The Reformed Pastor, a Summary

1 Pastor, watch out for your soul!

• Make sure you’ve laid hold of saving grace before you offer it to others (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim 4:16).
• Do not preach a Savior whom your own heart neglects. Unsanctified preachers abound.
• Your knowledge, people skills, and preaching eloquence are no substitute for your own conversion. Many have preached Christ yet perished.
• Examine yourself honestly and often, since a minister is prone to mistake familiarity with holy things for holiness.
• Remember that God usually fits a man for the work before he uses him in it.

2 Pastor, feed yourself!

• Do not be content merely to be in a state of grace; keep faith, love and zeal in lively, daily exercise.
• Preach to yourself the sermons you study before you preach them to others.
• Watch your heart: when your love and faith cool, your preaching soon shows it and your people feel the chill.
• Feed on the truths you handle, so that you speak from experience rather than from mere notions.
• Keep up secret prayer, meditation and heavenly-mindedness as the fuel of public ministry.
• Treat the care of your own soul as a service to the church, not only as a private concern.

3 Pastor, live what you preach!

• Guard against living contrary to your doctrine; do not unsay with your life what you say with your tongue.
• Avoid living in the very sins you condemn. Preaching against sin while practicing it makes you a hypocrite.
• Maintain innocence and walk without offense, so your life itself condemns sin and persuades people to duty.
• Abound in works of charity: visit the poor, meet bodily needs, and show compassion to soul and body together.
• Do not undo in private conversation and conduct what you build in the pulpit all week long.
• Make your manner of life a sermon your people can read when they cannot remember your words.

4 Pastor, be careful!

• Take heed: you have a depraved nature and sinful inclinations like everyone else. One sin opens the door to more.
• Take heed: the tempter targets leaders in Christ's army above others.
• Take heed: many eyes are on you; a minister cannot fall without the world hearing of it.
• Take heed: because a teacher's sins are committed with more hypocrisy and more broken vows.
• Take heed: great work requires great grace; weak graces will not carry a man through the trials of ministry.
• Take heed: the honor of Christ and his truth rests more on you than on others.
• Take heed: success depends heavily on your holiness; an unholy man will not fight Satan with his whole strength.

5 Pastor, care for every soul in your flock!

• Take heed to all the flock, not only to the regular attendees or the most promising members (Acts 20:28).
• Keep flocks no larger than can actually be overseen. An unmanageable charge calls for more laborers.
• Know people individually. Oversight means personal acquaintance, not merely public speaking.
• The whole charge is your duty: preaching, counsel, family oversight, care of the sick, reproof and discipline.

6 Pastor, seek out the lost!

• Make conversion the greatest aim of your ministry; the misery of the unconverted calls loudest for compassion.
• Keep the lost continually in view, remembering that they are near to everlasting misery and do not see it.
• Counsel inquirers and troubled consciences, answer those who ask, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30).
• Be known as a counselor for souls, as a physician is for bodies, so that people bring their doubts to you.
• Speak plainly and urgently to the unconverted, with tenderness rather than harshness.
• Never settle for outward church attendance or polite civility in place of a real change of heart.

7 Pastor, build up believers in every condition!

• Build up those already converted, fitting your help to their particular condition.
• Strengthen the young and weak in grace with patient instruction in the foundations.
• Help those troubled by a particular besetting corruption to overcome it, so it no longer smothers their graces.
• Seek out declining Christians, whether in sin or cooled in zeal, and labor to restore their first love (Rev 2:4-5).
• Do not neglect the strong; help them preserve their grace, keep growing and use their strength to serve others.
• Guard believers against error, pride and division as carefully as against open sin.

8 Pastor, minister to families!

• Keep a special eye on families, since the life of religion depends greatly on family government.
• Find out how each household is ordered, so that you know how to help it.
• Visit homes and ask heads of households whether they pray with their families and read the Scriptures with them.
• Teach those who do not know how to pray, and give them help to begin family worship.
• Make sure every home has some good, useful books besides the Bible, and give where people cannot afford.
• Direct families in how to spend the Lord's Day, including what to do at home after public worship.
• Enlist heads of households to lead and teach their children and servants, multiplying your ministry through them.

