LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Evangelical leaders, professors, and pastors emphasize the importance of faithfulness in a new ministry workbook released by SBTS Press, a publishing imprint of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In More Faithful Service, which released today, Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. highlighted the importance of faithfulness in the Christian’s life. Faithfulness is necessary for sharing the gospel, caring for people, and devotion to one’s family and the Savior, Mohler writes in the opening essay.
“Ultimately, the pastor’s calling is a call to serve the people of God in faithfulness. And that call requires the pastor to commit himself and his ministry to the Scripture and to the faith delivered to the saints,” Mohler writes. “The pastor who gives his mind and heart to the Bible will serve with greater effectiveness and greater faithfulness.”
The book is a sequel to Southern’s previous interactive workbook, The Call to Ministry, and gives the reader room to reflect on the content.
“The book is designed to encourage reflection and interaction,” said Steve Watters, vice president for SBTS Communications. “It includes questions to respond to and blank spaces where readers can capture thoughts raised by the essays and Scripture passages. Even the digital version will include a writable PDF for this purpose.”
The book is split into three sections on faithfulness, persistence, and excellence, and focuses on lessons and strategic plans for pastors to put in place in order to become more faithful to the tasks before them, said project editor Matt Damico.
“It’s likely that there will be pastors reading this book who are in the midst of deep discouragement, in a season of incredible fruitfulness and vitality, or in doubt about their own fitness for ministry,” said Damico, who is associate pastor of worship at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville. “I hope this book can encourage all of them to keep their hands to the plow and stay faithful.”
Additional contributors include Hershael W. York, the Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Christian Preaching at Southern and senior pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky, and Daniel S. Dumas, senior vice president for institutional administration.
“The strongest churches in America are those who have enjoyed continuous, persistent, and strong pastoral leadership,” York writes in the book. “The most obvious common denominator is that leaders persisted and stayed long enough to harvest the vision they planted. People trust leaders they believe will be there in the future.”
York contributed two articles, discussing marks of a pastoral leader and reasons to plant and stay in a church. Dumas’ essay encourages ministers constantly to pursue excellence in their life and ministry.
Other titles in the SBTS Press guide book series are A Guide to Church Revitalization, A Guide to Biblical Manhood, A Guide to Adoption and Orphan Care, A Guide to Expository Ministry, and A Guide to Evangelism.
More Faithful Service is available in print and digital editions at sbts.edu/press.