Jots & Tittles 19: Five Book Recommendations for Young Pastors

 

Had a phone conversation last week with a young man who has just accepted a pastoral call to serve in his first church. He asked if I could recommend a few practical books related to the pastoral ministry.

I’ve created this brief list to share with him. Many more might be added but here are five with a brief annotation that I have found helpful (listed In a-b-c order by author):

Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry with An Inquiry into the Causes of its Inefficiency (Banner of Truth, 1830, 2006).

Bridges (1794-1869) was an evangelical leader in the Church of England. This book shares valuable practical pastoral wisdom in everything from preaching sermons to pastoral work with various kinds of people. It is also filled with pithy aphoristic statements that will lodge in the mind. Example: “Believe—wait—work—are the watchwords of the Ministry” (179).

John Keith Davies, The Local Church: A Living Body (Evangelical Press, 2001).

Davies (d. 1991) served for over thirty-seven years as a Baptist pastor and church planter in Wales. This is technically a book on ecclesiology or even a practical manual on church order, but it also has much, necessarily, to say about the work of pastoral ministry. Davies extols especially the advantages of ministry within the small church. For my full review of this book, look here.

Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, Complete and Unabridged (Zondervan, 1954 reprint).

These lectures were delivered by Spurgeon (1834-1892), the “Prince of Preachers,” to the students at the Preachers’ College in London. Though the content is sometimes uneven, it includes classic essays addressing topics like dealing with personal discouragement and despondency (“The Minister’s Fainting Fits”) and dealing with both praise and criticism (“The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear”).

William Still, Dying to Live (Christian Focus, 1991).

William Still (1911-1997 was the “bachelor minister” at the Gilcomston Church of Scotland in Aberdeen from 1945-1997. This autobiography addresses the lows (the week seven of his elders resigned and attendance plummeted) and highs (the joys of seeing fruit and spiritual growth driven through expository preaching, alongside work with students and children) of his unusually long and fruitful ministry in one congregation. Though I list only this work of autobiography (or biography) I commend this genre to aspiring pastors.

William Still, The Work of the Pastor (Christian Focus, 1984, 2001).

This book consists of five lectures presented by Still at an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship student conference in 1964. It is easy to digest and brimming with sagacious insights. Example: “We are so eager, we want a short training and a long ministry. Jesus has thirty years’ training and three years’ ministry” (143).

JTR

Spurgeon on the Martyrdom of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:1-12)

 

Image: Spurgeon marker, now in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.

I preached yesterday on the martyrdom of John the Baptist in Matthew 14:1-12. Lots of gems in Spurgeon’s Matthew commentary on this passage. Here are a few I shared on twitter @Riddle1689:

Spurgeon on Herod hearing of Jesus’s fame: “The peasant heard of Jesus before the prince” (Matt, 118).

Spurgeon on Herod thinking Jesus was John redivivus: “Great superstition often underlies a surface of avowed unbelief” (Matt, 188-189).

Spurgeon on John’s confrontation with Herod: “John did not mince matters, or leave the question alone. What was a king to him, if that king trampled on the law of God?” (Matt, 189).

Spurgeon on Herodias: “She was a very Jezebel in her pride and cruelty; and Herod was a puppet in her hands” (Matt, 189).

Spurgeon on Herodias’s daughter: “In these days mothers too often encourage their daughters in dress which is scarcely decent, and introduce them to dances which are not commendable for purity. No good can come of this; it may please the Herods, but it displeases God” (Matt, 190).

Spurgeon on Herod’s rash vow: “Rash promises, and even oaths, are no excuse for doing wrong. The promise was itself null and void, because no man has a right to promise to do wrong” (Matt, 191).

Spurgeon on John’s death: “…the man of God left his prison for Paradise by one sudden stroke of the sword… he received his crown in heaven though he lost his head on earth” (192).

Spurgeon on Herod ordering John’s death: “Men may sin by proxy, but they will be guilty in person” (192).

Spurgeon on Herodias and her daughter: “What a mother and daughter! Two bad women can do a world of mischief” (Matt, 192).

Spurgeon on John’s disciples going to tell Jesus: “When we are in great trouble, we shall be wise to do our best, and at the same time tell the Lord Jesus all about it, that he may direct us further as to what we are to do” (Matt, 192).

JTR

The Vision (3.13.14): Spurgeon and Farese on the Sovereignty of God

 

Last Sunday evening in Lynchburg, I preached on the “U” (“Unconditional Election”) in “TULIP” (forgot to record it!)  In so doing I necessarily addressed the related topics of God’s sovereignty, his decrees, and predestination.  I ended with this well known quote from Spurgeon (from his May 4, 1856 sermon titled Divine Sovereignty):

There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a foot-ball, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach.

