Without a doubt, there are two books that every pastor should read:?The approved pastor? Richard Baxter and the pastor as a public theologian?By Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan. With different and unambiguous proposals, these books help us in pastoral care in a brilliant way.
Richard Baxter writes with particular concern, the special care of the whole herd. His book was motivated by a meeting of pastors in Worcester on December 4, 1655, to agree to catechist each member in their respective churches. Due to his illness, Baxter was unable to attend, but left this rare jewel written with his opinions for these workers.
- What makes Baxter’s book even more valuable is that he writes not only from biblical principles.
- But also from his own experience with his congregation.
- See his story:.
“We spend Mondays and Tuesdays, from morning to dusk, involving about fifteen or sixteen families, every week, in this catechism. With two attendees, we travel extensively through the congregation of about eight hundred families and teach each family throughout the year. Not a single family refused to visit me at my request, and I see more external signs of success in which they come than in all my public preaching. The big number forces me to take one whole family at a time, one hour each. The church clerk comes forward, one week in advance, to arrange route schedules and schedules. Do I also take notes of what each family member has learned to consistently continue and teach?(p. 31).
Baxter’s concern arises later: “[Those] who have listened to me for eight or ten years still don’t know if Christ is God or man. They are amazed when I tell them about his birth, his life and his death. They still don’t know that children have original sin. Neither do they know the nature of repentance, faith, or holiness that is required of them? (p. 173). His call is that we follow the example of Christ who used dialogue to preach to his disciples; Paul who preached and taught everyone not to render their work useless (Gal 2. 2) and gave personal instructions (jailer in Acts 16); of Peter who, while publicly preaching in Jerusalem to a multitude (Acts 2), also preached to Cornelius and his friends (Acts 10); Filipe, who personally disciplined the eunuch (Acts 16); among others. The author understood that pastoral care consists of caring for the entire flock through personal catechesis (Acts 20:28), without exception. He goes on to say that the size of the flock must be determined by the number of shepherds. Couldn’t everyone be pastoralized if there are not enough pastors in the church, or if the congregation is small enough to allow pastoral care for each member? (p. 110).
The basic verse of all Baxter’s arguments is Acts 20:28: “Take care of yourself and the whole flock upon which the Holy Ghost put you as bishops, to graze the church of God, which you bought with your own blood. “First part of the book destined for the heart of the shepherd himself?Take care?. Baxter is interested in the character of the worker and the need for him to have experienced divine grace in his own life, and even makes a courageous plea for the public repentance of the shepherds to their congregations if they have not lived exemplaryly. The second and third part of the book are devoted to the other half of the verse: “And the whole flock”. The author manages to be a little repetitive and neat to constantly emphasize the pastoral need and the obligation to take personal care of all his people.
Undoubtedly, Baxter’s book is a warning to all of us, ministers of the gospel, so that we do not lose track of our journey. Now is there a sinful tendency in the ministry to worry about the church only as an institution or?Departmentalize the ministry in several areas. It is common to see pastors only as preachers or administrators. Pastors no longer know the names of their members, they no longer pray for them and do not get involved in the lives of their sheep. We have lost the essence of pastoral ministry!
If Baxter’s book calls us to personal care for the flock, Vanhoozer and Strachan’s book calls us to the need to be good theologians. His concern is that theology has been separated from pastoral ministry: “Is there a pastor and a theologian here?(P. 13), two different and anti-list things of a single shepherd. What God has united, the separated man, and the concern of the authors is that the “theologian of the academic world” risks becoming a disembodied spirit?And that “theological spirits [must belong] to ecclesiastical bodies”?(p. 15). If theology continues in? Exile?(p. 18), the church will become a “dry land”, a place where it is not possible” to cultivate or develop something?”(p. 19).
Vanhoozer identifies a current problem in pastoral ministry, distorted images of this ministry: “Leadership, Executive Director, Psychotherapeutic Guru, Political Agitator, Teacher, Awakening Preacher, Builder, Moral Trainer, Community Activist”, among others. this mistake is to answer your crucial question: “What do pastors have to say and make it their own role?”(p. 26). The author sums up his argument like this: “First, pastors are and have always been theologians. Second, each theologian is, in a sense, a public theologian, a particular type of intellectual, a specific class of generalists. [?] Third, the pastor-theologian’s purpose as a public intellectual is to serve God’s people, building them in the “faith given to the saints once and for all” (p. 36).
By “theologian”, the author suggests that his main role is to “say what God does in Christ for the world”. “Public” means that “pastors work with god’s public and in their name, for God’s sake. “the public/people everywhere”. Finally?Intellectual?is “a specific form of generalist who knows how to link great truths to real people. “Vanhoozer believes that pastors should be ahead of congregations and for that they must be rooted in the gospel and culturally competent. Should he be an organic intellectual, who clearly sets out the needs, beliefs and aspirations of the social group to which he belongs, that is, “brings to the level of discourse the doctrines and desires of the community”.
In the book “The Pastor as a Public Theologian” it is worth noting two points: the first is that among the chapters of the book, the authors put the “pastoral perspectives”, articles of several pastors that address, from the biblical experience and exegesis, important Another highlight is chapter 2, written by Owen Strachan, on “a brief history of pastoral ministry”. The author traces a brilliant historical panorama of theological shepherds, from Ireneu de Lio (130-200 AD) to the present day. , highlighting the great names of our faith as examples of ministry. The intention of this chapter is to demonstrate that the Christian Church has always believed that pastors should be good theologians in the service of the local Church. According to the author, it was not so, until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that pastors granted academics the status of intellectual leaders, abandoning much of the range of disciplines that the Christ of Kuyper (and Edwards) had claimed!??(p. 122).
I have one last observation about the two books. The need we have to consider these two works is that, although at the same time they refer to different areas of pastoral care, these areas go hand in hand!Baxter invites us to personally care for the flock, Vanhoozer and Owen teach us that without public theology, our ministerial service will be compromised.
We must not decide which way to choose, we must take both. Without one of these? Wings, our flight will lose its course and what awaits us is the crash.