About

My name is Peter Hough. I’m the pastor of a unique little church called the Alton Mission in Alton, IL, just across the river from St. Louis, MO. (More about that at altonmission.com.) I like to make things, and writing works best for me when it feels like that. Mostly it’s just difficult and slow. But I have (almost) self-published a book called He Must Increase: Developing Leaders from the Inside Out, from which I’ll post some excerpts now and then. My current project is on peace and nonviolence, and pieces of that will surely be found here as well.

About the name of the site, “The Ironic Disciple”: Discipleship isn’t about having all the answers at the beginning, like cheat codes to an old Nintendo game that give you an easy shortcut to saving the princess. Being a disciple means you’re caught up in a story, and one that is too vast and deep and mysterious to be easily apprehended. But who would want to be in a small story anyway? Being confounded and disoriented are normal to being a disciple. Those “little did he know” moments are part of the irony of living in a story you don’t entirely understand. There’s eternity planted in our hearts, but the Author has hidden from us how it all fits together. How sublimely absurd. And yet the whisper of something more, something beyond the boundaries of our knowledge or experience or biases, awakens that adventurous part of the soul and begs us to be attentive to the unknown other.

If you want to be in touch, you can find me on Twitter @PeterAHough or use this contact form: