Recommended Pastoral Theology?

The Public Square
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What books of pastoral theology (or practical theology, if you prefer) do you recommend?

I’ll offer a couple recommendations (in addition to the usual Baxter’s Reformed Pastor and Gregory’s Book of Pastoral Rule): Harold Senkbeil’s The Care of Souls and Eugene Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor. Senkbeil is a veteran Lutheran pastor, and while his book is self-consciously very Lutheran, the central concept he writes about - a pastoral habitus/disposition - is something that, although lost today, was very familiar to Reformed pastors in the 17th and 18th centuries. Peterson is probably a surprise recommendation. He didn’t finish his race as a pastor particularly well. That’s worth acknowledging. But his earlier books on pastoral ministry are a needed corrective to the activity-centered mindsets of so many pastors today. One friend described him as an having an almost Kierkegaardian insight into the problems endemic among today’s caste of pastors.

Here are a couple tasters to show why I think both books are so valuable today.

From Senkbeil:

'Every useful human endeavour is more than just mastering external skills; these flow from an inner attitude or aptitude developed by repetition. By practicing for years a musician grows not only in instrumental proficiency, but the artistic expression that informs reliably fine performances. A chef’s expertise isn’t merely a matter of external technique, but the internal intuition that results from years of habitually blending the right ingredients, timing, temperature, seasoning, and presentation that makes for consistently fine cuisine. And as you will see by my recurring stories throughout this book, a farmer learns his craft over time and experience as he is shaped by the very animals and crops he tends and harvests. Habit is not something you were born with; it’s obtained over long experience.

It’s no different when it comes to pastors. A “practical habitus” for ministry is never completely mastered. This “practical disposition” is acquired through a lifelong process by which the pastor as Christian goes on receiving what he brings to others. So for as long as he lives the pastor, like other children of God, treads the path of continual repentance and faith on his own personal pilgrimage back home to the Father’s house. Daily he confesses his sins and daily he receives the Holy Spirit and everything that Jesus died to bring him: forgiveness of sins, life, and eternal salvation. This daily dying to sin and rising to new life through faith in Christ is the pivotal hinge in every Christian’s life, and it’s an essential ingredient in faithful and consistent care of souls. No pastor can give to others what he himself has not received. Turn that around and you have the very core of what pastoring is all about: giving out the gifts of God in Christ that you yourself received by faith. The essence of pastoral work is to bring the gifts of the Good Shepherd to his sheep and lambs. And here’s the well from which you draw inexhaustible grace ever day as a pastor: In the church the Holy Spirit daily and richly forgives all your sins along with the sins of all believers.’ [Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls, (Lexham Press, 2019), 18-19]

From Peterson:

'With the vastness of the heavenly invasion and the urgency of the faith decision rolling into our consciousness like thunder and lightning, we cannot stand around on Sunday morning filling the time with pretentious small talk on how bad the world is and how wonderful this new stewardship campaign is going to be…

If we have even an inkling of apocalypse, it will be impossible to act like the jaunty foreman of a home-improvement work crew that is going to re-landscape moral (or immoral) garden spots. We must pray. The world has been invaded by God, and it is with God we have to do.

Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world.

Apocalypse opens up the chasm of reality. The reality is God: worship or flee…

With programs shaping the agenda—not amazing grace, not stubborn sin—the pastor doesn’t have to be patient. We set a goal, work out a strategy, recruit a few Christian soldiers, and go to it. If, in two or three years the soldiers haven’t produced, we shake the dust off our feet and hire on as captain to another group of mercenaries. When a congregation no longer serves our ambition, it is abandoned for another under the euphemism of “a larger ministry.” In the majority of such cases, our impatience is rewarded with a larger salary.

Apocalypse shows this up as inexcusable exploitation. Apocalypse convinces us that we are in a desperate situation, and in it together. The grass is not greener in the next committee, or parish, or state. All that matters is worshiping God, dealing with evil, and developing faithfulness. Apocalypse ignites a sense of urgency, but it quenches shortcuts and hurry, for the times are in God’s hands. Providence, not the newspaper, accounts for the times in which we live.

Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land—a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost, and then abandonment in search of another place to loot. Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people, to parish—to place.

St. John was patient, teaching the Christians in his seven less-than-promising congregations to be patient. But it is an apocalyptic patience—not acquiescence to boredom, not doormat submissiveness. It is giant sequoia patience that scorns the reduction of a glorious gospel to a fast-food religion. Mount Rainier patience that mocks the fast-lane frenzy for a weekend with the Spirit. How long did it take to grow the sequoia? How long did it take to build Rainier? Apocalypse ushers us into the long and the large. We acquire, with St. John and his congregations, fidelity to place and people, the faithful endurance that is respectful of the complexities of living a moral, spiritual, and liturgical life before the mysteries of God in the mess of history.

