Charles Williams on Pastoral Ministry

I am currently preparing for the Founders’ Day Address at Union this Friday where my topic will be Charles Bray Williams who taught at Union from 1926 to 1939. He had previously served as founding professor of Biblical Greek at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (1905-1919), President of Howard College (now Samford; 1919-1921) and Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Mercer University (1921-25). He is best known for his translation of the New Testament, The New Testament Translation in the Language of the People (1937).

I have enjoyed deeply learning more about this fascinating man and all his labors. He was a good example of the combination of scholar and pastor. For now, I simply want to point out one comment from his daughter’s biography of him. She states that he,

believed strongly in a pastor’s knowing personally every member in his church, and he had a very active plan of visitation of every family in their home every few weeks.

People often say no one has ever followed Baxter in systematic visitation of his members. This is simply not true (as a variety of historical examples show). And here is one example from the 1940’s in Southern Baptist life even!

Student Responses to Baxter, 2

I am once more teaching my Pastoral Ministry class and having students read Baxter’s Reformed Pastor. Last time I posted some student responses to reading this book. Here are a few more from this years’ interaction.

“I have never understood, the way I do now, the weight and burden of taking on the responsibility of shepherding the blood bought people of God. This book has caused me to say, ‘Oh, so this is what I am supposed to do.’”

“A pastor is not someone who can just teach, but rather he is someone who has a deep care for his congregation and shows that care in the way he lives and interacts with others.”

“Nearly every sentence is directly applicable to the contemporary pastor.”

“I would have come out of this book with less had I been able to simply dash through it at a page per minute. … I was forced to work things out as I read them, forced to map out trains of thought as I went. It was very worthwhile, and I will relish reading more in the future that was written by dead holy men.”

Packer on Baxter’s Directory

The following lengthy quote is from J. I. Packer’s introduction to Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory.. The task of writing an encyclopedia entry on Baxter has given me opportunity to delve some more into the man who in the eyes of many embodies the oversight of souls. This quote provides a great contrast between the pastoral teaching of Baxter and much of what passes for instruction today.

“From this standpoint it is possible to see clearly the difference between the ‘how-to’ books that today’s evangelicals write for each other and the ‘how-to’ teaching of the Directory, which is so much wiser and digs so much deeper. Our ‘how-to’s’ – how to have a wonderful family, great sex, financial success, in a Christian way; how to cope with grief, life-passages, crises, fears, frustrating relationships, and what not else – give us formulae to be followed by a series of supposedly simple actions on our part, to be carried out in obedience to instructions in the manner of a person painting by numbers or activating a computer. Wisdom in role-play is all; ‘heart-work’ hardly comes into it. This wisdom is in Baxter, too, though usually in a more sober, searching, shrewd form than we superficial moderns attain to; but his ‘how-to’s’ are regularly concerned with the ‘heart-work’ that is involved in doing what has to be done with the glory of God as your goal, and love and compassion for the needy other as your motive, and a passion for holiness as your driving desire, and a vivid sense of spiritual conflict keeping you humbly distrustful of yourself, and constantly watchful against Satan’s devices, and deeply dependent on Christ every moment. Only a little thought about the models of godliness set forth in the Psalms and the moral teachings of the Epistles is needed to convince one that Baxter and the Puritans were right to zero in on the ‘heart-work’ of right action, and that our generation has been terribly wrong to neglect it. Had we remembered that what makes good works good, according to the Scriptures, is a right form, fixed by law and wisdom, allied to right desires, fixed by the gospel, we might have been spared the egocentric, zany, simplistic, degenerate, half-magic-spell type of evangelicalism which is all that the world sees when it watches religious TV or looks directly at the professedly evangelical community. Such evangelicalism neither honors God nor blesses man. Back to Baxter! would make a good and healthful motto for the Christian leadership of our time.”

Baxter and the Dangers of Pride

I am convinced that one of the major problems in contemporary American Christianity is pride. I think this is the case in the workings of my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. We so easily cave to the allure of the praise of men. Early we learn that the way forward is to lavish human-centered praise, and we learn to gauge our progress by the amount of exuberant praise received. I need often to be reminded of the Bible’s rebuke of such ways, and historical examples help me.

It is said that after Richard Baxter received a letter full of praise to him, he responded by writing, “I have the remainders of pride in me; how dare you blow up the sparks of it?” While we need not be unkind to those who wish to express appreciation, we can learn from this example of “self-watch” (Baxter’s term). I would dare say that today you are more likely in the circles of church leadership to be rebuked (or ignored, overlooked) for failing to express enough praise than for fawning.

Let us be quick to give appreciation and thanks, but let us be measured and not exaggerated. Love for our brother will call for us to encourage him with thanks, but it will also call for us to be careful about kindling the sparks of arrogance that lie within his heart just as within ours.