Resources on Pastoral Ministry
We all need mentors. With so many voices telling us what to do, it’s vitally important that we have godly, thoughtful, experienced people showing us what to do. Preparing for a life in ministry in the PCA is demanding work—and I’m not just talking about your seminary workload. You need real-life pastoral experience under the direction of a mentor. I serve as director of field education at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Much of my work involves talking to students about their relationships with their pastoral mentors. Since 1987, I’ve mentored men preparing for ordination. While serving on Boston’s North Shore, I mentored many men in the Gordon-Conwell field education program. Before coming to RTS, I employed men pursuing ordination. Mentoring has…
Read MorePastoral care is an act of love. God’s minister provides pastoral care because he loves the Word of God, and he loves God’s people. His care brings the ministry of the Word to wherever his flock is found, whether gathered before his pulpit on the Lord’s Day or in his study during the week: homes, hospitals, cemeteries, and prisons become places of the Lord’s mercy and grace. This requires that the man of God be available to his people – ready to go to them, and willing to care for them. It is the God-breathed Word that comforts the mourner, encourages the struggler, directs the confused, and rebukes the careless. The caring pastor trains his congregation in righteousness. Biblical pastoral…
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Conrad Mbewe, Pastoral Preaching: Building a People for God. Carlisle, England: Langham Partnership, 2017. $20.99. Every year Reformed Theological Seminary Jackson hosts the John Reed Miller Preaching Lectures. Guest ministers speak to various aspects of the life and work of the minister. Both students and veteran preachers leave encouraged in the Lord. Our 2015 lecturer was Conrad Mbewe, who for three decades has pastored Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia. I found his lectures to be among the best I have heard on preaching. The instruction was clear, direct, and winsome, offering entirely satisfying nuts-and-bolts counsel to the preacher. Judging by the feedback, students were as personally renewed in their commitment to biblical preaching as I was. The publication of Mbewe’s Pastoral…
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I am grateful to serve with a ministerial staff that is expected to pray – and does pray with and for the church. Yesterday each of First Presbyterian Church of Jackson’s ministers received Dr. David Irving’s Devote Yourself to Prayer. “Brother pastors,” he writes, “it is your duty to be devoted to prayer for your people. To put it bluntly, it is your job to pray.” This outstanding booklet demonstrates from Acts 6:1-7 the principal role of prayer in the apostles’ work. It summons pastors to reflect on the duty, difficulty, discipline, and delight of prayer. His reflections are full of sound Bible teaching, quotations from praying pastors, and practical advice for those who are serious about dedicating themselves…
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I love practical ministry books, but there can be a downside: detached from scriptural theology, they become manipulative, promoting worldly methodologies to achieve ends that are at odds with the holiness of life that God seeks for his church. Ultimately, the minister and his work must be shaped by the character of God, who has revealed himself in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. True, a minister must understand the needs of his church and community as he pursues his work. But every plan must also be brought to the touchstone of Scripture and tested for its biblical fidelity. To that end, pastors will find Theology for Ministry: How Doctrine Affects Pastoral Life and Practice a most helpful book.…
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x I’m keen on Puritan and Reformed works in pastoral theology. At their best, they never separate three indissolubly linked areas of ministerial life: personal piety, preaching, and pastoral care. Albert N. Martin’s three volume work is a notable contribution to this great tradition. Since volume one appeared in 2018, I have made volume one, The Man of God: His Calling and Godly Life, a required text in my first-year Pastoral Ministry course, and have found helpful lecture materials in volume two, The Man of God: His Preaching and Teaching Labors (links to both reviews in Reformed Faith & Practice provided). Martin’s knowledge and use of classic texts in pastoral theology is extensive. I tell students that were they to write down the texts he cites…
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