Reformed Pastor - Baxter - V - Chapter 2 concluded

Required reading
Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter (we'll be reading from the 1862 edition available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Conclude Chapter 2 by reading Sections 2 (The manner of this oversight) and 3 (Motives to the oversight of the flock).

My summary
In the first section we read today, we look at the manner of the oversight of the minister.  The ministerial work must be carried on:
1. Purely for God, and the salvation of souls;
2. Diligently and laboriously;
3. Prudently and orderly;
4. Insisting chiefly on the greatest and most necessary things;
5. With plainness and simplicity;
6. With humility;
7. With a mixture of severity and mildness;
8. With seriousness, earnestness and zeal;
9. With tender love to our people;
10.With patience;
11.With reverence;
12.With spirituality;
13. With earnest desires and expectations of success;
14. Under a deep sense of our own insufficiency, and of our dependence on Christ;
15. In unity with other ministers.

In the second section we read today, we are shown the motives of our oversight as ministers:
1. From the relation in which we stand to the flock--we are overseers;
2. From the efficient cause of this relation--The Holy Ghost;
3. From the dignity of the object which is committed to our charge--The Church of God;
4. From the price paid for the Church--which he hath purchased with his blood.

What grabbed me
I liked the advice given ministers to be careful to read what is helpful and ignore what is unhelpful: 'The great volumes and tedious controversies that so much trouble us and waste our time, are usually made up more of opinions than of necessary verities; for, as Ficinus saith, "Necessity is shut up within narrow limits; not so with opinion": and, as Gregory Nazianzen and Seneca often say, "Necessaries are common and obvious; it is superfluities that we waste our time for, and labour for, and complain that we attain them not." Ministers, therefore, must be observant of the case of their flocks, that they may know what is most necessary for them, both for matter and for manner; and usually the matter is to be first regarded, as being of more importance than the manner. If you are to choose what authors to read yourselves, will you not rather take those that tell you what you know not, and that speak the most necessary truths in the clearest manner, though it be in barbarous or unhandsome language, than those that will most learnedly and elegantly tell you that which is false or vain, and "by a great effort say nothing." I purpose to follow Augustine"s counsel: "Give first place to the meaning of the Word, so that the soul is given preference over the body; from which it follows that we seek the more true as much as the more discerning discourses to be met with, just as we seek the more sensible, as much as the more handsome, to be our friends."'

You have very little time on the earth and there is much rubbish that can be read - make sure you read only what is clearly profitable.

Next week's reading
Commence Chapter 3 by beginning Section 1 (The use of humiliation) by reading Points 1 (On account of our pride) and 2 (Our not seriously, unreservedly, and laboriously laying out ourselves in our work).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.