WM 380: Book Review: Peter Barnes, Pain of a Particular Kind: The Loss of a Child

You can read the review on my academia.edu page here.

JTR

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

Oden on Pastoral Care and Modern Psychotherapy

 

Image; Thomas C. Oden (1931-2016)

Posted this thread to my twitter today, @Riddle1689:

In Thomas C. Oden's A Change of Heart memoir he notes how his "conversion" from Protestant liberalism to traditional Christianity led him to rethink pastoral care and "psychotherapeutic fads" (see pp.150-153).

In 1971 Oden gave the Finch Lectures at Fuller looking at empirical outcome studies of the effectiveness of psychotherapy. This later became the book After Therapy What? (1974).

After reviewing over 300 empirical outcome studies, he found "that the average psychotherapy cure rate was not better than the spontaneous remission rate."

"The average outcomes of all types of therapy approaches turned out to be the same rate of recovery as that which occurred merely through the passage of time, approximately 63 percent."

"Indeed those studies found that symptoms would disappear spontaneously about two thirds of the time without any therapeutic intervention."

"That finding was coupled with the alarming specter of 'client deterioration,' which showed that 10 percent of the patients found their conditions worsening under the care of professional psychotherapists."

"Those empirical facts took me aback. I had spent two decades trusting the assumed effectiveness of psychotherapies, but now I had actual rigorous empirical evidence of their average ineffectiveness."

These discoveries led Oden to move from study of modern psychotherapy to classic pastoral works like Gregory the Great's Book of Pastoral Rule (AD 590).

JTR

WM 237: Interview: Ron Rumburg, Reflections on Life, Pastoral Ministry, & Books

 

JTR

Book Review: The Dark Side of Christian Counseling

 

I have posted above audio versions of my review of E. S. Williams, The Dark Side of Christian Counseling (Wakeman Trust & Belmont House Publishing, 2009).

I have also posted to academia.edu the written version which appeared in the Reformed Baptist Trumpet, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2010): 9-10. Read it here.

JTR

Book Review: Albert N. Martin, Pastoral Theology, Volumes 1-2

 

I have posted audio versions (above) of my review of Albert N. Martin, Pastoral Theology, Volumes 1-2 (Trinity Pulpit Press, 2018).

I completed this review of the first two volumes in the Pastoral Theology trilogy and submitted it for publication in the Midwestern Journal of Theology (which supplied the second volume to me to review) before the third and final book in the series was released.

You can also read a pdf here of my written review which appeared in Midwestern Journal of Theology, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2021): 124-128.

Blessings, JTR

Festschrift for Pastor Albert N. Martin Forthcoming: A Workman Not Ashamed

 

I was pleased to be able to contribute an essay on pastoral theology, "The Administration and Administrators of Baptism", to the forthcoming festschrift for Pastor Albert N. Martin, edited by David Charles and Rob Ventura.

The book titled A Workman Not Ashamed: Essays in Honor of Albert N. Martin is being published by Free Grace Press and can be pre-ordered here.

Here is the forward to the work from Dr. Joel Beeke:

Al Martin’s ministry has had a profound impact on hundreds of faithful ministers and thousands of people for several decades, such that it is high time that a festschrift—that is, a book of essays reflecting his interests and passions written by friends, be written in his honor. I am grateful to David Charles and Rob Ventura who served as the organizers and editors for this festschrift, and wish to testify my gratitude to them and their fellow contributors that this book passes muster for what it is designed to do. I am confident that its honoree will be delighted with its contents.

To profit from this festschrift, one does not have to agree with every detail of each chapter of this book. A wonderful variety of subjects is presented to the reader, reaching the whole man: head, heart, and hands. Good scholarship, edifying soul-enriching food, and experiential and practical applications abound in these pages—all of which reflects Al Martin’s own ministry of the Word.

This book opens with a sketch of Al Martin’s life by John Reuther, who has known him for more than four decades, beginning when he first sat under Al’s preaching at Trinity Baptist Church in New Jersey.

Sam Waldron draws several encouraging points about preaching from Luke’s account of one of the most fruitful sermons in all history: Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Here we are reminded that preaching is the authoritative proclamation of Christ from the Scriptures with a call to practical action.

Conrad Mbewe presents a plea that pastors mentor future pastors in the context of the local church, just as Trinity Baptist Church for many years sponsored its own academy for pastoral training. Pastors need to study books, but they also need to be with people to learn how godly pastors relate to their families and church members in a variety of settings.

Richard Barcellos provides a detailed exegetical study of the Greek text of Ephesians 4:12 to support the old translation that Paul uses all three phrases to describe the results of the ministry of the word (as in “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” KJV), not the newer translation that joins the first two to suggest that the ministry of the Word equips others to build up the body.

Alan Dunn writes an essay exploring how the church overcomes the world in its witness through suffering and martyrdom. Dunn strikingly calls this “the strategy of slaughtered lambs.”

Jim Savastio exhorts pastors to “feed the flock of God which is among you” (1 Pet. 5:2), that is, to preach to address the needs of the people whom God has entrusted to them. Toward that end, preachers must know their Bibles and know their flocks.

The core of the message that we preach is the gospel of justification by faith, and D. Scott Meadows opens Galatians 2:15–19 to proclaim that we can never be justified by works of obedience to God’s law. Our righteousness is Christ alone received by faith alone.

Rob Ventura touches upon a key theme in Al Martin’s life: the Holy Spirit and the preacher. Without the prevailing power of the Spirit to convict, convert, and comfort hearers, the preacher would be wise never to enter the pulpit.

Michael Haykin offers a chapter on the life of one of the earliest Reformed (or Particular) Baptist ministers, William Kiffen or Kiffin (1616–1701). Kiffen was a signatory and probably an author of the First London Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), and in 1689 he also signed the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

At the heart of Christ’s purpose to build His kingdom is the church, with its ordinances of worship. Jeffrey Riddle makes an argument that the ordinance of baptism should be done in the assembly of the church by its designated officers—not just by an informal gathering of believers.

Nothing is more important for the church to do than the worship of God. Scott Aniol explains the Reformed regulative principle of worship and its particular applications by Baptist churches in their practice of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, singing, and church polity.

The goal of preaching the gospel is to restore fallen men and women to fellowship with God—deep and rich communion, as is explored in the chapter by Jeffrey Waddington. He draws particularly from Geerhardus Vos’s insights into the purpose for which God created us.

Few Calvinistic Baptists have attained to the stature of the Bible commentator and systematic theologian John Gill (1697–1771). Gill’s sermon, “The Duty of a Pastor to His People,” originally given at the ordination of George Braithwaite in 1734, rounds out the book with a call to faithful pastoral ministry.

Here, then, you will find a book that honors a veteran minister and teacher of the Word by exhorting other ministers to preach the Word, shepherd the flock, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill the commission placed upon them by the Lord. May God use the contributions of these authors to raise up preachers who fit the words of Francis Wayland (1796–1865): “From the manner in which our ministers have entered upon the work, it is evident that it must have been the prominent object of their lives to convert men to God.”

JTR