9 Pastor, visit the sick and dying!

• Visit the sick diligently and help them prepare either for a fruitful life or a happy death.
• Go as soon as you hear someone is sick, whether or not they send for you; do not wait.
• When time is short, press the main points: the glory of the life to come, the way Christ purchased it, the folly of neglecting it, and the hope still offered to those who believe and repent.
• Use the season of sickness, when people feel the vanity of the world, to urge real reconciliation with God.
• Visit those whose sickness is not mortal as well as the dying.
• If they recover, remind them of the promises and resolutions they made on the sickbed, and hold them to those.

10 Pastor, reprove and discipline!

• Reprove and admonish those who live offensively or impenitently, ordinarily trying private persuasion first.
• Fit your reproof to the person's temper and the nature of the offense, with skill and love.
• Where an offense is public or the offender stays impenitent, reprove openly and call again to repentance.
• Join the prayers of the congregation to your reproofs and exhortations on the offender's behalf.
• Receive and restore the penitent gladly.
• Exclude from communion those who remain impenitent after trial, and teach the church to avoid them (1 Cor 5).
• Do not treat discipline as optional; it is part of the pastoral office, not an extra.

11 Pastor, uphold pure motives and diligence!

• Work for God and salvation of souls, not for gain, reputation, or livelihood. A wrong end spoils the whole work.
• Labor diligently, because the stakes are eternal: the glory of God, the defeat of Satan and the salvation of souls.
• Proceed prudently and in order: milk before meat, foundations before the superstructure, conversion before the works of grace (Heb 5:12-14).
• Insist chiefly on the greatest, most certain and most necessary truths; teach Christ, and you teach them all.
• Make all your teaching as plain and simple as possible; obscure preaching hides the truth it claims to reveal.
• Be serious, earnest and zealous, remembering that you deliver a message of salvation or damnation from the living God.

12 Pastor, maintain humility, love, and dependence!

• Carry out the work with great humility, ready to learn from anyone while you teach.
• Mix severity and mildness wisely, according to the person and matter in hand.
• Minister in tender love, as a father or mother toward children; let your people see that nothing pleases you but what profits them (Gal 4:19).
• Bear patiently with abuse, ingratitude and slow progress from those you seek to help.
• Handle holy things reverently, as in God's presence, and spiritually, as one moved by the Holy Spirit.
• Keep up earnest desires and expectations of success; do not be content to labor without seeing fruit.
• Work under a deep sense of your own insufficiency, going to Christ for light, life and strength.
• Pursue communion with fellow ministers and the peace of the churches, working together rather than in rivalry.

13 Pastor, remember the nature of the office you hold! (Acts 20:28)

• Remember that you are an overseer; the office itself signifies labor more than honor.
• Remember that you took this charge voluntarily, and common honesty binds you to fulfill it.
• Take encouragement from the honor of being Christ's ambassador and an instrument of men's conversion.
• Do not claim the privileges of the ministry while refusing its work.
• Remember that the Holy Spirit made you an overseer by qualifying, directing and calling you.
• Consider the dignity of the charge: it is the Church of God, the body of Christ, attended by angels.
• Consider the price: God purchased it with his own blood, so do not neglect what cost Christ so much.

14 Pastor, you must confess sins!

• Humble yourself before God with a plain confession of sin; reform starts with repentance.
• Put pride to death. Pride corrupts your sermons, colors your company, and hungers for applause and preeminence.
• Repent of half-heartedness: negligent study, weak preaching, and indifference to nearby congregations that could use your help.
• Repent of worldliness: trimming truth to satisfy the powerful, becoming engrossed in earthly business, and growing barren in charitable works.
• Repent of neglecting duties, especially discipline, and of excusing laziness as prudence. Neglected discipline deceives souls, makes Christianity look indifferent to holiness, feeds separation, and invites God's displeasure.

15 Pastor, guard the unity and peace of the Church!

• Value the unity and peace of the whole church, and do not merely praise it while being an instrument of division.
• Do not lay too much stress on opinions over which godly men and whole churches have differed.
• Do not make much of controversies that rest on philosophical uncertainties or that are merely verbal.
• Be wary of any point of faith unknown to the whole church in every age since the Scriptures were given.
• Turn yourself and your people away from vain controversies toward the fundamental truths that edify.
• Work with neighboring ministers in a common work rather than standing apart.

