Abraham Booth, “Pastors, Care for Your Wives”

In an ordination message preached in 1785, Baptist pastor, Abraham Booth, gave a powerful exhortation on the need of pastors to attend to their own wives and children.  He voices in first person what he fears is the cry of too many pastors’ wives and closes with an exhortation referring to one’s wife as his …

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Buoyant Expectation of God

What essential for a pastor?  Much could be said in answer to this question.  Wayne Oates several years ago stated this: “…the consummate requirement of him [a pastor] is that he depend devotedly upon the Chief Shepherd for his own spiritual sustenance and live in the buoyant expectation of his continual manifestation of himself.  Titus …

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Isaac Watts’ Pastoral Poetry

I have been reading recently on Isaac Watts who has blessed the church so richly with his hymns.  Below is a good, though lesser known, example of Watts poetry (originally published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707-1709).  Many of Watt’s hymns were composed to accompany his sermons and you can see him as a pastor …

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Spurgeon, The Richness and Freshness of the Bible

Here is a good, encouraging word from Spurgeon on the task of preaching and the inexhaustible richness of the Word of God. “After preaching the gospel for forty years, and after printing the sermons I have preached for more than six-and-thirty years, reaching now to the number of 2,200 in weekly succession, I am fairly …

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The Duty of Pastors, Philadelphia 1743

In 1743 the Philadelphia Baptist Association adopted as a statement of their discipline Benjamin Griffith’s treatise, “Concerning a True and Orderly Gospel Church.”  In this treatise is the following description of the duty of pastors (emphasis added, and reformatted): The minister being thus put upon his work, proceeds (1.) to preach the word of God …

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The Privilege of Theological Study

Today in one of my classes we discussed B. B. Warfield’s classic booklet, The Religious Life of Theological Students.  There is much wisdom in this little booklet, so if you have not read it I encourage you to do so (online here). In one places he exhorts theological students to realize and appreciate the privilege …

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