American religion is conspicuous for its messianically pretentious energy, its embarrassingly banal prose, and its impatiently hustling ambition. None of these marks is remotely biblical. None is faintly in evidence in the gospel story. All of them are thoroughly documented diseases of the spirit. Pastors are in great danger of being undetected carriers of the very disease we are charged to diagnose and heal. We need the most powerful of prophylactics—something like the apocalyptic prayer and poetry and patience of St. John. [Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor, (excerpts from the chapter, ‘The Apocalyptic Pastor’)]

What others would you add?

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Thank you for sharing these.

Peterson’s point on prayer is a good reminder. So often I have found myself talking about things and never praying about them…especially during conversation with others. I want to get better at this, and it seems to be as simple as saying “Let’s pray about that,” or “Let’s thank God for this.”

Pr Bayly recommended reading books about literal shepherding. He mentioned The Shepherd’s Life. I’ve started it. Really good. About England’s Lake District sheep farmers.

In a similar vein, perhaps it would be helpful to remember pastors are also fishers. RC Trench spends time on this regarding Luke 5:1-11, the great draught of fishes miracle. Here are some of his comments:

It is not for nothing that the promise here clothes itself in language drawn from the occupation of the fisher, rather, for example, than in that borrowed from the nearly allied pursuits of the hunter. The fisher more often takes his prey alive ; he draws it to him, does not drive it from him; and not merely to himself, but draws all which he has taken to one another; even as the Church brings together the divided hearts, the fathers to the children, gathers into one fellowship the scattered tribes of men. Again, the work of the fisher is one of art and skill, not of force and violence; -Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord

and this from a footnote:

Yet this title of ‘fishers’ itself also fails to set out the whole character of the Christian ministry; sets out only two moments of it in any strength, the Church’s missionary activity, as the enclosing within the net, and the bringing safely to the final kingdom, as the landing the contents of the net upon the shore (Matt. xiii. 48). All which is between it leaves unexpressed, and yields therefore in fitness, as in frequency of use, to the image borrowed from the work of the shepherd; has given us no such names as 'pastor ’ and ‘flock’ to enrich our Christian language. That of 'shepherd ’ expresses all which ’ fisher ’ leaves out, the habitual daily care for the members of Christ, the peculium, after they have been brought into the fellowship of the Church. It was, therefore, fitly said to Peter, ‘Thou shalt catch men’ before it was said, ‘Feed my sheep;’ and each time though not a different commission, yet a different side of the commission, is intended; he shall be both evangelist and pastor. Jeremy Taylor gives the matter a slightly different turn: ‘In the days of the patriarchs, the governors of the Lord’s people were called shepherds. In the days of the Gospel they are shepherds still, but with the addition of a new appellative, for now they are called fishers. Both the callings were honest, humble, and laborious, watchful, and full of trouble, but now that both the titles are conjunct, we may observe the symbol of an implicit and folded duty. There is much simplicity and care in the shepherd’s trade ; there is much craft and labour in the fisher’s, and a prelate is to be both full of piety to his flock, careful of their welfare, and also to be discreet and wary, observant of advantages, laying such baits for the people as may entice them into the nets of Jesus’s discipline.’

I could list other books but they are all recommendations from Pr Bayly, so you are probably already familiar with them? One book does come to mind, Samuel Rutherford’s Letters.

I have just started my call, so for myself I need to be immersed in the work more than anything else and later will be able to see what books are helpful (aside from those tried and tested by experienced pastors). Still, I too am curious of others suggestions.

Blessings,

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And on a related note, from the late John Wimber: “Catch the fish, then clean them”. :slight_smile:

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Coming back to this…

Calvin’s sermons are worth every penny. From his sermon on 1 Tim 1:1-2:

Paul, however, does not simply call himself an apostle. He writes that it is ‘by command of our Lord Jesus Christ’, who has been ordained by God his Father as our supreme and only teacher. All, therefore, who venture to teach, must speak in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for of him alone it is said, ‘Listen to him! (Matt. 17:5). When that voice was heard from heaven it was meant to shut the mouth of every creature, so that none should presume to preach anything devised by their own brain or claim to be a teacher or instructor. These things are reserved for the Son of God. What else then must we do? Let all who teach confess in truth that Jesus Christ speaks by their mouth, as Paul himself says in another place: Do you ask for proof regarding him who speaks in me? It is our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 13:3).

