Pastor as Gardener by Matthew Erickson: A Review and Endorsement
With a discount code to buy the book!
Mary mistook the resurrected Jesus for a gardener. Jesus called himself a vine and a sower. Paul said that the work of the ministry is for one to plant, another to water, but that God causes growth. Adam and Eve were created for a garden, and the final vision of the Bible is for humanity to once again take up residence in the shade of the tree of life.
These biblical passages, and so many more, are what lay the foundation for the renewed vision for ministry that Matthew Erickson offers in his new, compelling, and wonderful book entitled The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry.
Pastors, ministry leaders, and congregants of goodwill across the denominational spectrum need to read this book. Leaders will be encouraged, and congregants will discover a biblical, realistic, and hope-driven vision for what they should expect of their pastors (and themselves).
👉 Eerdmans has generously offered a limited-time 40% discount code that you will find at the bottom of this Substack review.
Why Pastor as Gardener?
There are existential reasons Erickson believes gardening is the needed metaphor for pastoral ministry in our cultural moment. Living in a post-Covid world, where religious observance and church attendance is in decline, with troubling numbers of a pastoral mental health crisis (including rising suicide numbers), touches on the depths of the challenge.
Erickson also rightly highlights that the Evangelical church has, up until this point, been captive to the church growth movement—a mile-wide and inch-deep approach to ministry, aiming to get as many bodies in as many seats as possible as quickly as possible. The existence of a handful of highly “successful” megachurches seems to vindicate the model. The argument goes: every church is a potential megachurch if one can simultaneously harness market trends and the favor of God.
Unfortunately, there’s a trail of beat-up, lonely, and self-loathing pastors who’ve never seen these capitalist-style promises manifested and feel like they only have themselves to blame. Pastor as gardener is the necessary antidote to the toxic ideology of church growth models.
Erickson admits that the biblical metaphor for ministry that generally first comes to mind is the image of shepherd. Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and his followers sheep. Psalm 23 is an enduring favorite to memorize amongst the faithful. But Erickson asks (in so many words), “how many people in the West can really connect with the idea and meaning of a shepherd?” Few have the lived experience of tending sheep. There’s of course no reason to throw out the emphatically biblical image of ministry-as-shepherding, but Erickson wants to suggest that we lean into the equally-biblical image of gardening. Doing so is a step in the direction of listening to the whole witness of Scripture, and—we should add—it’s an image that even those who live in the concrete jungles of American metropolises with their parks, lawns, and flowerpots hanging from wrought iron railings can resonate with.
In addition to being biblical, gardening also provides a realistic and hopeful vision for ministry. Let me I highlight these three features with just enough to whet your appetite for more.
Gardening is Biblical
I’ve already noted the obvious and far-reaching biblical grounds for thinking of the pastor as gardener. But I’ll add my own bit about why it provides a much-needed answer to the pitfalls of the church growth model that has ravaged the Evangelical church in America. Those who recognize the toxicity of the more-is-always-better movement feel powerless to critique it because the response from the pastor-as-CEO is always, “well, don’t you want the church to grow?” No one would say “no.” Jesus himself spoke of crops yielding 30- 60- or 100-fold.
Gardening provides a way of affirming the desire for growth and abundant harvest while also acknowledging that other factors affect the possibility of growth. Climate, soil quality, birds of the air, and the salting practices of one’s pillaging enemies offer just a handful of possible factors.
Gardening is Realistic
The realism that Erickson offers follows from the gardening’s biblical basis. Erickson uses the real-life example of African agriculturalists finding ways of growing food even in the harsh climates of places like South Sudan. Equally, churches and pastors need to recognize the climate and environment that they find themselves in, discovering creative ways to use the raw material of circumstance to persist in planting and watering. Irrigation might be in order. Or aquaponics. Or a greenhouse. Sometimes seedlings need to be sprouted in a home basement with full spectrum lamps because of the harshness of a lingering winter.
Erickson uses philosopher Charles Taylor’s compelling account of secularism to talk about the West’s particular gardening climate. “Secularism,” he notes, is not merely the lack of belief, but a different way of believing. There’s too much to say about our secular environment in the West as Taylor describes it to detail it here (and some, like Lori Branch, are now speaking of post-secularism). But Erickson helpfully engages thinkers like Andrew Root and others to tease out the implications of the terroir and climate of secularism. You should read it for yourself.
Suffice it to say: the pastor as gardener is neither idealistic nor given to the despair of environmental fatalism. It’s a realistic approach to the actual experience of pastors serving on the front lines of the church, which makes it all the more compelling. It names reality, but doesn’t make the church victim to it.
Finally, Gardening is Hopeful
That’s how Erickson ends his magnificent book: hope. He points out that pastors, like gardeners, find that vocational fruitfulness often “remains beyond tangible perception.” Seeds sprout where the eye cannot see. And, after sprouting, the plant grows only when no one’s watching. I will add that, most importantly, the process is one of mystery. We don’t know how a mustard seed turns into a tree for birds to nest in, but it happens—and it’s God who makes it happen.
Again: one plants, another waters, but God causes the growth. The pastor as gardener is an image of hope because it puts the final responsibility on God. Or, put better, God is the master gardener, and we are his field workers, weed pullers, and fruit pickers. We don’t know how the End comes when we will once again stand beneath the tree of life, just like we don’t understand how the deceased body of our loved one will one day rise incorruptible. We don’t understand, but we hope. And if there’s anything the church needs in the West, it needs to experience afresh the theological virtue of hope.
Where Next?
I don’t have anything substantively critical to say of Erickson’s work. There are a few places where the reader’s attention will require some extra effort, like when Erickson introduces Taylor’s concept of secularism, but that extra effort is itself a fertilizer to the ideas Erickson is teasing out. It will surely bear fruit.
After engaging The Pastor as Gardener I began to wonder what other ways of speaking about the pastoral life and the life of the church might also connect biblically and realistically with our living hope. Might pastor as chef help us consider the work and hospitality of eucharistic observance? Eugene Peterson once remarked that the place he first learned his priestly craft was in his father’s butcher shop, which connects with matters of food, sacrifice, gratitude, hospitality, and the giving of the self to the world (which is always a bloody affair).
What about pastor as ship captain (like Paul)?
Pastor as nurse or doctor (like Luke)?
Pastor as contractor who builds with living stones (1 Peter 2:4-6)?
My point is: Erickson’s work has set my imagination down a path of rethinking all the ways we’ve come to speak so glibly about the pastoral life and the church’s ministry to the world. New images that inevitably turn out to be ancient images seem to be the only way forward. And that’s the inspiration Erickson’s book gives.
🫵 Go read it 🫵
Exclusive 40% Discount from Eerdmans
🚨 Exclusive to Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear: Readers get a limited time 40% discount on Erickson’s book at the Eerdman’s website. Discount code is valid through May 31, 2026.
Discount code is GARDENER40. Go get your copy, and be sure to share this post so other can get a discounted copy too 🤲.
How Eugene Peterson-ese of him to write on this topic. Did he Wendall Berry much? :-)
Great reminder for me as our church is looking at classic business consolidation practices and moving toward an app for directory, groups, giving, etc. Thanks, Joseph.