Spring 2026 · Vol. 55 No. 1 · pp. 112–118
Ministry Compass
Amateur Geographers: Knowledge of Place in Pastoral Ministry
The life of faith always and necessarily takes place in a community of persons who are located somewhere in time and place. Geography is as important in the Christian way as Christology.
—Eugene Peterson 1
Therefore, the elders among you I exhort, as co-elder . . . shepherd the flock of God among you.
—1 Peter 5:1-2 2
Overnight, the frigid air of this place deposited its moisture, adorning each leafless stick with diamonds. Now as I (Rod) drive across “the valley”—a somewhat ironic, yet geographically accurate name for the flat plateau of deep-soiled farmland immediately north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan—the sun sets the frost afire, dazzling my eyes. This combination of cold and sunshine is not an uncommon weather phenomenon around here. Fourteen Januaries ago we (Leanne and I) found ourselves in the small town of Hepburn with our two elementary-aged children. I had not been a pastor before. We had not lived in a small, rural, p. 113 farming-commuter town. Most of our lives had been spent two provinces west of these frozen flatlands.
Though pastoral ministry was new, we could see how the Spirit had been preparing us over twenty-odd years. Both of us had recently embarked on graduate-level theological studies. We had been active in an urban church plant, and before that had served as volunteers in a more established church. Each of us had worked after university in public service administrative and project leadership roles. We were not entirely ignorant; on the contrary, we brought into ministry a range of various “knowledges” (biblical-theological, ministry, leadership, administrative, etc.), most of which has proved invaluable.
There was one “knowledge,” however, we were certain we did not possess as we began: knowledge of (this) place. Not that we were disconcerted by this fact. Was it not simply a matter of “building relationships” and learning our “ministry context” so that we could get on with the work of shepherding people?
Since then we have gained some knowledge of our place, but along the way, we have also come to view knowing place as a core pastoral practice, lying at the heart of Jesus-shaped ministry. And yet, knowledge of place is often underemphasized, misunderstood, and not taken seriously as a form of “real” knowledge. In what follows, we propose to begin a conversation that we hope will inspire a fresh emphasis on knowing the places we serve.
Geography
But what is a place? And what does it mean to know a place?
Place should not be equated with mere location, a pin on Google maps. We are interested, rather, in exploring place as the collision of people and land. As an example, the insertion of European settlers in what is today the Canadian province of Saskatchewan—in the case of Hepburn, primarily German-speaking individuals and families associated with the relatively new Mennonite Brethren denomination—created a new “place,” lamentably dis-”placing” the long and fruitful collision between this land and various indigenous peoples.
Geography is the formal study of place in this sense. Geographers seek to understand both the physical and human landscape, and the consequences that emerge from their collision. It is a challenging, interdisciplinary field of academic study. Pastors do not have the time to take yet another degree in geography; yet, as the title of this essay suggests, perhaps there is room for pastors to be amateur geographers—people who seek to know p. 114 a place with all the focus, rigor, and discipline of the geographic explorer, motivated solely by love. 3
Knowing a place, then, is no simple task. It requires attention to everything from microclimates to generational feuds, from accessibility of recreational facilities to topsoil depth, from demographic density to local legends. And then it means labor to gather up the causes and consequences, the joys and griefs, the stories and attitudes of this particular collision.
As an example, the village of Hepburn came into existence in the early twentieth century with the construction of the railway. Decades later, when a highway was to be built north from Saskatoon, the original plan routed it through Hepburn. Village citizens and leadership successfully lobbied authorities to relocate the road two miles east. The rationale at the time: a paved highway would bring unwanted visitors and influences. Knowing why a major transportation corridor bypasses a town helps make sense of this place. Highway 12 conveniently allows many residents to commute daily to Saskatoon, while its location keeps alive a hint of safe distance from a changing outside world.
This is only one example taken from our knowledge of this place, but examples could be generated for any place, be it rural or urban, temperate or tropical, or anywhere else. To us, the worth of this slow-gathered knowledge is obvious. So why has it been undervalued in pastoral formation and practice?
Outside Expert Bias
One reason for the underemphasis on knowledge of place may be found in our denominational DNA as evangelical Anabaptists. The Mennonite Brethren (MB) family formed after a small group of Mennonites living in what is today Ukraine had a radical personal faith encounter through the preaching of traveling, German-speaking evangelists. Since then, MBs, like other evangelicals, have placed high value upon the “outsider” who comes bringing “revival,” personal renewal, and fresh vision for the church. Almost by default, what is local and familiar is spiritually too ordinary and, most likely, slipping into complacency and compromise. 4
This bias among evangelicals parallels a broader cultural prejudice characteristic of the modern, industrial world. We favor “expert” knowledge from “outside” over and against what author Wendell Berry calls “local knowledge.” Advocating for change in agricultural practice, Berry argues that “the particular farm . . . must not be treated as any farm. And p. 115 the particular knowledge of particular places is beyond the competence of any centralized power or authority.” 5
What is the best way to farm—not anywhere or everywhere, but in every one of the Earth’s fragile localities? What is the best way to farm this farm? In this ecosystem? For this farmer? For this community? 6
Berry’s passionate defense of knowledge of place may be aimed at the agricultural industry, but his theologically rooted critique crosses over to the shepherding of people. Humans should never be treated as unplaced and thus interchangeable. The “particular . . . must not be treated as any.”
