden of your conversation uh or of your congregation, excuse me. And um, and really kind of on on day-to-day levels, how's that made a difference?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

One of the things that's been significant for me, Joel, and it's something I would have said before, but I really believe that fruitful ministry comes from the overflow of our own life with God. And so this has really emphasized that in a new way. That part of what I have to do as a pastor is cultivate the hidden life with the word and with prayer and um spiritual discipline with God. I view that as kind of the under-the-soil work, the thing that nobody's gonna see where my roots are going down deep. And so it's shaped my way of diligence in just life of prayer every day in the word for myself, not to form a sermon, not to come up with a devotional for my staff, but just being with God. And then that that growth that people are going to see, the visible life of prayer, the visible preaching ministry and things like that, um, that's gonna find its vitality out of the roots in the soil. So that has shaped my day-to-day life even more deeply, more profoundly in how I enter into the life of prayer and with the word and and uh just the the diligence with that. In terms of the acts of ministry, when we talk about community and not being the central, like the personality center of the church, it's changed the way that I'm trying to empower my staff. Um, and each each pastor, there's probably solo pastors listening, and I think this still applies for solo pastors because we can empower the congregation to do the work of ministry, but it's it's really helped me move out of trying to be the center. It's changed some of the way that I approach preaching. I actually preach a little bit less than I used to, not because I don't like preaching. I love preaching, but I want to empower others around me to do that and also work against the personality-centric approach that I was kind of working out of at that time. Um, we've done a lot of work within our staff to empower all of our ordained pastors to do more of the works of ministry. Everybody wants the senior pastor to do those things, but it's helped me to empower people in visitation and um facilitating um and serving and officiating weddings and funerals. So there's been more of a community approach to how we do ministry now at our church. Um I think another thing is just um this might not seem super practical, but when we talk about hope, just having a long-term perspective on what we're doing.

unknown 41:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

That it's okay if we don't see immediate fruit. It's okay if things that we believe God is calling us to are going to be a long, long work over a long time. And and uh that we're we're doing something here in our churches for the present that also we hope will bear fruit in a long term. So doing ministry in a in a meaningful, fruitful, healthy way, that's honoring to God, that's just changed my perspective on outcomes or those sorts of things as well. I don't know. Did I get at some of what you're asking me there?

Joel Lawrence 42:29

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And and Matt, just so grateful for you and this conversation and uh hearing your your heart and your journey, and do again want to commend to folks uh the Pastor as Gardener, a renewed vision for ministry that will be coming out uh March 24th. So uh want to encourage people to run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore to grab that or to Amazon and order that up. So, Matt, again, thanks so much for joining us. We're grateful for you and um you're being part of the CPT community and what you're doing to serve the church. We're just uh very, very blessed to uh be in in fellowship with you. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Thank you so much. It it's great to be with you guys today. And I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing with CPT. It's a blessing to me and I'm sure to many others. So thanks so much.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the CPT Podcast, a theology podcast for the church. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider subscribing if you haven't already? You can also help us out by leaving a rating and especially a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. We love hearing from listeners in this way, and it helps others find out about the show. The Pastor Theologians Podcast is a production of the Center for Pastor Theologians. You can learn more about the CPT at our website, Pastor Theologians.com. You can also find us on Facebook, YouTube, and follow us on Twitter. This show is produced. Produced by Seth Porch and Sophia Luke. The show is recorded and edited in partnership with Glowfire Creative, and editing is done by Seth Creekhorn. Hosting duties are shared by Joel Lawrence, Ray Paul, and me, Zach Wagner. Thanks for listening.