Pastors are the mouth of Jesus. What else can be said? The Second Helvetic Confession comes to mind:

THE PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD IS THE WORD OF GOD. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.

Calvin spends a lot of time bolstering the authority of true pastors in that first sermon.

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Christmas sale anyone???

The description above is wrong; it’s the three-volume set of sermons on the Pastoral Epistles Matt’s just quoted from.

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Sinclair Ferguson’s Some Pastors and Teachers is also very helpful. Spent some time reading it this weekend. Ferguson’s writing is always theologically rich and deeply nourishing to the soul. SP&T is largely a collection of previous essays rearranged in one volume for practical theology, but it’s well worth working through slowly. His introduction is along the lines of what @tbbayly has been urging of us around here for years - we need to put our gifts to use for Christ’s church.

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Bonhoeffer’s Life Together is also essential reading. Whatever you make of his personal theology or whatever you think about the recent film on his life, Life Together is an outstanding work of pastoral theology, for both the pastor and the congregation. Here’s one excerpt (and there are many like it throughout the short book):

'Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realise it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great general disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.’

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Yes, your comments remind me that Bonhoeffer’s reputation as a pastor will last a lot longer than his reputation as a theologian, bogged down as it was in early twentieth-century neo-orthodoxy.

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From memory, the Gregory Peck film ‘Twelve O’clock High’ had good lessons on how to lead men, a good understanding of command (including its pitfalls). Different medium, but comparable quality to Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin novels (and films) leadership lessons.

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Another film recommendation: Netflix’ ‘The Two Popes.’

Want to know how the world sees theological conservatives? Watch their portrayal of Pope Benedict. The sneering mockery he received in that film angered me…and I am firmly Protestant in my doctrine.

But the lesson was a valuable one to learn.

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Just came across Theodore Cuyler’s How To Be a Pastor.

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Cuyler is excellent. Some quotes to encourage men to read it:

A majority of all congregations, rich or poor, are reached and influenced, not so much through the intellect as through the affections. This is an encouraging fact ; for while only one man in ten may have the talent to become a very great preacher, the other nine, if they love Christ and love human souls, can become great pastors.

Let a pastor make himself at home in everybody’s home ; let him come often and visit their sick rooms, and kneel beside their empty cribs, and their broken hearts, and pray with them ; let him go to the business men in his congregation when they have suffered reverses and give them a word of cheer let him be quick to recognize the poor, and the children—and he will weave a cord around the hearts of his people that will stand a prodigious pressure. His inferior sermons—(for every minister is guilty of such occasionally)—will be kindly condoned, and he can launch the most pungent truths at his auditors and they will not take offense. He will have won their hearts to himself, and that is a great step towards drawing them to the house of God, and winnine their souls to the Saviour.

Nothing cheers and helps a pastor more than to have his people say to him during the week, “I thank you for last Sunday’s sermon ; it did me solid good; it relieved some of my doubts, it lifted off some of my loads, it comforted me under my heartaches, it brought me nearer to Christ.” Such encouragements not only reveal to us what our people need, but they are an hundred-fold better pay than a salary.

(Also, you can download the book as a PDF in that link. Scroll down to ‘Download Options’ on the right. Internet Archive is invaluable)

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That first quote…what gold. May we labour to be faithful preachers, but may we even more be consumed with being good shepherds.

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Here’s a sermon on Jesus’ temptation…I’m preaching Matthew 4 this Sunday, and I’m going back to this as part of my prep. It’s excellent pastoral theology. Good historical/systematic theology, but well connected to very personal pastoral matters.

Also an excellent discussion on the temptation to use ‘pastoral categories’ to get out from under the responsibility to think carefully and biblically about controversial issues.

And the gospel application at the end…oh brothers, may this heart be in us.

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If you’re looking for help with preaching, Mastricht’s little ‘Best Method for Preaching’ is excellent, and it’s only 30 pages! Now it’s in the first volume of his Theoretical-Practical Theology, which is much bigger, and I don’t know if you can find his preaching booklet on its own. But the whole volume is worth reading, as is his discussion on whether theology is theoretical (focused on contemplating God) or practical (focused on human action).

It’s filled with little gems like:

  • keep the introduction to the sermon short and to the point, but without unnecessarily getting into the argument of the text.
  • don’t just talk about the obscure or controversial points in the passage; make sure the sheep can understand the passage and how it leads to their edification.
  • don’t make a show of your learning, just help your people understand God’s word.
  • make sure the exegesis is short and simple enough so you have plenty of time for application.
  • remember there are different types of application; teaching doctrine is application, as is consoling the afflicted, rebuking the shameful, exploring virtues/vices and graces/sins, and exhorting ‘for the purpose of exciting a zeal for virtue of any good work.’

