Best Books on Pastoral Ministry: 14 Classics Every Pastor Should Read
If a pastor reads one old book on the ministry, it should be Richard Baxter's The Reformed Pastor (titled here Gildas Salvianus). Baxter takes Paul's charge to the Ephesian elders, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock," and presses both halves. Watch your own soul first. Then know and teach every person in your care, house by house. If you want something lighter to start, read Horatius Bonar's Words to Winners of Souls, which takes about an hour and may change how you spend your week.
The classics on ministry say the same few things, and they say them bluntly. The pastor's own walk with God comes first, because a minister who isn't living what he preaches will do harm. Preaching matters, but the work isn't finished in the pulpit; it goes on in homes, sickrooms and private conversation. The aim is souls: people converted and Christians built up. And the power is God's, so the pastor must pray. These writers weren't theorists. Many of them served one congregation for decades.
Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.
1 Peter 5:2
Here are fourteen of the best books on pastoral ministry in TheWay Library, all free to read. They are just as useful for elders, missionaries and anyone who leads a small group.
Start here
1. The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter
Baxter wrote this for a day of fasting among the ministers of his county, after they agreed to catechize their people family by family. The first part searches the pastor's own heart. The rest explains what it means to oversee all the flock, confesses the clergy's neglect, and argues for personal instruction of every household.
Take heed to yourselves, lest you should be void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others, and be strangers to the effectual workings of that gospel which you preach…
The Reformed Pastor, The Text Explained, and Taking Heed to Ourselves
See Who Was Richard Baxter? and the best Puritan books. Read The Reformed Pastor.
2. The Christian Ministry, by Charles Bridges
The most complete book on the ministry in this list. Bridges sets out the calling, its trials and comforts, then asks why so much ministry bears so little fruit, and looks for the causes in the minister himself as well as in the world. The sections on preaching law and gospel and on pastoral work are full of wisdom.
Let us not think, that all our work is done in the study and in the pulpit.
The Christian Ministry, The Nature and Importance of the Pastoral Work
See Who Was Charles Bridges? Read The Christian Ministry.
3. Lectures to My Students, First Series, by C. H. Spurgeon
Spurgeon's Friday talks to the young men of his Pastors' College: the minister's self-watch, the call, private and public prayer, choosing texts, the voice, holding attention, and "The Minister's Fainting Fits," his honest lecture on depression. Funny, warm and practical.
He is not always in the act of prayer, but he lives in the spirit of it.
Lectures to My Students, First Series, The Preacher's Private Prayer
See our Lectures to My Students summary and Spurgeon's advice to preachers. Read Lectures to My Students.
4. Words to Winners of Souls, by Horatius Bonar
A short, searching appeal to ministers about their own spiritual state. Bonar argues that a few holy, earnest men will do more than a crowd of lukewarm ones, examines the minister's life and prayer, and reprints the Church of Scotland's 1651 confession of ministerial sins. Hard to read without being moved.
Nearness to him, intimacy with him, assimilation to his character — these are the elements of a ministry of power.
Words to Winners of Souls, The Minister's True Life and Walk
See Who Was Horatius Bonar? Read Words to Winners of Souls.
The pastor's work
5. How to Be a Pastor, by Theodore L. Cuyler
Cuyler wrote this as he left a long Brooklyn pastorate. Books on preaching are everywhere, he says, but most of a pastor's work happens outside the pulpit. He gives plain counsel on visiting, the sick, funerals, the troubled, training new converts and prayer meetings.
"A house-going minister" said Chalmers, "makes a church-going people."
How to Be a Pastor, The Importance of Pastoral Labor
See Who Was Theodore L. Cuyler? Read How to Be a Pastor.
6. The Work of the Ministry, by W. H. Griffith Thomas
A full handbook from his lectures to ordinands at Oxford. Part I studies the minister in Scripture; the rest covers the work itself: services, preaching, visiting, children, Bible classes, missions, prayer meetings and personal work. His shorter Ministerial Life and Work covers much the same ground.
Not merely must we love ideas but men, not only truth but lives, not only congregations but individuals.
