Epilogue: The Puritan Pastor's Programme
EPILOGUE
THE PURITAN PASTOR’S PROGRAMME
I
It is a truth periodically voiced by a few, though rarely heeded by the many, that the church of God on earth, always and everywhere, is just one generation from extinction. Shocking as this may sound, it is not a dictum that is difficult to defend. Should clergy no longer spend their strength teaching the faith, preaching the gospel, and seeking the salvation of souls; should believing parents no longer labour to share their faith with their children, and believers with their neighbours; should the practice of evangelism be abandoned; should the Bible and Christian books be left around the house unread; and should church people settle for being the nicest persons in the world according to the world’s specifications; how long do you think the church would remain a going concern? More than a generation? I doubt it. And have you not noticed that much of Western Christianity is currently treading this path to extinction? It seems clearly so to me. What then can stop the rot and turn the tide? One thing only, in my view: a renewed embrace of the Puritan ideal of ministerial service. Without this, nothing can stop the drift downhill.
In saying this, I target specifically what I call the Old West: that is, the primary Protestant groupings from Reformational days, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian and Baptist, in Western Europe, North America, Australasia and South Africa. In central Africa and Asia, it would seem that the Puritan ideal has already been learned from the Scriptures and is being actively implemented in face of much hostility and heavy cultural opposition, particularly from Islam. But now contrast that with our post-Christian, secularised, materialistic, arrogant, drifting Western world. Here the Christian message is mocked, the church is marginalised and ghettoised, and too many clergy persons see their role in explicitly defensive terms, as keeping the institutional wheels going round, if they can, and keeping their congregations feeling good, again if they can. Some find these tasks beyond them; then funding fails, buildings close, congregations disperse, and they themselves move out of pastoral ministry to attempt something else. Others soldier on to retirement, and finish their course thankful for their pensions and otherwise carefree. Meantime, however, the overall situation remains dire, and the sense that as congregations grow older and smaller the church slides further into terminal decline becomes stronger and stronger.
It would seem that the clergy, the church’s spiritual leaders, have largely lost their way, and when the leadership loses its way there is small hope for the rank and file. Now what I urge here is that the Puritan ideal for pastors, which, judged by the New Testament Scriptures on which it is based, has classic status in itself, is the foundational reality on which all ventures in church renewal must be based, otherwise they will fail continually until finally all is lost. Let me try to justify this opinion as I close.
II
How should we formulate for ourselves the Puritan pastoral ideal? The foregoing pages have already blocked it in general terms, but for the acme of full-scale, crystallised precision on this, as on so many other matters, we cannot do better than turn to John Owen, by common consent the greatest Puritan theologian and perhaps the greatest British theologian of all time. In a chapter entitled, ‘The especial duty of pastors of churches,’ in his late treatise, The True Nature of a Gospel Church (1689), he sets out the pastor’s God-taught job description as follows:
The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the Word ... . A man is a pastor unto them whom he feeds by pastoral teaching ...
Sundry things are required unto this work and duty of pastoral preaching; as, – (1) Spiritual wisdom and understanding in the mysteries of the gospel ... (2) Experience of the power of the truth which they preach in and upon their own souls. Without this they will themselves be lifeless and heartless ... a man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul ... If the Word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us. (3) Skill to divide the Word aright, 2 Tim. 2:15; and this consists in a practical wisdom, upon a diligent attendance unto the Word of truth, to find out what is real, substantial and meet food for the souls of the hearers, – to give unto all sorts of persons in the church that which is their proper portion. And this requires, (4) A prudent and diligent consideration of the state of the flock ... as unto their strength or weakness, their growth or defect in knowledge (the measure of their attainments requiring either milk or strong meat), their temptings and duties, their spiritual decays or thrivings; and that not only in general, but, as near as may be, with respect unto all the individual members of the church ... And, (5) All these ... are to be constantly accompanied with the evidence of zeal for the glory of God and compassion for the souls of men. Where these are not in vigorous exercise in the minds and souls of them that preach the Word, giving a demonstration of themselves unto the consciences of them that hear, the quickening form, the life and soul of preaching, is lost.
