A pastor’s life is never boring. In any one week I may counsel someone on how to pay their gas bill by stretching their grocery budget with the foodbank, shovel snow from the walkway, pray for the mourning, and preach God’s word. Each of these events can be interpreted theologically (yes, even shoveling snow), but it doesn’t happen automatically.

Patton makes the case that “theological conceptualization does not grow immediately out of pastoral experience. At its best the process is slow” (13). In From Ministry to Theology, Patton describes how ministry and theology are related.

Pastoral practice and theology are related through the imagination and its empowerment of pastoral theology’s three essential elements: action in ministry, relationship in community, and interpretation of meaning. (21)

In order to get to theological interpretation, Patton employs a phenomenological approach which first immerses the person in the details of the actual situation itself while bracketing out the human desire to ascribe meaning to the event. This enables the person to avoid the error of slotting diverse experiences into presupposed categories of meaning.

This type of reflection may seem antithetical to the fast-paced demanding life of the pastor, but it produces genuine theological insight into the daily life of ministry.

Patton, John H. From Ministry to Theology: Pastoral Action & Reflection. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1995.