Book Review: “The Unhurried Pastor"

BOOK REVIEW

“The Unhurried Pastor: Redefining Productivity for a More Sustainable Ministry”

By Brian Croft and Ronnie Martin

Published by The Good Book Company, 2024

I started and finished this book over the course of two evenings. I am not a fast reader by any metric, but I just couldn’t put this one down. It probably didn’t hurt that I also had just began a six-week sabbatical, the purpose of which is for me and my family to find some much-needed rest from ministry and sweet refreshment in the Lord. Since my sabbatical started I have been actively focused on trying to get “unhurried” (is that a real word?), so finding a book entitled The Unhurried Pastor was like a thirsty man finding a sign for water.

The real question though was whether this book would be more than just a great title. Does the sign actually point people to real, thirst-quenching water? Do Brian Croft and Ronnie Martin actually, in The Unhurried Pastor, lead readers/pastors deeper into the unhurried ministry?

Before they dive in to the deep stuff, Croft and Martin lay out their thesis for the book, and it goes like this: to redefine how the work of a pastor is done so that it will lead to joy and longevity for the pastor.[1] In the pages that follow, in an attempt to fulfill that statement, they work through eleven different subjects, most of which are spiritual practices, and a few that one might call spiritual traits or attitudes (i.e. hopefulness, humility, etc.). These eleven are the keys. Croft and Martin believe sincerely, as comes through in their writing, that wholeheartedly engaging with and living out these eleven practices and traits are what will inevitably lead pastors to that joy and longevity that so often seems to be missing from pastoral work.

As far as I can tell, all that Croft and Martin are doing in these eleven chapters is reminding pastors of what matters. They are helping re-prioritize. Through personal pastoral stories (which are powerfully told), together with the Scriptures, they lead readers into seeing what the pastoral life (if not simply the Christian life) should be consumed with, and what it has unfortunately become consumed with in the name of productivity. The chapters are so simple. That’s what makes for a quick read. And yet they are deeply convicting and hope-giving, which is why it should probably be a slow read.

I have got to say, it is a bold move to put the word redefine in the thesis of your book. After so many centuries of pastoral work being done and so many books having been written about it, are Croft and Martin really the ones who are going to redefine it or even a piece of it? It sounds crazy, but according to their own words, that is what they set out to do. Now here is the even crazier thing: I think they did it. At the very least, for me, they contributed something significant, probably much to the chagrin of some in my congregation, to the redefining of my pastoral work. I say contributed because some of that redefining in my life and ministry began with the writings of Eugene Peterson, and has now been taking further by The Unhurried Pastor.

My only grievance with the book, I wish that they had included more Eugene Peterson in it! Perhaps because Peterson has been so impactful in my own understanding of pastoral work, I do wish he had come up more. Of course it is noted in the introduction what an inspiration he was to the project, and that inspiration and influence is obvious throughout all of the pages. But I went in expecting his writings to pop up on more pages. Obviously though, I realize that this is an unfair criticism. If I wanted to read Eugene Peterson, then I should go and read Eugene Peterson.

All in all, this was a great read. For pastors, for anyone in vocational ministry, and even for Christians outside of it, I cannot recommend this book enough. When my sabbatical began, I was aware of the need for re-prioritizing. My pastoral life has not always (and especially lately) been sustainable and honestly not always too joyful either. What I was unaware of was has how exactly to re-prioritize it. The Unhurried Pastor has been a gift to my soul in this way, and it came right at my time of greatest need. Croft and Martin have blessed me beyond on measure, or rather, the Lord through them.

[1] Brian Croft and Ronnie Martin, The Unhurried Pastor: Redefining Productivity for a More Sustainable Ministry (The Good Book Company: Charlotte, 2024), 13.

Book Recommendations: 4 Books on the Church

There are lots of good books on the structure, purpose and practice of the church. Here are four of my favourites.

1. Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time by Marva J. Dawn.

This book is getting old, but it has aged well. Dawn’s insights into solving our worship wars, and her sketch of biblical, corporate worship is just as relevant today as it was in 1995. Perhaps the strongest part of Reaching Out is her discussion of music, preaching, Scripture readings, rituals, liturgies, art and other worship practices and her advice for making these practices God glorifying and people edifying.

2. In Good Company: The Church as Polis by Stanley Hauerwas.

A heavier read than Dawn’s book, but no less excellent if one is up for the task. Hauerwas brilliantly and biblically explores the beliefs and practices that are a part of the Church’s identity, and that serve to separate her from the world. A warning to the reader, Hauerwas examines the protestant and the catholic church in his study.

