Sustaining Pastoral Excellence

Tending to the Holy April 26, 2010

(from The Alban Institute: http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=8994)

2009 Academy of Parish Clergy Book of the Year

Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry (Alban, 2009) by Bruce G. Epperly and Katherine Gould Epperly has been named the 2009 Book of the Year by the Academy of Parish Clergy. Previous winners have included N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (2008); E. Brooks Holifield’s God’s Ambassadors: A History of the Christian Clergy in America (2007); and Diana Butler Bass’s Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (2006).

Tending to the Holy invites pastors to embody their deepest beliefs in the routine and surprising tasks of ministry.  Inspired by Brother Lawrence’s classic text in spirituality, The Practice of the Presence of God, Tending to the Holy integrates the wisdom and practices of the Christian spiritual tradition with the commonplace practices of pastoral ministry. Bruce and Katherine Epperly utilize a variety of spiritual disciplines—especially Benedictine, Celtic, Ignatian, Rhineland, and process spiritualities—to provide a framework for helping clergy nurture the awareness of God, creative imagination, and personal well-being in every aspect of their ministerial lives.

Practicing God’s presence in the ordinary tasks of ministry inspires wholeness, spiritual transformation, vision, imagination, endurance, and healthy self-differentiation in ministry.  Commitment to joining spiritual practices with the routine and repetitive tasks of ministry provides an important antidote to unhealthy stress, burnout, and loss of vision in ministry.  By seeing their congregational leadership in terms of spiritual transformation, imaginative practice, and relational interdependence, ordinary ministerial practices can become ways pastors can deepen their relationship with God.

Growing out of their work with pastors at every season of ministry, as well as combined ministerial experience of nearly sixty years, Bruce and Katherine Epperly invite pastoral leaders to complement and expand on their understanding of spiritual leadership, pastoral excellence, and self-care, integrating traditional and contemporary spiritual practices with the concrete arts of ministry.