Reformed Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, and Missions — Unit 4: Pastoral Care: Baxter's Reformed Pastor

Key Verse

"Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe Richard Baxter, his ministry at Kidderminster, and the purpose of The Reformed Pastor (1656).

2. Explain why Baxter, following Acts 20:28, puts care of the pastor himself before care of the flock.

3. Describe the main parts of pastoral care: personal teaching, visiting, care of the sick, the dying and the grieving, comfort for the doubting, and restoring the straying.

4. State the debates over Baxter's example and the objections to personal pastoral care, with the Reformed answers.

5. Describe how a pastor shares pastoral care with elders, deacons and the whole congregation.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative and holds Scripture to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God. When it says "we," it means the confessional Reformed churches. Where other Christians differ, we state their views fairly and then answer. Unit 2 spoke of the pulpit and Unit 3 of teaching. This unit speaks of the pastor in the homes, the sickrooms and the hard places of his people's lives.

Who Was Richard Baxter?

Richard Baxter (1615-1691) was an English Puritan pastor. He served the people of Kidderminster, a town of weavers in the west of England, during the 1640s and 1650s. He was not a member of the Westminster Assembly, but he belonged to the same Puritan movement that produced it, and Course 1 tells that story. After the restoration of the monarchy he refused to submit to the Act of Uniformity, and he was among the ministers forced out of the Church of England in 1662. He suffered poor health through much of his life, and he later suffered imprisonment. He wrote a great many books. Two of them, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650) and A Call to the Unconverted (1658), were widely read.

His best-known book on ministry is The Reformed Pastor, published in 1656. It grew out of a plan for the ministers of his county to meet and renew their work. The word "Reformed" in the title is best read as a call for pastors to be renewed and faithful in their own life and work, as well as a reflection of the Puritan reforming spirit. He was not writing a manual of church government. He wrote as a pastor to pastors.

Baxter built the book on one text, our key verse, Acts 20:28. Paul was speaking to the elders of Ephesus, and the verse has two commands: take heed to yourselves, and take heed to all the flock. The book follows this order, and so does this unit.

Take Heed to Yourselves

Baxter's first concern was the pastor's own soul. He held that a pastor who neglects his own relationship with God will fail the people, however busy and skillful he may be. This is also the teaching of Scripture. Paul told Timothy, "Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine" (1 Timothy 4:16). Paul himself said, "I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27).

What does it mean in practice to take heed to yourself?

Be a believer yourself. A man may preach the gospel and not know it in his own heart. Baxter warned ministers to be sure that they had truly been saved by grace, and not only taught about it. This was not a morbid concern. The Reformed doctrines of assurance and perseverance teach that a believer can know that he is in Christ, and a pastor should seek that knowledge.

Guard your private life with God. The pastor needs time for prayer and the reading of Scripture for his own soul, and not only for sermon preparation. The apostles gave themselves "continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4). Prayer comes first in the list.

Watch your pride. The pastor is honored, and he is tempted to enjoy being honored. Baxter's book is hard on pride. Peter says that elders are to serve "not for dishonest gain but eagerly; nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:2-3).

Watch your home. The pastor's marriage and children are part of his work and witness (1 Timothy 3:4-5). A pastor who gives all his strength to the church and none to his wife and children does harm to both. Marriage, as God made it, is a covenant between one man and one woman, and the pastor's marriage is a picture of it before the congregation.

Care for your body and mind. Pastors are weak vessels. C. H. Spurgeon, the great Reformed Baptist preacher of London, suffered from depression and from painful illness, and he spoke openly of it to his students. Rest, honest friendship and the care of physicians are not signs of weak faith. Luke was a physician and a companion of Paul (Colossians 4:14).

Take Heed to All the Flock

The second command is to shepherd the whole flock. Ezekiel 34 is the great chapter on shepherds. God rebukes shepherds who feed themselves and not the sheep, who do not strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring back the strayed or seek the lost (Ezekiel 34:2-4). Christ is the true and Good Shepherd (John 10:11), and He tells Peter, "Feed My lambs... Tend My sheep... Feed My sheep" (John 21:15-17).

Baxter urged that pastoral work go beyond the pulpit. Paul described his own ministry to the Ephesians as having "taught you publicly and from house to house" (Acts 20:20). Baxter took this seriously. His practice was to meet with the families of Kidderminster, one by one, to teach them the basics of the faith and to talk with them about the state of their souls. Unit 3 already noted that he made catechizing of families central to his work. The point was not to prove he was busy. It was that a sermon preached to a crowd does not reach every heart. A person may sit under the sermon for years and still not know whether he is saved. In a private conversation, the pastor can ask.

Personal teaching and visiting

Baxter's method may be summarized in four steps: visit, ask, teach and pray. The pastor goes to the home. He asks about the family's faith and life. He teaches from the Scriptures what is needed. He prays with them. Many Reformed pastors since have followed the same pattern, and the Presbyterian tradition has long expected elders to share in it.

The sick, the dying and the grieving

James says, "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him" (James 5:14). The pastor and elders visit the sick, pray, read Scripture and listen. They do not promise what God has not promised. They teach that sickness is under God's hand and that He may heal in answer to prayer, while they hold fast the comfort of the gospel for those who do not recover. For the dying, the pastor offers the hope of Christ's resurrection. Paul writes that we should not "sorrow as others who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). For the bereaved, he follows Paul's command to "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15). He is present, and he does not rush to explanations.