The Work of the Ministry, A Competent Ministry
See Who Was W. H. Griffith Thomas? Read The Work of the Ministry.
7. An Earnest Ministry the Want of the Times, by John Angell James
James asks whether the pulpit has lost its power, and answers that the great want is not learning or eloquence but earnestness. He shows what earnestness looks like in the matter and manner of sermons and in the pastorate, with examples and motives.
Whatever other deficiencies we have, the chief of all lies in the heart.
An Earnest Ministry the Want of the Times, The Nature of Earnestness
8. A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing, by Thomas Boston
A private meditation young Boston wrote to his own soul early in his ministry, on "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." What does it mean for a preacher to follow Christ? Short, honest and very Scottish.
A dead man cannot follow any person; a dead preacher cannot follow Christ; there must be a principle of life, spiritual life in him, or else he is nought.
A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing
Read A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing.
The pastor as preacher
9. The Preacher: His Life and Work, by J. H. Jowett
Seven lectures: the call, the preacher's perils, his themes, his study, his pulpit, his home and his place in public life. Jowett warns against losing your sense of awe by handling holy things every day, and urges deep prayer and businesslike discipline together.
Men never learn to pray in public: they learn in private.
The Preacher: His Life and Work, The Preacher in His Pulpit
See Who Was J. H. Jowett? Read The Preacher.
10. The Preacher and His Models, by James Stalker
Yale lectures that hold up the prophets, chiefly Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the apostle Paul as patterns for a minister. Stalker asks what makes a true preacher: his call, his message, his manhood, his faith and his mind.
In the pulpit not only must a man have something to say, but it must be a message from God.
The Preacher and His Models, The Preacher as a Man of the Word
Read The Preacher and His Models.
11. Lectures on Preaching, by Phillips Brooks
Brooks gave the world its best-known definition of preaching: truth through personality. These Yale lectures work out what that means for the preacher's character, his sermons, his people and his times.
And preaching is the bringing of truth through personality.
Lectures on Preaching, The Two Elements in Preaching
See Who Was Phillips Brooks? Read Lectures on Preaching.
Letters and the pastor's heart
12. Letters and Conversational Remarks, by John Newton
Letters the old author of "Amazing Grace" wrote from London to a minister in Edinburgh, full of counsel on ministry, controversy, church parties and trials. The conversational remarks from his last, nearly blind years are a treasure.
To attack human depravity with philosophy, or fine sentiments, or by extolling morality, I compare to fighting Goliath with a wooden sword.
Letters and Conversational Remarks, Conversational Remarks
13. Familiar Letters, by Robert Murray M'Cheyne
M'Cheyne's letters home during the 1839 mission to the Jews, which took him through Europe, Egypt and the Holy Land. They show a young pastor's heart for his people back in Dundee and his own walk with God. Read them with Andrew Bonar's biography of M'Cheyne, which is in our guide to the best Christian biographies.
May God keep me humble, and prayerful, and holy.
Familiar Letters by the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, To the Same (London)
Read M'Cheyne's Familiar Letters.
14. The Second Epistle to Timothy, by H. C. G. Moule
Short devotional studies on Paul's last letter, the old apostle's charge to a younger pastor: guard the deposit, preach the word, endure hardness, and remember that the Lord stood with me. Moule writes for the heart, and these readings are good for a pastor's own quiet time.
For God did not give us a Spirit of cowardice, but of power, and love, and discipline.
The Second Epistle to Timothy, A Call to Holy Courage
See Who Was Handley Moule? Read Moule on 2 Timothy.
How to read these books
Read Bonar first, on your knees if you can. Then work through Baxter or Bridges slowly over a few months, one chapter a week. Keep Cuyler and Griffith Thomas on the shelf for practical questions. Newton's and M'Cheyne's letters are good for tired days.
The other great book for pastors is E. M. Bounds' Power Through Prayer, on the preacher's prayer life. See our Power Through Prayer summary and men are God's method, and the list of the best Christian books on prayer. For the pastor's work of reaching the lost, see the best books on evangelism. More of these authors are on their pages: Richard Baxter, Charles Bridges and C. H. Spurgeon.