Baxter's advice to Pastors

Advice to Pastors

Richard Baxter

1. The ministerial work must be carried on purely for God and the salvation of souls, not for any private ends of our own.
2. The ministerial work must be carried on diligently and laboriously, as being of such unspeakable consequence to ourselves and others.
3. The ministerial work must be carried on prudently and orderly.
4. Throughout the whole course of our ministry, we must insist chiefly upon the greatest, most certain, and most necessary truths, and be more seldom and sparing upon the rest.
5. All our teaching must be as plain and simple as possible.
6. Our work must be carried on with great humility.
7. There must be a prudent mixture of severity and mildness both in our preaching and discipline.
8. We must be serious, earnest, and zealous in every part of our work.
9. The whole of our ministry must be carried on in tender love to our people.
10. We must carry on our work with patience. We must bear with many abuses and injuries from those to whom we seek to do good.
11. All our work must be managed reverently and use not holy things as if they were common.
12. All our work must be done spiritually, as by men possessed of the Holy Spirit.
13. If you would prosper in your work, be sure to keep up earnest desires and expectations of success. If your heart be not set on the end of your labors, and you long not to see the conversion and edification of your hearers, and do not study and preach in hope, you are not likely to see much success.
14. Our whole work must be carried on under a deep sense of our own insufficiency, and of our entire dependence on Christ.
15. We must be very studious of union and communion among ourselves, and of the unity and peace of the churches that we oversee.