It is a widely felt need this matter of pastoral leadership, pastoral counseling, pastoral procedures, the pastoral heart, and pastoral equipment for skillful service.
Many an earnest minister is placed in a position of pastoral responsibility who readily realizes he has had but little training for the solemn duties he is called upon to perform. Immediately he looks about for help. The urgency of his task grows upon him. He would quickly acquire knowledge of the best methods of shepherding the flock of God.
The best forms of service, the most effective methods of ministry, the making central of the Word of God, fruitful visitation, the ministry to the sick—how he longs to increase his efficiency in all directions at once. He will eagerly reach out for every aid he can find to enlarge his usefulness. He wants to correct his deficiencies, improve his procedures, amplify his power in preaching, increase his wisdom in winning souls, and advance toward perfection, wanting nothing. He may discover that he needs to rearrange his whole intellectual furniture and ministerial equipment.
One of our chief weaknesses has lain in pastoral theology. Our teaching tends to the theoretical and hortatory, not the practical and helpful. Practical theology has often, instead of dealing with cases, methods, procedures, and standards, been presented quite impractically. What we have needed is technical helps, specializing on the details of The minister's life and the everyday demands of his office. We can never have too many of them, for our need is a continuing one. Some have been prepared, but more are needed.
The volume on Pastoral Work, by Andrew W. Blackwood, of Princeton Theological Seminary, is more than a classroom text. It is practical. It uses cases from life. The theories it presents do not grow from theories. They have been developed from experience. Each proposal has come from the field. His practical philosophy is not that of an armchair dreamer.
Dr. Blackwood has been a pastor and has drawn largely from his own experience.. He has been an observer and has watched shepherds at work among flocks large and small. From a boyhood in the home of a "horse-and-buggy" doctor, he has been projected into almost every kind of field except among the very rich.
As a teacher he studied the literature of the subject. He knows how to present it with satisfying clarity and impressiveness. He deals with the things that should matter most in the Work of a pastor.
The pastor who has advanced in experience and has acquired ease in his work and ability will realize that nothing else is so vital as ever-enlarged efficiency. He will appreciate this part of the 1946 Ministerial Reading Course. The pastor just beginning, as he needs it more, will appreciate it more. The theological student, getting ready for his lifework, will look into its sage counsel eagerly. And it will bring real help to each.
It is a solemn thing to be a minister of Jesus Christ. We have come to the biggest hour the world has ever known for preaching. We have to deliver to men the most stupendous announcement of all history. We deal with the eternal destinies of human souls. On what we say and how we say it, on what we do and how we do it, depends the decision whether many a person shall spend the eternal ages in the earth made new, or be cast into outer darkness. Pregnant with the greatest issues of human life is the solemn work of God's servants today. We do not dare to take our calling lightly.
The sacred vocation to which a pastor has been called requires all the energies, all the capacities, all the devotion, all the possibilities, all the time, all the possessions, all the requirements any man of God has now, or, ever can obtain, to be given over, without any reserve whatever, to the accomplishment of the noblest work to which any human being has ever been called.
In this book there is help. Study it diligently, absorb it fully, use it wisely.