Visit the Sick

Visit the Sick: Ministering God's Grace in Times of Illness, by Brian Croft
(Day One Publications, 2008), pb., 92 pp.

I was very pleased recently to receive a copy of this book and to see that it was now available. It was my privilege to read a pre-publication copy of it and to write a commendation for the book. Here is my blurb found in the book:

“Visit the Sick is an excellent and much-needed resource today when the actual practice of ‘shepherding souls’ is so often neglected. Many younger pastors (and not so young ones as well) have never received the sort of very practical guidance which Brian Croft gives in this book. This book has the potential to be a great blessing to pastors and those they shepherd. It will now be a recommended text in my Pastoral Ministries class and I heartily commend it to others.”

Brian Croft is pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, where former students of mine and former members of our church are members and serve. Brian is a faithful pastor who seeks to oversee souls, and he has particular experience in this realm of visiting the sick (as Mark Dever discusses in the foreword).

Visiting the sick used to be one of the top things thought of in pastoral ministry but today it is often overlooked or shuffled off to others as much as possible. This ought not be the case. Even as we hold up the importance of preaching and teaching, we may not neglect shepherding such as in this area. This is not what was done by those who went before us.

I commend this book to all pastors. Brian Croft has done us a great service.