3. A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship by Michael Horton

Horton never disappoints in his unrelenting concentration on Scripture. In A Better Way Horton makes the biblical case that the Preached Word and the administered sacraments are the means of Grace which God has chosen to use to save the His people. An especially important read for everyone who belongs to the church and to a church. Even if you are not reformed, as Horton is, I am sure you will find his explanation of biblical worship persuasive, inspiring and applicable.

4. Christ, Baptism and The Lord's Supper: Recovering the Sacraments For Evangelical Worship by Leanord J. Vander Zee

The title says it all. Vander Nee takes on baptism and the Lord’s supper, attempting to explain the deeper biblical meaning of both. This book is a gift to the church, since most people in the church, pastors included, seem to misunderstand or at least lack an in-depth understanding of these practices. As a pastor himself, Vander Zee carefully guides pastors and lay people into a fuller and more Christ centred view of worship.

Book Review: "The Soul-Winning Church"

“The Soul Winning Church: Six Keys to Fostering a Genuine Evangelistic Community” by J.A. Medders and Doug Logan Jr. The Good Book Company, 2024.

I am probably the thousandth person by now to make a post like this about the “Soul-Winning Church,” but I have to say it. This book was fantastic. It was to my heart what kerosene is to a fire. Fuel!

I have lived and pastored for a long time now with an always increasing frustration and confusion as to why our churches aren’t making more disciples. Why are the baptismal waters so still? Why is so much church growth dependent on other church’s decline? What are we doing wrong or missing all together? What needs to change? I have walked around with these questions swirling around in my head, but not ever really being able to put them into words, let alone find their corresponding answers. And then this book showed up in the mail.

In only 164 pages (making it super accessible and easy to hand out to almost anyone) Medders and Logan do a massive job, and they do it well. They give hope to pastors like me that our little churches can be soul-winning churches; that evangelism can be ingrained in the culture of our churches and not just be another category of ministry, and that we can love the people that come from other places, without settling for transfer growth as the ultimate means of growth.

Medders and Logan identify in the book six key areas of focus for becoming a church that reaches the lost. Each key is just as convicting, convincing and compelling as the next, well at the same time being so obviously biblical. I am not lying when I tell you that I only made it through chapter one before stopping to spend the next week reflecting on the first key and laying out plans for walking through the chapter with my elders at our next meeting (which is exactly what we did).

I think if you’re a pastor you need to read this. I think if your plumber you need to read this. I think that this book needs to be read by home groups, men’s groups, women’s groups, youth groups, and by everyone else in the church that’s not in a group. At the end of the day, I don’t think that I am the only one feeling this perplexing frustration about the lack of souls being won. Something is missing, and Medders and Logan identify that missing piece. They remind readers how central soul-winning is to the mission of the church, and then they go to work on equipping the church for that mission.

We have got to be churches that are consumed with winning souls, because Christ is consumed with winning souls! And if there is a book that can play even the smallest part in further fueling that passion and preparing Christians to walk it out, then in my mind, that is a must read.

As Spurgeon writes (and as Medders and Logan quote him saying), “Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; indeed, it should be the main pursuit of every believer. We should each say with Simon peter, “I go afishing,” and with Paul our aim should be, “That I might by all means save some.”[1]

Grab it, read it, and lets go!

[1] C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Savio (Fleming H. Revell. 1895), p 9.

Book Review: "Honor"

“Honor” by Adam Ramsey. The Good Book Company, 2024.

I have been so encouraged, inspired, challenged and fed by The Good Book Company’s “Love Your Church” series. Every book that has come out in this series so far has been a gift to me both as pastor and simply as another Christian disciple. They are short enough to be quick reads, but dense enough to have substance. Rich with Scripture and biblical insights, and ascetically pleasing too!

All that to say, as I picked up Adam Ramsey’s latest contribution to the series I had high expectations, and they were absolutely met.

As the title suggests, Ramsey writes on the topic of honor. His main ambition in the book is to paint for readers a biblical picture of what honor is supposed to look like in the Church and in the lives of believers. Of course that sounds simple enough, but it may just highlight for you how little you actually understand honor as it is defined and described in the Bible (at least that’s what it did for me).

While defining honor Ramsey at the same time casts a vision for what an honouring church could and should look like. What does a church look like that properly honors God, that has an honorable witness, that honors its leaders, that is led by honorable leaders?

Let me just say, that I needed this book. In my home, in my community and in my church, I fail on a weekly basis to honor others, lead honorably and to give all honor to God. Ramsey spoke so clearly to the shortfalls in my life when it comes to honor. More than that though he stirred in me something that needed to be stirred up; a conviction and a passion to want to be an honorable and honoring Christian and pastor, leading an honourable and honoring Church.

The Church as the People of God

What is the church?

