Pastor Like It’s AD 299

Works like Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor and Charles Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students are commonplace reading recommendations for aspiring pastors. Rightly so. Spurgeon’s book is more than a century old, and Baxter’s dates to the 1600s. While the books may be theologically familiar, their age helps us look beyond the ecclesiology of our cultural moment—or at least keeps us from being too mesmerized by it.

In Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers, Coleman Ford, assistant professor of humanities at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Shawn Wilhite, associate professor of New Testament at California Baptist University, take us back even further to ministry models from ancient pastors who were as close to the age of the apostles as we are to the Reformation. Christian pastors from that patristic era may feel completely foreign to us. We’ve gratefully received much of our orthodox doctrine from them, but pastoral wisdom? They lived in a world with challenges and concerns that don’t feel as pressing to us. So they seem less equipped to help us with ministry. Yet Ford and Wilhite show how these pastors offer wisdom for contemporary pastoral practice.

Pursue Wisdom and Virtue

The early church fathers offer pastoral wisdom for today’s church because the core of being a pastor isn’t bounded by time and place. Through theological retrieval pastors can creatively draw from the past to influence the present. For example, retrieving insights from the church fathers can “correct three misunderstandings regarding the nature of ministry today”—the pastor as CEO, an obsession with numerical success, and pragmatism over sound doctrine (9–10).

Contemporary ministry models often place personalities or programs and systems at the church’s center. These models assume that spiritual practices exist beneath the constant grind of scheduled activities. Pastoral skills have always been important, but the early church fathers recognized that spiritual virtue and theological faithfulness are the foundation. For example, the virtue of humility was at the core of Basil’s ministry because it was key to “unlocking [the] divine glory” every human lost through the fall (25). Similarly, pastors like Gregory of Nyssa pursued “Trinitarian spirituality,” which highlights the fruit of the Spirit and the soul’s ascent to God (36–37). For these fathers, being a pastor was more about holiness than effective management.

Being a pastor was more about holiness than being effective management.

Yet ancient pastors had to do more than cultivate their own piety. Origen of Alexandria’s life highlights the importance of skilled pastoral ministry as well. The fathers believed that as the pastor fosters virtue in his life and the lives of his hearers, he hones the “skills (exegetical, theological, pastoral)” necessary to “apply the right medicines” to life’s various personal and pastoral ailments (77, 81).

Establish a Theological Vision

Pastors can’t do ministry off the cuff. They must ground their efforts in a theological vision anchored in Scripture. According to Ford and Wilhite, Irenaeus of Lyons was “an excellent model of the biblical pastor. He was attuned to the depth and spiritual vitality of Scripture, the lifeblood of the Christian” (99–100). This is where the theological vision of pastoral ministry must begin. Likewise, for Athanasius of Alexandria, Christ-centeredness resulted in fighting for orthodox Christian belief. It also enabled a Christ-centered spirituality, reminding us “the Christian hope is not found in the latest church program but in the eternal person of Christ” (134). Similarly, Augustine of Hippo used his theological insights to help the congregation become more spiritually mature.

The virtues and theological vision of ancient pastors were enabled by and resulted in particular ministerial practices. For example, Gregory the Great—whose Pastoral Rule should be required reading for all pastors—exemplified a contemplative approach to ministry. He demonstrated how “silence and solitude . . . can provide a much-needed corrective to our obsession with busyness” (182). And John Chrysostom embodies the ability to “faithfully preach in [his] unique context” (205). He preached eloquently but in a way that communicated truth effectively to his people.

Learn a Lesson in Proportion

In perusing Ancient Wisdom’s table of contents, one might wonder if Wilhite and Ford could’ve written a chapter on “the political pastor,” discussing an early apologist less prone to fall into political idolatry than some in our time. Or, perhaps, they could have written on “the mentoring pastor,” drawing on the ministry of Cyprian of Carthage to discuss the importance of raising faithful ministers to serve the church in the ways promoted in this book. While such topics are important in their own right, this book’s selectivity undergirds its greatest strength: its sense of proportion.

Pastoral skills have always been important, but the early church recognized that spiritual virtue and theological faithfulness are the foundation.

Though the book offers advice to pastors, it contains few “practical tips” for ministry. Instead, the authors, like Paul, encourage pastors to “keep a close watch on [themselves] and on the teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16). According to Paul, that’s the real key to pastoral success. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the complexities of pastoral ministry. Instead, as the pastor digs a deep well of virtue and biblical-theological clarity in himself and his hearers, the church draws from that well as needs arise.

Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls shows that the church fathers are an invaluable resource for the contemporary church. Though few can hope to attain Chrysostom’s preaching prowess, Augustine’s theological acumen, or Athanasius’s tested courage, these heroes of the faith give us something to aspire to. As such, this book is an invaluable resource for retrieving the past as a way forward for today’s church.

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