(1) To be able rightly to understand the various cases that will occur of this kind ... A skill, understanding and experience, in the whole nature of the work of the Spirit of God on the souls of men, of the conflict that is between the flesh and the Spirit, of the methods and wiles of Satan, of the wiles of principalities and powers or wicked spirits, of the nature and effects and ends, of divine desertions, with wisdom to ... fit medicines and remedies unto every sore and distemper, are required hereunto ...
(2) To be ready and willing to attend unto the especial cases that may be brought unto them ...
(3) To bear patiently and tenderly with the weakness, ignorance, dullness, slowness to believe and receive satisfaction, yea, it may be, impertinencies, in them that are so tempted ...
In the discharge of the whole pastoral office, there is not anything of duty that is of more importance, nor wherein the Lord Jesus Christ is more concerned ... than this is ...
11. That ... without which all the rest will neither be useful unto men nor be accepted with the great Shepherd, Christ Jesus ... is, a humble, holy exemplary conversation, in all godliness and honesty.1
III
It was, I think, James Moffatt who spoke of ‘the dark grey pool of Owen’s ratiocination;’ and, whoever it was, the phrase is a perfect fit. Owen’s laborious sentence structure and his preference for matter-of-fact words that lack colour makes him perhaps the least attractive of Puritan writers. Anyone attuned to the lively rhetoric of today will always find reading Owen to be a demanding exercise. But in analytical precision, thoroughness and weight, even at the cost of some redundancy, Owen stands supreme. My slimmed-down reproduction above of his account of pastoral duty indicates the magisterial quality of his mind, and though his style is academic and cool, what he says has an authenticity that reflects the years in pastoral ministry (at Fordham and Coggeshall) with which his public ministry began. Nor is he at any point out of the Puritan mainstream. This can be seen by comparing his survey with the outline of chapter 2, ‘The Oversight of the Flock,’ in Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, as laid out on the contents pages of William Brown’s edition of the work. Baxter wrote in 1656, Owen some thirty years later, but the correspondence in thought is remarkable.
THE OVERSIGHT OF THE FLOCK
Section 1: The Nature of this Oversight
THIS OVERSIGHT EXTENDS TO ALL THE FLOCK
Section 2: The Manner of this Oversight
THE MINISTERIAL WORK MUST BE CARRIED ON
Section 3: The Motives to this Oversight
John Owen and Richard Baxter disagreed on some secondary matters relating to the organising of churches in the England of their day and the exact stating of the doctrine of God’s grace, but on the ideal of pastoral ministry, as the above extracts show, they saw in effect eye to eye. For both of them, the presbyteral vocation was the living out of a sustained and all-absorbing dedication to the love and service of a holy, gracious, sovereign God and of needy people to whom the presbyter must reach out as God’s commissioned agent. The pastor should see himself as a man set apart to preach Bible truth, to teach Christ and to counsel the spiritually perplexed by the light of the written Word; to convert, nurture, watch over and care for sinners; to pray for them, bring wisdom to them, model godliness before them, and lead them into and in doxology, fidelity, purity, humility, maturity, and joy in Christ; and to fight in whatever way particular situations might require for the fullness and forthrightness of the faith. I began this Epilogue by asking: can the church survive without pastors of this quality today, fulfilling their ministry according to Puritan specifications? I leave my readers to ponder this question as now I close.3
1 John Owen, Works, ed. William H. Goold (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1968), XVI: pp. 74-89.
2 Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, ed. William Brown (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), pp. 28-29.
3 The following, from Owen p. 89, written in the 1680s, merits thought: ‘The present ruin of religion, as unto its power, beauty and glory, in all places, ariseth principally from this cause, that multitudes of those who undertake this office [i.e. become pastors] are neither in any measure fit for it, nor do either conscientiously attend unto or diligently perform the duties that belong unto it. It ever was and ever will be true in general, “Like priest, like people.”’