I've been reading Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor by D.A. Carson, a wonderful book about his father's life and ministry in Canada. The book is refreshing to this ordinary pastor as I can relate to the mentality of its subject and its emphasis on how to become a more faithful pastor, not necessarily a more successful one as is held in much of contemporary church thinking. While the book is refreshing, it is also very sobering as it
makes the reader realizes that service in small, obscure churches with only modest growth may be the only life for many pastors, no matter how hard they pray, work, and serve. The book reveals the very bleak side of pastoral ministry in a tough field in a tough time in Canada and how such ministry can break the spirit, health, and finances of a man. Responding to the call of God is never easy, but it has it particularly rough edges when gains in ministry are always small. The call and duty presses one to stay with the work, while the work makes one miserable at the same time. Being caught between a rock and a hard place is a gross understatement of such a ministry. Of course, the book also includes much of God's grace and successes in ministry as well.I will review more the book later, but for now an entry that is both humorous and sobering at the same time.
The author recalls this incident with his father, found on page 74:
One Saturday we were both weeding a flower bed. I was in the first year of high school, I think, and going through my first poetry-writing phase. I wrote for my own amusement but sometimes printed the results in the school newspaper. Observing the worms as I was hoeing, I thought it would be fun write a poem in the first person from a worm's point of view. I composed it in my head on the spot: a worm approaching the warmth of the sun, squeezing through particles of dirt, etc. My last two lines were, "I saw the spade flash in the sun:/Woe is me! I am undone." I thought it was hilarious and could hardly wait to print it at school. I interrupted my weeding long enough to recite it proudly to my father. He kept on weeding, said nothing for a minute or two, and then quietly asked, "Are you quite sure you want to print a poem that applies to a worm the deepest reflections of the prophet Isaiah when he was afforded a vision of the transcendent God in all his glory?"
"It's just a joke," I protested. But I never printed the poem.
Good boy. Oh, that we had reverence for God and his Word like that today!





Roger E. Olson has a fine new book called 
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