Pastor: a Reader for Ordained Ministry.(Book Review)

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, February, 2003

Edited by WILLIAM H. WILLIMON. Abingdon. 326 pp. $25 paper.

A judiciously selected anthology on sundry dimensions of ministry by the chaplain of Duke University. What it means to be a priest, a counselor, a preacher, an intercessor, an evangelist, and an unworthy servant aspiring to holiness. Wisdom from the ancients (Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom), the more recent (Fosdick, Reinhold Niebuhr, Spurgeon), and the contemporary (Hauerwas, Richard Lischer, Sam Proctor, Neuhaus)--Protestant, Catholic, liberal, conservative--and each one guaranteed to occasion pause, self-criticism, and the inspiration to assume anew the impossible possibility of Christian ministry.