Being a Pastor: A Conversation with Andrew Fuller, by Michael A. G. Haykin and Brian Croft. Durham, UK: Evangelical Press, 2019. 256 pp. $15.99.
Bible college and seminary professors have long urged ministerial students to pursue the study of church history. One of the reasons commonly given for this pursuit is the fact that Christian leaders from the past can act as spiritual guides for those who live in the present. If this reasoning is true, then modern pastors should be excited to learn that historian Michael Haykin has teamed up with Brian Croft to produce a work that deliberately seeks to unite historical theology with pastoral theology through the writings of Andrew Fuller (1754–1815).
Importantly, this collaboration brings together two men who are prodigious writers in their respective fields. Michael Haykin serves as professor of church history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and has written numerous books on patristics, Baptist history, and biblical spirituality. His co-author, Brian Croft, is the senior pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, and the founder of Practical Shepherding, an organization that seeks to equip pastors for ministry. He has also published several books on pastoral theology and church revitalization.
What has motivated Haykin and Croft to write this book is a recognition that “evangelical pastoral ministry is in crisis” (19). They are aware that “pastors are leaving the ministry in droves” and that churches are closing by the thousands each year (211). While there are many factors that lead to short pastorates and dying churches, the authors believe that poor pastoral leadership is a major factor. Modern pastors are either shaped by the pressures of a pragmatic, results-oriented ministry that stresses numbers over spirituality, or they have fallen prey to the trappings of “personality leadership” which “relies more on the clever tactics of leadership rather than the leader’s gifts and abilities to facilitate faithful, Christ-honoring, biblical ministry and soul care within the church” (211–12).
In Being a Pastor, Haykin and Croft call for a different kind of pastoral model, a model that relies simply on preaching God’s Word and caring for the souls of their people. As such, the authors have channeled the voice of Andrew Fuller to address pastors on this important subject. The main portion of the book (Part II) consists of nineteen of Fuller’s sermons that were preached either at ordination services or to the ministerial students of Baptist ministry schools. Bracketing Fuller’s sermons are sections that assist the reader in putting Fuller in his historical context (Part I) and applying Fuller’s insights to the contemporary pastorate (Part III).
The historical section (Part I) consists of two chapters. The first provides a survey of the ordination sermon in eighteenth-century English Dissent. This overview examines the ordination sermons of three representative Dissenters—Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), John Gill (Baptist), and Philip Doddridge (Congregationalist). These men were extremely influential in their respective denominations and did much to inform the pastoral landscape in which Fuller was born and raised. What was common to all of those men, and what no doubt influenced Fuller, was the conviction that “devotion to Christ” was “the means by which men will be qualified for the task of pastoral ministry” (62). According to Fuller’s forerunners, “the minister’s calling and being equipped by God, his faithfulness in teaching sound doctrine, his living a life of personal godliness and pointing others to Christ—all of these aspects of biblical ministry are to be grounded in an ardent love for the Saviour” (62–63). With this background in place, part one moves on to discuss Fuller’s own concept of pastoral ministry in chapter two. Among the subjects covered in the chapter are Fuller’s emphasis on personal and family devotion, his commitment to Scripture, his focus on Christ, his reliance on the Holy Spirit, and his desire to be used by God for the greatest good possible. Like Henry, Gill, and Doddridge before him, Fuller believed that a fervent love for Christ must motivate all that the pastor does.
Part two of the book, which consists of Fuller’s ordination sermons, makes up the main portion of the book. The sermons, it should be noted, are of varying literary quality and length due to the fact that Fuller never intended to publish most of them (most were published after his death). In fact, sermon nineteen is merely an outline. Nevertheless, these sermons are filled with precious nuggets of pastoral advice. For example, his repeated exhortations to “study divine truth as a Christian and not merely a minister” (123) are memorable and important reminders. As a pastor myself, I repeatedly found myself inspired, convicted, motivated, and encouraged.
The final part of Being a Pastor attempts to take the advice Fuller gave his students and translate it into the modern context. The substance of the final section can be summarized with two exhortations drawn from the New Testament—“take heed to yourself” and “take heed to your flock.” As to the former, the modern pastor must take pains to ensure that his own spiritual, physical, and mental well-being is looked after before he can effectively minister to others. In terms of the second, pastors need to remember that caring for the souls of their people through prayer and the Word is their primary responsibility as pastors. Too often pastors focus on the business aspects of the church and not on what the New Testament calls on pastors to do. Again, taking advice from Fuller, pastors ought to focus more on faithfulness and spirituality than popularity or busyness.
In conclusion, I believe every pastor would benefit greatly from reading this book. Fuller has an engaging way of highlighting the most important aspects of pastoral ministry, and Haykin and Croft have done an excellent job in exposing us to Fuller’s writings on the pastorate. They have also done well in helping us see how Fuller’s counsel to pastors in the eighteenth-century remains relevant today.
