Six out of seven dwarfs are not happy.

There had been talk about Gen. Petraeus running for political office someday. That obviously can't happen now. He's shown himself to be a man of courage and principle.

I've finished Eugene Peterson's book, "The Pastor." For the first third of the book I assumed he had a point, a thesis he was developing, that this book was about something. Halfway through I realized it's part memoir, part unloading. Not unloading in the sense that he's got irritations and frustrations he needs to vent. At the end of a long life of pastoral ministry he's come to some conclusions about people, about God and the way he works, and about the church and the changes it's gone through over the last 50 years. Those conclusions evolved, emerged, and became settled convictions that he now unloads as truths he wants us to understand - and presumably agree with.

For the most part I do. He dislikes the quantification of the church and pastoral ministry, the adoption of the business model in a place where the focus is supposed to be about God's dynamic presence in his people, corporately and individually. I went through a stretch where I drank that Kool-Aid and bought into the church growth movement's mantra that "more" was the measure of "success" for God. I came to realize the serious flaws of that equation about the same time I went from the college back into pastoral ministry at Celebration. From the professor's office back to the pastor's.

I've got several years to go before I'm as old as Peterson, who was born in 1932. He was a pastor for 30 years and a seminary prof for 15 years after that. My 10-year classroom stretch came in the middle of my pastoral years and the total so far is 38 years. But I've decided I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to write down my conclusions about people and ministry after I retire.

Actually, I was thinking this morning that I'm going write mine after I retire and two days before I die. (How's that for presumption?) That way, if anyone seriously disagrees and gets upset with what I've written, so what? I'm outta here.