Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Pre-Ordination Reading?

Any suggestions for pre-ordination retreat reading? Or indeed any other stuff that a new or newish minister should read? I guess if any new stuff is to be ordered before I go away, I ought to get Amazon onto it soon.

So what might one read?

The Bible, of course. Maybe especially Acts 6, 20; the Pastoral Epistles.

The BCP ordination service, or maybe even CW, I suppose, if we must.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers

John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

Derek Prime, On Being a Pastor

Douglas Wilson, Mother Kirk

Jeff Myers, The Lord’s Service

I’m thinking of taking something I haven’t read yet. Maybe:

Jay Adams, Preaching with Purpose

John Owen, On The Duties of Pastors

Is there anything especially suitable from the early church?

Would Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule be good reading?

Something on counselling, I guess: Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands?

I could probably do with spending some more time with the Canons of the Church of England, though I’m not sure how edifying that would be.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chrysostom, On the Priesthood (which is in vol 9 of series 1 of NPNF).

If you've not read Peter Brown's bio of Augustine that'd be great too.

Or spend your time praying through the Psalms.

Or reading the Bible all the way through.

I read Chrysostom. It's great.

Marc Lloyd said...

Thank you, Matthew.

I might look into Chrysostom.

Yes, I have read Browns Augustine a long time ago and very much enjoyed it.

Might not have time for the whole Bible, despite the silence.