Topic Archives: Pastoral Theology/Pastoral Helps

This is the text of an address delivered at the Leicester Ministers’ Conference, 28 April, 2012. It is included, along with four other addresses, in Iain H. Murray’s Evangelical Holiness and Other Addresses. J. Gresham Machen once wrote: ‘If we are going to avoid controversy, we might as well close our Bibles; for the New […]

The following post first appeared (on October 24, 2016) on www.reformation21.org, a blog run by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is posted here with their kind permission. After a cracking day at the Evangelical Library in London on “Reading John Owen” (opening, it has to be said, with Nigel Graham giving what may be […]

The following extract is taken from Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, pages 249–273.  Note to the reader: before this section, Baxter spends time considering how a minister may winsomely prevail upon his people to submit to being catechised. With this treated of, he proceeds to outline how a shepherd of God’s flock can best carry […]

In the recovery of biblical exposition that has marked the church in our own time, it has not always been recognized that in addition to such exposition the Reformers and Puritans placed great stress on catechizing. We tend to think of this as children learning catechetical questions and answers by rote. But what the Puritans […]

The following extract is taken from Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (256 pages, £5.75), pages 168–177. The Duty of Personal Catechising and Instructing the Flock Particularly Recommended Having disclosed and lamented our miscarriages and neglects, our duty for the future lies plain before us. God forbid that we should now go on in the sins […]

This review of The Pastor: His Call, Character, and Work first appeared in Ordained Servant: A Journal for Church Officers (2022 edition) published by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The Pastor: His Call, Character, and Work, by Faculty and Friends of ‘Old’ Princeton. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2020, x + 272 pages, $20.00. From time […]

This review was first published in the 2022 edition of the New Horizons magazine and has been shared with permission. * * * The Lord Jesus once said, ‘every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old’ (Matt. 13:52). The treasures from […]

If you would strengthen your faith to suffer great and hard things, study much the book of the Revelation, which is a standing cordial for the relief of the saints, in anti-christian times; and study and read and commend to your children, the Book of Martyrs, where you have examples to the life of the […]

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in Kelvedon, a village in the county of Essex in the east of England, on 19 June, 1834. He went to be with Christ from Mentone, France, on the evening of Sunday 31 January, 1892. During his lifetime he became perhaps the greatest preacher in the English-speaking world, of his […]

Beloved Brother, I write to you, August 5, 1836, in the seventieth year of my age, and in the fiftieth of my ministry, after conversing much with ministerial brethren, earnestly desiring to see our associational union brought into action by representatives of the churches, with a view to promote a determination — 1. To bear […]

Researchers are taking notice of a disturbing trend: children are spending less and less time outdoors. A recent survey of two thousand parents and children in the United Kingdom found that ‘the average child between 6 and 16 years old spends only an hour a day outside.’ The summary of the study says, ‘Believe it […]

Every employment has its own particular perils and pitfalls, occupational hazards which are simply attendant on fulfilling the task in hand. In this post I want to share three healthy and holy fears which should characterise the mind and heart of a faithful minister. These are not the pathological fears which seize all of our […]

Scottish evangelical Christianity represents a tradition of biblically faithful, theologically rich, and spiritually powerful devotion and ministry. I think, for example, of William Still, Eric Alexander, and Sinclair Ferguson as outstanding representatives of this glorious tradition. And I can’t think of these men and others like them and what they stand for without emotion. So […]

Leadership in the church is so important that we should be prepared to go to great lengths to see future leaders of the church trained. In the final letter that we have from the apostle Paul, written in a lonely prison cell in Rome while he was expecting death for the sake of the gospel, […]

Almost two years ago I shared 15 reasons why visitation is good for your Pastor (you can read it here). At the time it was so fulfilling to talk to people about what I’d written, both online and in the real world, and to feel a sense of conviction about my own pastoral practice in […]