The badlands shaped, perhaps as much as any other voice or experience, Eugene’s convictions about what it meant to be a pastor. He possessed a dogged commitment to his immediate place, to his holy charge to pastor this one (at times fledgling) community of ordinary people. And he exhibited a resolute determination to resist the siren songs insisting he must push to make something of himself and build something “significant” at Christ Our King. These convictions were forged in the long stretch of desert years when his commitments were severely tested. Through frustration and boredom and dark
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