I grew up in a Christian family, and so the language of the church was all around me. And as far I understood it the church was a building, and it was a service. It was a literal place I went to and a weekly event I attended. This definition served me well up until eventually I started to look through scripture and realized that were no mentions of church strictly as a service or a building. Obviously, this realization was perplexing, and so I searched the scriptures even more, asking, “Well ok, what is the church then if not a service and a building?” But this new question brought me another realization, that the Bible actually never says, “This is the Church…” A clear definition is never given. Though that is not say that God is silent on the church. He is anything but silent. He just speaks about in ways that are slightly more hidden or that require a closer look.

There are really two main ways that God speaks about His church in the New Testament: marks and metaphors; this is what the Church is like, and these are the marks or the fingerprints that church must have. So, I want to look briefly at some of those marks and metaphors, though before I do that I will try to give a simple and biblical definition of the church. The New Testament word that we translate as church is the Greek word ekklesia, which just means assembly or legislative body. It is a people or group with shared beliefs and/or a common identity. When it comes to the Christian body then, we ought to ask “What is the common identity? What is it that unites these people?”

In Ephesians chapter 5, speaking to husbands about the treatment of their wives, Paul brings up the church for his analogy and he says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” If we are looking for what unites Christians, there it is, Christs sacrificial love. In other words, the church is a gathering of people who have received what Christ gave up, namely himself. Or to say it another way, the church is the community of the redeemed.

If that is an accurate description, which I am convinced it is, then the church is even bigger than we could imagine. It is everyone who has been redeemed over all places and all time. It is a universal community. Still God seemed to have in mind that this community of redeemed people would also exist in smaller, local contexts. So, in Romans as Paul is giving his final greetings, he tells his recipients to greet Prisca and Aquila, and the church that meets “in their house” (Romans 16.5). Likewise, in his letter to the Colossians he says, “Give my greetings to the brothers3 at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house” (Colossians 4.15). Clearly, from the beginning then the church was a universal group of believers, and a local gathering of believers. Christians were spiritually connected as brothers and sisters across the known world and yet they also belonged to a local group of Christians with whom they could live out the metaphors and marks of the church.

The People of God

There are at least 96 metaphors in the New Testament saying essentially, “This is what the Church is like.” From those 96 just take one, The People of God.

Listen to the language of 1 Peter, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2.9-10). What stands out to me as I read that passage is the claim God makes upon Christians. He calls them, “A people for his own possession,” and then ends by telling them directly, “You are God’s people.” It stands out particularly because I have heard the language spoken before, but spoken about Israel.

In Exodus 19 God gives this conditional promise to Israel, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine” (Exodus 19.5). In Deuteronomy Moses says something similar to them, saying “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7.6). In both references God’s promised blessing to Israel, if they would walk in obedience to Him, is that they would be His people. Now stop for a second and think of what that means, that they would be His people. It does not mean that He was going to make a bunch of individuals that belong to Him separately. No, it means that He was going to make them into a community that belonged to him, into a people group that was His, like a tribe or a nation. God was going to make Israel into a tribe or a nation that would be for His own treasured possession.

Think also about what it means that they would be His people. What does it mean to belong to God? Don’t overthink it. What does it mean for a husband to say to his wife, “You are mine.” It is not suppose to be an oppressive or objectifying statement. Instead, it says, “I will be your home. I will protect you. I will care for a nurture you.” It is a statement of cherishing. When God promises Israel that they will be His own people that is exactly what He is expressing. If you doubt that just listen to how God speaks of Israel in other places in the Old Testament. “But you shall be called, ‘My delight is in Her’” (Isaiah 62.4). “He kept them as the apple of His eye” (Deuteronomy 32.10). What a thing then to be called God’s people!

As it would happen Israel disobeyed and failed over and over to keep God’s covenant, and so judgement comes. Still, even in the midst of judgement, God does not forget about His people. He promises them through the prophets that He will have mercy and that He will one day restore them. Jeremiah 31 reads like this, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31.33).

The New People of God

And then Christ comes, and He dies on the cross. And in His death, He wipes away sin. He brings forgiveness. But it is not just to make a bunch of individually forgiven and separated people. He substitutes Himself in the place of sinners to recreate and reclaim His people, and this time in a way that their failure will never cut them off from Him again. So then out of Christ and through the cross comes this renewal of Israel as God’s own people again, only this time it doesn’t stop with Israel, it is worldwide. It is everyone, every tribe, tongue and nation who trusts in Christ’s sacrifice. They are incorporate into God’s people, so that the apostle Paul, referring to the gentiles, can quote the prophet Hosea, ““Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people’” (Romans 9.25).

This is the Church then, the fulfillment of the promise that Israel would be His people again. This is what Christ died to create, a new Israel. A people who can once again be called the apple of God’s eye.

Now isn’t that so different then the idea that the church is a building or a service?