Richard Baxter (1615-1691) had a huge influence on John Wesley. It is easy to see when you read the work of both men. Last night, while reading Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, I came across two passages that reminded me of Wesley. One gave me encouragement, the other one challenged me.
The first:
When we once return to the ancient simplicity of faith, then, and not till then, shall we return to the ancient love and peace. I would therefore recommend to all my brethern, as the most necessary thing to the Chruch’s peace, that they unite in necessary truths, and bear with one another in things that may be borne with; and do not make a larger creed, and more necessaries, than God hath done.
I can almost hear “think and let think” in those words. The passage grows out of Baxter’s concern that our dividing up of the body of Christ into wary and suspicious camps is dividing the work of God and encouraging people to remain outside of faith. They look and see the contention and the quarreling and conclude that if the church cannot settle the truth and live in peace, then why not remain at outside of it?
As often happens when I read old authors, I find the problems of our day are not so new. The present generation, apparently, did not invent the notion of staying away from religion because the people inside it don’t look much like Jesus.
Baxter moves from this section to discuss what he believes is needful for the church – once it has adopted a simple faith based on Scripture and ancient creeds and dropped its spirit of contentious infighting. This is church discipline, which he says is as much the pastor’s duty as preaching itself.
To the complaint of pastors in his day that exercising discipline will make them unpopular with the people and provoke anger from those who do not wish to be under church discipline, Baxter has little simpathy.
But if you cannot suffer for Christ, why did you put your hand to his plough? Why did you not first sit down and count the cost? This makes the ministerial work so unfaithfully executed, because it is so carnally undertaken; men enter upon it as a life of ease, and honour, and respectibility, and they resolve to attain their ends, and have what they expected by right or wrong. They looked not for hatred and suffering, and they will avoid it, though by the avoiding of their work.
Ouch. The Rev. Baxter hits pretty close to home here.
Does the ministerial office require at times suffering and enduring the hatred of humanity? Jesus seemed to think that every Christian would have to endure that. Why, then, would the clergy be exempt? But I – for one – am pretty good at being inoffensive in just about everything I do.
Some pastors embrace with too much gusto their roles as disciplinarians and notch their Bibles with sinners they’ve turned out of church. But this is not the direction my pastoral rivers run. The danger of my ministry is to be too kind not too cruel.
So, Baxter’s words remind me that being nice may not be the be-all and end-all of the pastoral vocation. Of course, I am not well tutored in the arts of loving discipline. Being a novice, I’m apt to be clumsy if I were to try to do this better.
Even as I write these words, I hear in my head the voice saying I should not worry about discipline. What people need is someone who will walk side-by-side with them with compassion and pray with them. I recall Eugene Peterson’s pastoral books that offer spiritual direction as a pastoral office but make no mention of church discipline. The contemporary spirit appears to be that the disciplinarian pastor is an anachronism and likely to do more harm than good.
If that is so, we need to take up this issue at General Conference.
Just last week we added new members at the church I serve – one by adult baptism. The new members and the congregation spoke the “I do” and the “I will” in response to the baptismal questions. We pledged to hold each other up and resist the working of evil in our lives and in the world. Read the words. We were making some pretty big pledges there.
In my Book of Discipline (please note the title of the book), it speaks of the obligation on the congregation to respond to those who do not keep their baptismal promises – to call them back to the faith they spoke at the font. In most churches I’ve been a part of, we mostly ignore these parts of the Discipline. We sometimes speak of the meaning of baptism and membership, but we don’t go so far as to put to individuals their Christian duty in a way that might unsettle them.
I must confess I would be very bad at that. But I’m not convinced either my awkwardness or my discomfort with the task is an excuse for my leaving the work undone.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
