Reformed Pastor - Baxter - VIII - Chapter 3 continued

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) - Continue Chapter 3 by commencing Section 2, Part 1 by reading Article 1 (Motives from the benefits of the work).

My summary
Today we begin the last section of the book which puts forward the duty of personally catechising and instructing the flock.

In this reading we look at the motives for catechizing by examining the benefits that come from the work.  Catechising will:
1. be a most hopeful mean of the conversion of sinners;
2. essentially promote the edification of saints;
3. make our public preaching better understood by our people;
4. make us more familiar with them, and assist us in winning their affections;
5. make us better acquainted with their spiritual state, and enable us better to watch over
them;
6. assist us in the admission of persons to the sacraments;
7. show men the true nature of the ministerial office;
8. show our people the nature of their duty to their ministers;
9. give the governors of the nation more correct views of the Christian ministry, and so may procure from them further help;
10. exceedingly facilitate the ministerial work in succeeding generations;
11. conduce to the better ordering of families, and the better spending of the Lord's day;
12. help to preserve many ministers from idleness and misspending their time;
13. contribute to subdue our own corruptions, and to exercise our own graces;
14. withdraw both ourselves and our people from vain controversies, and the lesser matters of religion;
15. extend these various benefits to all the people in our several parishes;
16. not even stop here, but is like to be a work that will reach over the whole land.

What grabbed me
Up to this point Baxter has been looking at the ministry in general terms.  Now Baxter is wanting to drive home the thesis of his book, the catechising of every member of his congregation.  This is probably where most ministers today are going to disagree with him, or at least find him less convincing.

For example, in today's reading Baxter appears to place more importance on catechising than preaching: 'Before we undertook this work, our hands were full, and now we are engaged to set apart two days every week, from morning to night, for private catechizing and instruction; so that any man may see that we must leave undone all that other work that we were wont to do at that time: and we are necessitated to run upon the public work of preaching with small preparation, and so must deliver the message of God so rawly and confusedly, and unanswerably to its dignity and the need of men’s souls, that it is a great trouble to our minds to consider it, and a greater trouble to us when we are doing it. And yet it must be so; there is no remedy: unless we will omit this personal instruction, we must needs run thus unpreparedly into the pulpit. And to omit this we dare not--it is so great and necessary a work.'

Baxter is actually ready to accept the sad fact that he is a poorer preacher because of catechising. 

Personally, I would have to place first priority on preaching and catechise if there is time to do so.  After all I am charged to preach the word in season and out of season, not catechise the word in season and out of season.

Next week's reading       
Continue Chapter 3 by concluding Section 2, Part 1 by reading Articles 2, 3, and 4.

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