Well worth your time.

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Thanks, Aaron.

It was published separately as an 80 page book (I’m curious about 30 vs 80 pages), but is already out of print. Mostly expensive used copies are available if you look around. Just buying volume one of the “Theoretical-Practical Theology” is generally cheaper. Here’s a link to used books by Mastricht, where you can see a hard cover volume 1 is $30, but a paperback copy of preaching is $50.

Here is a summary of the 10 chapters:

https://www.apuritansmind.com/pastors-study/evaluation-of-the-best-method-of-preaching-by-peter-van-mastricht-by-c-matthew-mcmahon/

And here is a 30 page sample of the 80 page version of the preaching book:

Edit: Of course, if you can read Latin, you can just read the original.

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Here’s a gem from Herbert

Can also get a modernized spelling version on amazon

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Finally finished Warhorn’s republication of Stephen’s Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ. Wow. Well worth the time to work through. A rare combination of book that’s simultaneously enjoyable and mentally stimulating, yet also convicting.

Years ago I heard a church history lecturer complain that Complementarianism was largely a reaction to feminism, and, in his estimation, a rather unsuccessful one at that. Tim Bayly has said something similar. There’s been too much of a focus on responding to or seeking to appease feminist ideology for the movement to have much of a coherent and historically grounded philosophy of manhood and womanhood. Clark’s book is a refreshing antidote to that trend. Reacting neither to feminism nor chauvinism, while at the same time not ignoring either, this is a book based on scripture, rooted in the Christian tradition, and thoughtfully applied to life today in the modern western world. Theologically convicted yet irenic, Clark helps us deal with both the theological and the practical questions we face in seeking to apply scripture’s teaching on what it means to be a man or a woman in this world.

The hardcover is beautiful, and the pdf is free! Thanks to Warhorn’s guys for such a high-quality product that also comes with a free option. Here are a couple tasters, if I can attempt to persuade you to get yourself a copy:

‘Ephesians 5:22–33 has been romanticized a great deal. The passage is often used to discourse about the mystery of marriage and about how the love of husband and wife reveals Christ and the church. While the content of such discourses may not be erroneous, to base them on Ephesians 5:22–33 distorts the main thrust of the text. The text has a practical function in regard to marriage. It does not exalt the married couple, but rather instructs them in their marriage. The passage teaches the husband and wife about the importance of the wife’s subordination and the husband’s care. Their love for one another is not primarily a matter of deep feelings (although these will be present to a great extent if Paul’s teaching is followed). Instead, it is a matter of their living together daily with the husband responsible to care for his wife and the wife responsible to respect and obey him. Moreover, the goal of this family order is unity, an internal oneness that allows the family to be an effective cell in the Christian community.’ (p88)

‘To summarize, Jesus related to women with love and respect. He spoke to them, taught them, healed them. He never spoke of them in a contemptuous or downgrading manner and never treated them as if they were unimportant. In his eyes, they had the same spiritual status as men. At the same time, the evidence is that he accepted a role difference for men and women and that he even respected the normal Jewish customs in the area. He was not, as one recent speaker claimed, “a man who breaks all categories, who goes beyond all accepted norms.” He did break some categories and went beyond some accepted norms, but only the ones that were due to scribal or Pharisaic interpretation of God’s teaching that he judged to be erroneous. Jesus was not revolutionary with regard to the roles of men and women. His revolution lay rather in the area of what constituted true righteousness and of the spiritual relationship of men and women alike to God and to Israel. The consequence of his teaching and approach in this area was a very significant spiritual and social change for women, one that allowed them, as Christians, to have the same spiritual status as men, to be treated with the same “brotherly love” as men.’ (p255)

‘The radical feminist movement has by its success shown its ability to produce vast social change. However, this could be one of the most destructive changes in the history of human society. The roles of men and women have proven useful in previous societies; in fact, past societies functioned well only when these roles were operating properly. Today a strong movement would destroy these roles without a firmly established understanding of the ecological consequences. The rationale is simply that human nature is “unbelievably malleable.” In essence, the human race is told that it should make such changes simply because it is capable of doing so. In the face of such a claim, human beings would do well to acquire a humble sense of the limitations of human knowledge, and to recall recent lessons about some of the painful consequences of technological change.’ (p453)