Then, on Monday I heard word that Reformed Baptist brother Johnny Farese had passed from this life to the next (see this post).  Among the many legacies which Farese left behind was this powerful video on the Sovereignty of God.  This message seemed to be a good companion to Spurgeon’s quote.

 

 

May we see the trials that come to our lives from the same frame of reference as Farese did, and may we love to preach God’s sovereignty as Spurgeon did.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

The Vision (9/13/12): Spurgeon: "In the first place preach, and in the second place preach, and in the third place preach."

In our afternoon “Sunday School” lesson last Lord’s Day I shared this quote from C. H. Spurgeon’s “Address to Open-air Preachers” on the primacy of preaching as a means of doing Biblical evangelism (in The Soul Winner [Pilgrim Publications]:  pp. 188-189):

And, first, we must work at our preaching. You are not getting distrustful of the use of preaching, are you? ("No.") I hope you do not weary of it, though you certainly sometimes must weary in it. Go on with your preaching. Cobbler, stick to your last; preacher, stick to your preaching. In the great day, when the muster-roll shall be read, of all those who are converted through fine music, and church decoration, and religious exhibitions and entertainments, they will amount to the tenth part of nothing; but it will always please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Keep to your preaching; and if you do anything beside, do not let it throw your preaching into the background. In the first place preach, and in the second place preach, and in the third place preach.

Believe in preaching the love of Christ, believe in preaching the atoning sacrifice, believe in preaching the new birth, believe in preaching the whole counsel of God. The old hammer of the gospel will still break the rock in pieces; the ancient fire of Pentecost will still burn among the multitude. Try nothing new, but go on with preaching, and if we all preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the results of preaching will astound us. Why, there is no end after all to the power of the tongue! Look at the power of a bad tongue, what great mischief it can do; and shall not God put more power into a good tongue, if we will but use it aright? Look at the power of fire, a single spark might give a city to the flames; even so, the Spirit of God being with us, we need not calculate how much, or what we can do: there is no calculating the potentialities of a flame, and there is no end to the possibilities of divine truth spoken with the enthusiasm which is born of the Spirit of God. Have great hope yet, brothers, have great hope yet, despite yon shameless midnight streets, despite yon flaming gin-palaces at the corner of every street, despite the wickedness of the rich, despite the ignorance of the poor. Go on; go on; go on; in God's name go on, for if the preaching of the gospel does not save men, nothing will. If the Lord's own way of mercy fails, then hang the skies in mourning, and blot out the sun in everlasting midnight, for there remaineth nothing before our race but the blackness of darkness. Salvation by the sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimatum of God. Rejoice that it cannot fail. Let us believe without reserve, and then go straight ahead with the preaching of the Word.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Spurgeon Textual Note

On the first day we met to begin our summer men’s Bible Study, reading together Spurgeon’s The Soul Winner, we ran into an interesting textual issue.  One of the brothers had an edition of Spurgeon’s book from Whitaker House (WH), while I had read the first chapter on my phone online from spurgeon.org.  When my friend read the opening paragraph from his edition, I noted some differences.  The WH edition begins as follows:

I purpose, dear ones, if God will enable me, to give you a short course under the general head of "The Soulwinner." Soulwinning is the chief business of the Christian; indeed, it should be the main pursuit of every true believer. We should each say with Simon Peter, "I go fishing” (John 21:3), and our aim should be, along with Paul, "That I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).  We will begin our messages on this subject by considering the question:  What is it to win a soul?

While my version read:

I purpose, dear brethren, if God shall enable me, to give you a short course of lectures under the general head of "THE SOUL-WINNER." Soulwinning is the chief business of the Christian minister; indeed, it should be the main pursuit of every true believer. We should each say with Simon Peter, "I go a fishing," and with Paul our aim should be, "That I might by all means save some."
We shall commence our discourses upon this subject by considering the question— WHAT IS IT TO WIN A SOUL?

When we examined the WH edition we noted the brief “publisher’s note” in the book’s front matter which read, “This new edition from Whitaker House has been edited for the modern reader.  Words, expressions, and sentence structure have been updated for clarity and readability.”

The line that struck me by its difference was the one in WH that reads, “Soulwinning is the chief business of the Christian…,” versus the original which reads, “Soulwinning is the chief business of the Christian Minister….”  The original reflects Spurgeon’s high view of office and the preaching duty of the Minister, though the continuation of the line clearly shows that Spurgeon also saw evangelism as a duty for all believers.  The WH edition reflects a more modern, egalitarian, Brethren, “every member minister,” type approach.

