A Pastoral Rule for Today: Reviving an Ancient Practice

The pastoral office has always been a difficult calling. Today, the pastor is often asked to fulfill multiple roles: preacher, teacher, therapist, administrator, CEO. How can pastors thrive amid such demands? What is needed is a contemporary pastoral rule: a pattern for ministry that both encourages pastors and enables them to focus on what is most important in their pastoral task. This book, coauthored by three experts with decades of practical experience, explains how relying on a pastoral rule has benefited communities throughout the church's history and how such rules have functioned in the lives and work of figures such as Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, and Bonhoeffer. It also provides concrete advice on how pastors can develop and keep a rule that will help both them and their congregations to flourish.

John P. Burgess (PhD, University of Chicago) is James Henry Snowden Professor of Systematic Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Holy Rus': The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia, Encounters with Orthodoxy: How Protestant Churches Can Reform Themselves Again, and Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a Time of Church Conflict.

Jerry Andrews (PhD, University of Chicago) is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in San Diego, California. He graduated from the Detroit Bible College (BRE), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (MDiv), Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM), the University of Pittsburgh (MA in Classics), and the University of Chicago (PhD in the Ancient Mediterranean World).

Joseph D. Small is the retired director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Theology and Worship. He is the author of several books, including To Be Reformed: Living the Tradition, Proclaiming the Great Ends of the Church, Conversations With the Confessions, and God and Ourselves: A Brief Exercise in Reformed Theology.