The reformed pastor

I think he's very much worth reading.

He wrote a book, The Reformed Pastor.

And he builds upon what William Perkins was doing, where he says, you need to spend time with your congregation.

You need to actually be a pastor.

But there are some things that we really could retrieve from the Puritans.

Yeah, that's really good.

As you're talking about the pastoral visits, I remember being really convicted of that when I read The Reformed Pastor the first time by Richard Baxter.

But the thing that came to mind as you're talking about just the way in which they involve themselves in the lives of their parishioners.

That means you have to have a plan.

Richard Baxter in his work, The Reformed Pastor, as you know, the first part of the book is based on watch out for yourselves.

The second part of the book is based on an all the flock, right? He had a plan to care for the flock there in Kitterminster, and it was something that worked out for him in that particular place, in that particular time, in that particular culture.

And for us, we have to figure out a way that we're going to be able to engage and be in contact regularly with the sheep.

You've got to be careful because then the next time the pastor gets up and says, oh, we're going to do this or that, there might be a little bit of skepticism there.

But even Baxter was concerned that his plan was not frequent enough.

Here's something from the reformed pastor.

He said, alas, how small a matter it is to speak to a man only once in a year, and that's so cursorily as we might be forced to do in comparison with what their necessities require.