Bible, Theology & Philosophy

This is the third week of July, and I’ve finally managed to grab a week of vacation—my first this year. People do all sorts of things with their vacation time. Some travel for fun. Some hole up in a remote hideaway. For me, however, vacation means getting to stay home.

By “staying home” I do not mean lounging around the house. What I do for vacation is to catch up on the projects that normal people do during their evenings and weekends. This week I’m installing a new exterior door and new windows. Last year I took two weeks of vacation, stripped our bathroom to the bare studs, and refitted everything in it. The previous year I finished the interior of my garage. Another year I built a 10x12 tool storage shed, complete with attic.

These are not projects that I pursue because I enjoy them. On the contrary, I do not like to do construction, auto mechanics, or most similar activities. But I do them anyway, for two very good reasons. First, the projects really need to be done (if you’d seen the shape my windows were in, you’d understand). Second, I’m too cheap to hire somebody else to do the work.

Actually, I have other reasons, too. One is a belief—almost a conviction—that people who do the work of the mind should not forget what manual labor feels like. We should value the kind of productivity that comes from the exertion of muscle. It helps us to remember the dignity of any honest job. Lessons are learned from swinging a hammer, turning a wrench, or digging in the soil.

Another reason that I do these things is simply because I can, and that ability I owe in no small part to my father. Dad has always been a hands-on guy. He’s slowing down a bit now, but he used to hope that something would break just so he could repair it.

Because of Dad, I grew up in houses that were constantly under construction. In fact, I prayed to receive Christ while kneeling beside a pile of two-by-fours in the middle of a remodeling project. Through the years I helped Dad hang drywall, lay hardwood flooring, run wiring and plumbing (both with real copper), and build cabinetry. The sweet whine of a table saw ripping plywood can bring tears of nostalgia to my eyes.

Not long ago, a friend of mine was challenging me on eschatology. He believes that it is very important to embrace the pretribulational, premillennial position. I asked why this was so important. His answer was that we need to know which season we are in because the danger of false teachers will appear in the last days.

The apostle Paul instructed the young preacher Timothy to give himself to reading. In the ancient world, reading was normally done aloud, and it was often a public activity. Books were scarce, and if you were going to read aloud anyway, why shouldn’t others benefit from hearing?

Paul thought that a young preacher needed to develop the habit of reading. This sensibility has been echoed through much of the history of the church. For example, the Anabaptists who drafted the Schleitheim Confession made reading the first duty of a pastor. Periods when pastors did not read have invariably been times of spiritual darkness for those who name the name of Christ.

Reading continues to be one of the most important duties of a pastor. Pastors are responsible to do the work of the mind, and their minds must have something with which to work. Reading is the door, and texts are the workmen through which the furniture of ideas enters the mind and organizes a pastor’s ministry.

How much should a pastor read? The answer to this question is determined by the nature of the ministry. A pastor needs to read enough, and enough of the right stuff, to be growing intellectually and to meet the demands of ministry in the world in which he lives.

Most of us minister to people who are familiar with sophisticated ideas in the fields of politics, jurisprudence, ethics, philosophy, and religion. For the most part, these ideas are mediated to our people through channels that are hostile to Christian orthodoxy and morality. Reading widely and thinking well is the only way for a pastor to help his people out of their bad thinking. I do not see how a pastor can expect to meet the challenges of contemporary ministry if his goal is to read less than approximately one book every week.

What should a pastor read? The short answer is, “All sorts of things.” Besides reading his Bible and reading for sermon preparation, a pastor should have a reading plan that he tries to implement consistently. Of course, his planned reading will be interrupted by necessary reading, but the plan gives some shape to his reading agenda.

Since graduating from seminary, I have found it useful to try to read by topic. I have a list of half-a-dozen general categories of reading. I try to rotate books from these categories.