My old mentor and colleague Col Marshall, who was instrumental in forming the Ministry Training Strategy, taught me more about the importance of personal ministry than anyone I know. He sent me this little piece recently about the way Puritan minister Richard Baxter trained people in ministering the gospel of Jesus. It was a great reminder of the importance of the gospel and the significance of sharing your life. I hope it will encourage you to keep reflecting on the power of personal example. Who are you sharing your life with in order to encourage them on in their faith?
Richard Baxter’s apprentices
By Colin Marshall
Richard Baxter is well known for his efforts to reform pastoral ministry in Kidderminster in 17th-century England. His driving passion was the salvation of all 1600 souls in his parish of St Mary’s. He correctly discerned that the complete reformation of his parish, and indeed all England, would not be through the establishment of the right form of church government and worship—whether episcopal, presbyterian or independent—but through the genuine conversion and spiritual transformation of its citizens.
I can well remember the time when I was earnest for the reformation of matters of ceremony […] Alas! Can we think that the reformation is wrought, when we cast out a few ceremonies, and changed some vestures, and gestures, and forms! Oh no, sirs! It is the converting and saving of souls that is our business. That is the chiefest part of reformation, that doth most good, and tendeth most to the salvation of the people. 1
Alongside his public preaching ministry, Baxter implemented a rigorous process of church discipline based on the systematic personal instruction (catechizing) of each parishioner of all ages, family by family. He argued that catechizing was “a most helpful means of the conversion of souls”, which would “promote the orderly building up of those who are converted”, “make our public preaching better understood” and “be much assisted in the admission of them to the sacraments”.2
As part of the wider application of his pastoral strategy, Baxter took pains to raise up and train young men for the ministry, thus ensuring a godly succession that would build on his work. His advice to these young men was
that you begin not the exercise of your Ministry too boldly, in publick, with great or judicious Auditories … But [if you can] at first settle a competent time in the house with some ancient Experienced Pastor, that hath some small Country Chappel that needs your help … There you may Learn as well as Teach, and learn by his practice what you must practice …3
As he grew in stature as a preacher and implemented his evangelistic pastoral strategy, “opportunities began to arise for Baxter to interact with a growing circle of boys and men who evidenced both academic and spiritual promise, making them in Baxter’s eyes, potential candidates for future pastoral ministry”.4 Baxter regularly took university graduates on as his assistants. They then usually lived with him in his home and helped him in the various aspects of his ministry for a year or so until they were ready for a pastoral charge of their own. Richard Sargent was his first assistant in Kidderminster. We have records of Humphrey Waldron, Joseph Read, Simon Potter and Edward Boucher who worked as Baxter’s apprentices.
Thomas Doolittle seems to have held a special place in the affections of Baxter, who describes him as “my Son and Fellow-servant in the work and patience of the gospel”.5 By using this biblical term of endearment, Baxter intentionally evokes the relationship that existed between Paul and his associate Timothy. Correspondence from Doolittle reflects his recognition that Baxter played a formative role in his life: “I must acknowledge [my gratitude] But specially for the care you have of my soule … I bless God for You and I hope this will encourage you to do the like for others you have done for me …”6 For nearly three decades, Thomas Doolittle and Richard Baxter shared the status of persecuted London Nonconformists, during which time Doolittle managed to reproduce many of the emphases that characterized Baxter’s own pastoral ministry.7
Baxter never refers to his ministry with these young men as being a “seminary for reformed pastors”, but that was its effect.8 Black notes that Baxter was not the only Puritan pastor who implemented pastoral mentoring:
This kind of relationship between Baxter and Doolittle is hardly unique in the broader context of ‘godly’ [Puritan] pastoral practice. And it is in tracing this personal network of intentional, mentoring relationships that one begins to uncover the elusive dynamic that lay at the core of the transmission of belief and practice at the puritan and then nonconformist end of the spectrum of seventeenth-century English Christianity.9
Endnotes
1 Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, edited by William Brown, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, reprinted from the 1862 edition, 1974, [1656], p. 211.
2 Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, pp. 174-178.
3 Richard Baxter, Compassionate Counsel to All Young Men (1681), cited in J William Black, Reformation Pastors: Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor, Paternoster, Milton Keynes, 2004, p. 233. See Black’s chapter 9, ‘Richard Baxter, Thomas Doolittle and the Making of a Reformed Pastor’, for a full discussion of Baxter’s apprentices. This short article is based primarily on Black’s work.
5 Black, p. 246. Cf. Phil 2:22.