The caution here is that when one gets such a reprint he should always check the front matter to determine whether he is reading the original in an unabridged form or in an abridged and modernized form.  I am not against abridgements.  I have, after all, done one myself.  Still, it is usually a good idea to compare the original with the abridgement to track theological influences in the interpretation.

JTR

The Vision (6/21/12): Spurgeon on Authentic Evangelism

Last Wednesday morning I met with a couple of CRBC men at a local coffee shop to begin a summer study of C. H. Spurgeon’s The Soul Winner and to discuss the topic of Biblical evangelism.

After noting that we should want to see the church increase by conversion growth (rather than sheep-stealing), Spurgeon warns that evangelism must be authentic:

But, still, all hurry to get members into the church is most mischievous, both to the church and to the supposed converts. I remember very well several young men, who were of good moral character, and religiously hopeful; but instead of searching their hearts, and aiming at their real conversion, the pastor never gave them any rest till he had persuaded them to make a profession. He thought that they would be under more bonds to holy things if they professed religion, and he felt quite safe in pressing them, for "they were so hopeful." He imagined that to discourage them by vigilant examination might drive them away, and so, to secure them, he made them hypocrites. These young men are, at the present time, much further off from the Church of God than they would have been if they had been affronted by being kept in their proper places, and warned that they were not converted to God. It is a serious injury to a person to receive him into the number of the faithful unless there is good reason to believe that he is really regenerate. I am sure it is so, for I speak after careful observation. Some of the most glaring sinners known to me were once members of a church; and were, as I believe, led to make a profession by undue pressure, well-meant but ill-judged. Do not, therefore, consider that soul-winning is or can be secured by the multiplication of baptisms, and the swelling of the size of your church. What mean these despatches from the battle-field? "Last night, fourteen souls were under conviction, fifteen were justified, and eight received full sanctification." I am weary of this public bragging, this counting of unhatched chickens, this exhibition of doubtful spoils. Lay aside such numberings of the people, such idle pretence of certifying in half a minute that which will need the testing of a lifetime. Hope for the best, but in your highest excitements be reasonable. Enquiry-rooms are all very well; but if they lead to idle boastings, they will grieve the Holy Spirit, and work abounding evil.
  
May the Lord be pleased to use our flock as in instrument in true evangelism.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Spurgeon on "Easter"

Someone posted the following on the RB list this week:

There is no ordinance in Scripture of any one Lord's-day in the year being set apart to commemorate the rising of Christ from the dead, for this reason, that every Lord's-day is the memorial of our Lord's resurrection. Wake up any Lord's-day you please, whether in the depth of winter, or in the warmth of summer, and you may sing

"To day he rose and left the dead,
And Satan's empire fell;
To day the saints his triumph spread,
And all his wonders tell."

To set apart an Easter Sunday for special memory of the resurrection is a human device, for which there is no Scriptural command, but to make every Lord's-day an Easter Sunday is due to him who rose early on the first day of the week.

--C. H. Spurgeon, MTP #1530

Spurgeon on the comfort of Psalm 91:9-10

Here's another Spurgeon anecdote, which I made use of in Sunday's sermon on David's Despair (1 Samuel 26-27):

In the Treasury of David, C. H. Spurgeon tells of an incident that happened in 1854 when he had only been serving his church in London for about twelve months. There was a cholera epidemic and multiple people in the church died. He writes:

Family after family summoned me to the bedside of the smitten, and almost every day I was called to visit the grave. I gave myself up with youthful ardour to the visitation of the sick, and was sent for from all corners of the district by persons of all ranks and religions. I became weary in body and sick at heart. My friends seemed falling one by one, and I felt or fancied that I was sickening like those around me. A little more work and weeping would have laid me low among the rest; I felt that my burden was heavier than I could bear, and I was ready to sink under it.

Then, one day as he was walking home, on Dover Street, he saw a placard that a shoemaker had put in his window, written in bold handwriting. It wasn’t a trade announcement but the words of Psalm 91:9-10:

Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

Spurgeon then writes:

The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I went on with my visitation of the dying in a calm and peaceful spirit; I felt no fear of evil, and I suffered no harm.

JTR

Spurgeon on "The Minister's Fainting Fits"

I opened yesterday's sermon on David's Despair (1 Samuel 26-27) by citing the opening lines of Charles Spurgeon's classic article in his Lectures to My Students on "The Minister's Fainting Fits":

As it is recorded that David, in the heat of battle, waxed faint, so may it be written of all the servants of the Lord. Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy. There maybe here and there men of iron, to whom wear and tear work no perceptible detriment, but surely the rust frets even these; and as for ordinary men, the Lord knows, and makes them to know, that they are but dust.

JTR