'A third error in historical analysis found in much feminist literature is a caricature of traditional womanhood based on the late nineteenth-century Victorian attitude that women should stay at home, work as little as possible, and be kept in a protected, restricted, and passive state. Feminist polemics can draw a particularly vivid contrast between this late nineteenth-century view of woman and the new liberated woman of the future. It is reasonable to attack such a view of ideal womanhood, but it is not reasonable to express or presuppose that this late nineteenth-century view was the traditional view of womanhood. The non-working, passive, delicate, protected woman who always stayed at home is a bourgeois Western ideal. It grew partly out of the medieval tradition of courtly love, partly out of a trend toward domesticity in the seventeenth century, and partly out of social conditions in the nineteenth century after the first phase of industrialization had taken the world of work from the home and left the women behind. The late nineteenth-century bourgeois ideal of womanhood is hardly that of the sturdy helpmate found in scripture or in most of the history of Western society.’ (p513)

'3. The approach to the roles of men and women has to be adapted to the circumstances of the modern environment, and to the individual cultures within which that approach is lived out.

Christians must be both faithful to the basic teaching and approach of scripture and realistic about the situation in which they live. Either they have to leave technological society and form special enclaves that operate according to a different socioeconomic system (like the Amish), or they have to learn how to live as a people within technological society itself. If they choose the latter, they must, even in their family and Christian community life, adapt themselves wisely to their secular environment. Adapting to modern circumstances, however, is not the same as accepting or being formed by the principles of modern technological society. The fundamental shape of Christian community life must be determined not by “the world” (in this case, modern technological society), but by the teaching of scripture. Yet twentieth-century Christians, even when they are faithful to scriptural teaching and know how to preserve a way of life and a community that are distinctive, will look different than first-century Christians. Their way of life in community will need to be lived in a way that is viable within a modern technological society. Faithfulness and adaptation depend on many specific decisions which need the wisdom and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Neither scripture itself, nor scripture and tradition together, can provide all the needed guidelines as Christians face new situations, especially in a rapidly evolving technological society. The Christian people also need leaders who know how to lead them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These leaders must be able to teach with genuine faithfulness to the Lord’s own teaching, and teach with wisdom and discernment about how to be faithful to the same scriptural commands in different circumstances.’ (pp583-584)

‘The first step in applying the Christian teaching on men’s and women’s roles, then, is to understand God’s purpose for the human race. Christians whose sole goal is to avoid the punishment of hell and gain admittance to heaven, to believe the basic doctrines and avoid breaking the essential commandments, cannot yet fully receive and adequately respond to the scriptural teaching on men’s and women’s roles. An adequate response requires an understanding of God’s full purpose: the creation of a new human race, a new community which lives according to God’s will and teaching. Any attempt to follow scriptural teaching on men’s and women’s roles apart from such an understanding of God’s purposes will suffer from the danger of legalism.’ (p592)

'If Christians are to live as the new humanity, the body of Christ, they need to pay a certain price. They need to commit themselves fully to Christ and to one another, and they need to invest enough of their personal lives in their life together as a Christian people that a cohesive community life can be established. Some form of personal subordination must be part of this commitment. Christians must subordinate their lives to the larger body of Christ if that body is to have any unity, and they must be personally subordinate to those responsible for representing that body and drawing it together. Without such subordination, the Christian people cannot form a social grouping that can live as the body of Christ. Christians should also be separate enough from the surrounding society that they can actually become a new people. Christians who identify primarily with the surrounding society and accept its authority as higher than any Christian authority will never become significantly different from non-Christian society. They will look more like the old Adam than the new. In short, the ideal basis for living the Christian teaching on men’s and women’s roles is to form a social grouping within which that teaching can be applied and within which those following it can be supported.

In a predominantly non-Christian society, the body of Christ must live as a social grouping distinct in some way from the rest of society. However, there are still places in the world where an entire town or district or other social environment is Christian, in the sense that everyone professes Christian belief and perhaps even belongs to the same church. Christians in these places who want to live a full communal life may have to follow a slightly different approach. In such situations, forming a separate body within the society may not be the best strategy for living the life of the body of Christ. With the right circumstances, the entire environment could possibly be transformed into a full Christian community. Nonetheless, even in such situations Christians must have a clear consciousness of the difference between the Christian people and society as a whole so that they are not unknowingly formed by the influences of the broader non-Christian world. They must also be conscious of building the body of Christ, the new human race, with sufficient commitment and acceptance of Christian authority to allow the formation of a fully Christian life as a people. The dynamics may be somewhat different in an area where all or almost all the people are willing to acknowledge themselves as Christian, but the goal has to be the same.’ (pp592-593)

(emphasis mine in these quotations)

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