The ministry

Church service

THE MINISTRY
By Charles J. Brown
Banner of Truth. 112 pages. £5.50
ISBN 0 85151 931 8

I don’t know why the Banner of Truth would bother publishing this book. It is very nice in some of the things it says, but it is so brief and dated that it not only misses the mark, but is in danger of actually misleading young ministers today.

It is true that we went our ministers to be godly men, who pray wisely and preach powerfully. However, Brown teaches this using some incredibly long sentences, sprinkled with Latin and such words as sesquipedalian! Consequently the good that he teaches is weakened by the way that he says it.

Also the work of the ministry today involves maturity and leading the whole congregation in effective evangelism impacting our modernistic, hedonistic agnostic generation. We need to encourage congregations to care for one another and not to perpetuate the ‘one man ministry’ model.

Read something by Mark Dever or John Piper, but really don’t bother reading this book. Certainly don’t buy it — use your money more wisely.

Also do make your sermons interesting at the beginning and all the way through — whatever Charles J. Brown says.

Chris Kelly,
Minister of Lansdowne Baptist Church, Bournemouth,
who did like Brown’s The Divine Glory of Christ

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