16 Pastor, counsel and instruct individuals personally!

• Teach the people personally, family by family and person by person, and not only from the pulpit; Paul taught "publicly, and from house to house" (Acts 20:20).
• Use personal instruction as a hopeful means of conversion, because it deals with the essentials of the faith and presses them on the conscience in private.
• Use it to build up converts in an orderly way, laying foundations before higher things.
• Expect personal engagement to make your public preaching better understood.
• Use it to become familiar and close with your people, and learn how you can watch over and care for them.
• Let it aid wise admission to the Lord's Supper and show people and rulers the true nature of the ministerial office.
• Expect it to improve family order and Lord's Day observance, cure ministerial idleness, and benefit your soul.
• Undertake it for the glory of God, the welfare of your people and your own welfare, for you will be judged by your faithfulness.

17 Pastor, you must face difficulties and answer objections!

• Admit your difficulties: laziness, man-pleasing, bashfulness, carnal self-interest, weak faith, and lack of skill.
• Prepare for difficulties in the flock: unwillingness to be taught, dullness, ignorance, hard hearts and quick relapse.
• Do not excuse yourself from personal engagement with others simply because you regularly preach publicly. Many who have listened to years of sermons often remain ignorant of the basics until taught in private.
• Do not excuse yourself because of your need to study. The care and salvation of souls exceeds your academic pursuits. Order your duties rightly.
• Do not excuse yourself because of health or comfort. Spend your time and strength for God, with reasonable rest.
• Do not wait for the whole parish to consent. The refusal of some does not excuse you, and others will accept.
• Recognize that personal engagement is itself preaching. A man may preach as truly to one as to a thousand.

18 Pastor, establish credibility so that people want to be instructed by you!

• Conduct yourself in a way that others can perceive you are competent, genuine, upright, and truly love them.
• Win a fair measure of their esteem and affection, not for your own sake but so that they will receive your counsel.
• Preach beforehand on the necessity of knowing the first principles of the faith, including for the aged (Heb 5:12).
• Show them that the duty comes from God, not from your own devising, and that you must give account for their souls (Ezek 33:8; Heb 13:17).
• Give a catechism to every family in the parish, rich or poor, so that all are without excuse.
• Deal gently and remove discouragements: accept other orthodox catechisms, do not press weak-memoried elderly people to memorize words, and make early meetings so winsome that word of them encourages others.
• Do not give up on those who refuse; go to them, learn their reasons and lovingly persuade them, for a soul is precious.

19 Pastor, engage in pastoral visitation!

• Begin with a brief, gentle preface that removes offense and explains why you have asked to visit with them.
• Speak with each person privately where possible, since many cannot speak freely before others.
• Hear what they have learned of the catechism, or at least the Creed and the Ten Commandments.
• Test their understanding of the weightiest points with plain, simple questions. Begin with what concerns them most nearly, such as what becomes of people when they die.
• Avoid needless or overly difficult questions. When they cannot answer, help them with explanatory questions and do not shame them.
• Then instruct each according to capacity, supplying what each most needs.
• Where you suspect someone is unconverted, inquire prudently into their spiritual state: whether sin is their grief, whether their heart is turned from sin, and whether God has the chief place in their love. Labor with all your skill to bring the heart to a sense of its condition, seriously and lovingly.

20 Pastor, follow up and keep records!

• End with a practical exhortation to believe in Christ and to use the means of grace, forsaking former sins.
• Direct them to pray daily for a renewed heart, to flee temptation and evil company, and to spend the Lord's Day in holy exercises.
• Part kindly, softening any sense of offense, and set them in the way of continuing what was begun, enlisting heads of households to keep up instruction at home.
• Keep a book with the names of all your members, noting who comes, who does not, and what each needs, so you can deal with them accordingly afterward.
• Suit your manner to the person: be plain with the weak, give Scripture for what you say, be serious in application, and show love in every part.
• Prepare your heart beforehand by prayer and by stirring up your belief in the truths you will press.
• If God enables you, give to the poorest to relieve them, and encourage them in learning.

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1. Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was an English Puritan pastor who ministered at Kidderminster in Worcestershire for nearly two decades and wrote prolifically.

2. The Reformed Pastor (1656) grew out of an address Baxter prepared for the ministers of the Worcestershire Association on Acts 20:28, and it can be read for free at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (opens in a new tab).

3. For hundreds of years, Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor has shaped how pastors care for their flocks, and is still used as a key text in seminaries for those training to become pastors.

4. Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor is ~90,000 words. This summary is less than 3% of that, and thus is far from comprehensive, and may oversimplify or misread him in places.