At the beginning of Scripture’s story, God creates humanity from the dust of the ground, and then places them in a garden. 7 In Jesus, we see a God who, in Eugene Peterson’s memorable paraphrase, “moved into the neighborhood.” 8 The incarnate Son set himself in a small village amid the hills of Galilee, a place replete with a local culture, a not-overly-high reputation, and, apparently, an accent.
When Peter writes to encourage his fellow pastors, he exhorts them to “shepherd the flock of God among you” 9—not some abstraction of humanity, but believers living in a specific geography. A good shepherd, Jesus reminds us, knows the sheep; 10 a competent shepherd also knows the intricacies of place: where to find sufficient grass, how not to overgraze a meadow, which watering holes last the summer, in which hillside hollow the flock will be safe. 11 Pastors likewise are invited to know not only techniques, ideas and interpretations, but the intricacies of place.
Research Required
Even if we accept the created “placed”-ness of humans, pastoral formation leads us to favor knowledge that is standardized, controllable, and professionalized (e.g., published and peer-reviewed). By definition, knowledge of this place will differ from knowledge of that place, but that should not disqualify it as “real” knowledge. On the contrary, knowing place demands all the same deep attentiveness, curiosity, reflection, synthesis, dialogue, and testing as any other form of knowledge. 12 Its particularity may, in fact, make it more difficult to acquire, for it is always primary research—time-consuming and never complete. 13
Furthermore, pastors (like other humans) are tempted to rely on the forms of knowledge that help to establish their authority, that render them the expert. Pastors lean on their books and degrees, training, conferences, and ministry experience. Accepting the role of “amateur geographer” would require surrendering the goal of expertise, and, thus, the power and control that come with it. For some this may feel vulnerable, yet it conforms p. 116 with Peter’s instruction to not “lord it over those in your charge” 14 and serves, instead, as an example of the downward, Jesus-shaped path of humility.
Humus in Ministry
In “The Work of Local Culture,” Wendell Berry describes an old galvanized bucket that over decades of hanging on a fence post has collected leaves and nuts, insects and droppings, rain and snow. Curiosity leads him to peer into the bucket whenever he passes:
For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. . . . This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus.
He claims this occurrence of the bucket’s collecting “leaves and other woodland sheddings,” though “passive,” is “irresistibly metaphorical”:
A human community, too, must collect leaves and stories, and turn them to account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—that will be its culture. These two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local culture, are intimately related. 15
As those in pastoral ministry, we have a choice in relation to this slow, creational process of building what Berry calls “local culture.” We can fail to attend to our place, settling for the comfortable role of expert outsider. Or we can participate in the building of the “local soil.” For knowledge of place is a participatory knowing. We may have a role to play in the gathering and passing along, but it is as we allow ourselves to sink in, and to accept our “placed”-ness, that we, too, become a part of what is known here.
Thus understood, knowledge of place is not merely instrumental, a means to “effective ministry,” but becomes an end in itself. As believers in a God of resurrection, this makes such knowing ultimately practical. Jesus summarized his own path toward the cross with a John-sized parable: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” 16 We are invited to follow Christ in this descent, confident that the fruit of our lives depends not upon our own efforts, but upon the hidden labor of the Spirit. 17 p. 117
In an older essay, Wendell Berry recounts his move from the literary hub of New York City to his family farm in rural Kentucky, concluding,
As I slowly fill with the knowledge of this place, and sink into it, I come to the sense that my life here is inexhaustible, that its possibilities lie rich behind and ahead of me, that when I am dead it will not be used up. 18
None of us knows the duration of our “place”-ments as pastors, or in life. Let us consider emulating Berry’s posture of surrender, practicing our “amateur geography” while we can, and trusting that the “deposit” of our very selves will, in the end, participate in a beauty much brighter and far longer lasting than this morning’s fragile frost.
Notes
- Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1988), 56.
- Translation by John H. Elliot, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 37B (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 809, emph. added.
- Here we use the word amateur, not in its more common sense of “lacking competency,” but in reference to its Latin etymological root as meaning “driven by love, without competing motives (e.g., professional, monetary, etc.).” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “amateur,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amateur.
- For a thoughtful theological reflection on this tendency in the evangelical tradition, see Julie Canlis, A Theology of the Ordinary (Wenatchee, WA: Godspeed, 2017), 1–10.
- Wendell Berry, “Nature as Measure,” in The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, selected by Paul Kingsnorth (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2017), 64.
- Berry, “The Prejudice Against Country People,” in The World-Ending Fire, 206.
- Gen 2:8.
- John 1:14 Message.
- 1 Pet 5:2, Elliott, 824, emph. added. Elliott contends that the phrase en hymin has “distributive force: the flock of God that is among you; that is, in your towns or villages or household communities.” p. 118
- John 10:14.
- In Psalm 23, the psalmist compares the Lord’s care with a good and competent shepherd.
- This leads to questions of equipping. We might offer this proposal: that every program preparing students for pastoral ministry include a minimum of one course in geography.
- One misconception is that mere time in a place automatically gives a person knowledge of that place. Certainly time creates familiarity and comfort. However, time without intentional reflection, synthesis, and dialogue can act as a blinder, where the particularities of a place go unseen or are projected onto an abstraction labeled “human nature.” Finally, while mere time in a place may lead to love, it may just as easily lead to resentment.
- 1 Pet 5:3 NRSVue.
- Berry, “The Work of Local Culture,” in The World-Ending Fire, 102–3.
- John 12:24 NRSVue.
- Mark 4:26-27.
- Berry, “A Native Hill,” in The World-Ending Fire, 34.