The doubting and the troubled

Many believers are troubled by doubt or by a sense of guilt. The Reformed pastor remembers that the Lord's way with such people is gentle: "A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench" (Isaiah 42:3). He teaches the doctrine of assurance from Scripture, as the Westminster Confession does in its chapter on assurance. He distinguishes between the doubts of a true believer who is weak in faith and the false comfort of a person who shows no fruit of repentance. Both need the gospel, but they need it in different ways.

The straying and the sinning

"Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). This is the goal of church discipline too, which is studied in Course 4 under "Church Discipline and Membership." The aim is restoration. The pastor and elders go first in private, as Christ taught in Matthew 18:15-17, and they do so with love and with patience. Scripture's own lists of sins are used without ranking one above another. All sin is serious, and all who repent find mercy.

Families, marriages and the poor

The pastor counsels engaged couples and married couples from Scripture, teaching marriage as God's good gift to one man and one woman, and the love and faithfulness that Ephesians 5 describes. He ministers to the widow and the orphan (James 1:27), and he works with the deacons for the poor. The subject of the home is taken up again in Unit 5, and the ministry of mercy in Course 4 under "Deacons and the Ministry of Mercy."

Debates and Objections

Debate: Was Baxter truly Reformed? Baxter's pastoral practice is admired in Reformed churches. His doctrine was more debated. He held a version of the atonement in which Christ died in some sense for all, and his teaching on justification differed from the stricter Reformed teachers of his day, some of whom opposed him strongly. Later Reformed writers have judged him differently. Some say he was a moderate Calvinist who held the doctrines of grace in his own way, and others say he departed from the Westminster standards. We state both. We read The Reformed Pastor with thanks for its pastoral wisdom and with the Bible and the confessions as our measure. The doctrines concerned are treated in Course 2, in the units titled "Particular Redemption (limited atonement) and the Free Offer of the Gospel" and "Justification by Faith Alone."

Debate: How much did Kidderminster really change? Baxter wrote that his labors there brought great change in the town. Historians note that this comes largely from his own account, written later in Reliquiae Baxterianae, and that the town was one with particular conditions: a settled community and the help of other ministers. They ask whether the results were as large as he reported. We reply that the Lord alone knows the hearts. We do not need to prove Baxter's numbers. The question for us is whether his method agrees with Scripture, and it does. Paul went from house to house, and the Lord blesses faithful work as He chooses.

Objection 1: House visiting is an intrusion and a form of legalism. Some say that it is not the pastor's business to ask about a person's soul. We agree that the work must be done with gentleness and respect, and never with a harsh spirit that pries. But Acts 20:20 and Hebrews 13:17, which says that leaders "watch out for your souls, as those who must give account," show that care for individuals is part of the office. A pastor who never asks leaves people alone.

Objection 2: No pastor can do all that Baxter describes. This is the fair objection of many tired pastors. The Reformed answer is that the work is not for one man alone. Christ gave pastors "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry" (Ephesians 4:12). Moses was told by his father-in-law that he could not bear the whole burden alone (Exodus 18:17-23), and the apostles asked the church to choose men to serve tables so that they could give themselves to prayer and the word (Acts 6:1-4). In the Presbyterian system, the elders share the oversight of souls and the deacons share the ministry of mercy. Members also care for one another (Galatians 6:2). A pastor who tries to do everything will break, and a pastor who does nothing will fail. Wisdom finds the middle way through shared work.

Objection 3: Pastoral care is a job for professional counselors. Some Christians think that the pastor should refer every troubled person to a therapist. We say that Scripture speaks to the soul's deepest needs, such as guilt, fear, grief and hope, and that the pastor has a calling to speak it. But wisdom also uses the physician when the body or mind is ill, and the pastor refers a person to a doctor when it is needed. Where there is danger to life, or abuse of a child or another vulnerable person, the pastor should also involve the proper authorities. This is no failure of faith. It is love.

Pastoral Application

Don Alberto is a faithful elder in a small church near Ajijic. His wife died in the spring, and his only son lives in the United States and cannot come home. In the months since, Don Alberto has missed several Sundays. A few members say, "He is angry with God."

Pastor Hector asks one of the other elders to go with him. They go to the house in the afternoon, bringing no speech. First, they listen. Don Alberto speaks of the empty house. Second, they read Psalm 23 and part of 1 Thessalonians 4, and pray with him. They do not tell him that his anger is wrong, and they do not explain why God allowed his wife's death. Third, they invite him to eat with one of the families after church, so that he is not alone. Fourth, Hector arranges for the deacons to see whether he needs any help with the house. Fifth, he returns every two weeks. Over several months Don Alberto begins to attend again. His grief remains, but he is no longer alone in it. This is the work Baxter described, done simply.

Summary

Richard Baxter (1615-1691), pastor at Kidderminster, wrote The Reformed Pastor in 1656 on Acts 20:28: take heed to yourselves and to all the flock. The pastor first guards his own soul, his private life with God, his pride, his home and his health. He then shepherds the flock by preaching, and also by personal visiting, teaching, care of the sick, the dying and the grieving, comfort for the doubting and gentle restoration of those who stray. Baxter's doctrine is debated, and the extent of his results at Kidderminster is a matter of historical discussion, but his method rests on Scripture. The answer to the objection that no one can do all this is that the work is shared among pastors, elders, deacons and members.

Further Reading

• Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (1656).

• Richard Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650).

• Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (published 1696).

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Beveridge translation, 1845), Book 4, chapters 3 and 12.

• Westminster Confession of Faith (1646-47), chapter 18, on assurance.

• C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, a Reformed Baptist voice.

• William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying (1592).

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