Spiritual Fathers

SPIRITUAL FATHERS

Author PAUL NEWBERRY

Publisher SOVEREIGN WORLD

ISBN 1-85240-364-0

This is subtitled, “A Biblical and Practical Perspective on Spiritual Fathers and Fathering.”  It is certainly not one of those books that present a schema by which leadership can be fostered.  The author comes from the older British Pentecostal church tradition and is himself a pastor of fifty years experience as well as a visiting lecturer at the AOG Bible College in the UK.  All in all the book presents something of the heart God’s spiritual way of church life and leadership and nurturing in ministry as opposed to many of the management techniques in vogue today.  I suppose you could call this unashamedly and graciously written, ‘old time’ doctrine as regards the heart of Christian ministry.  A welcome change from the  general fare of stylistic mentoring books.  Paul Newberry writes in an almost conversational style, draws on a lifetime of experience of older men who influenced his life as a child, teenager and younger minister and his own growth into a ministry of fathering other ministers and churches.  There are anecdotes that are helpful and to the point.  He begins with the Fatherhood of God and from that place unfolds a theology of relationship that is not simply a rather mechanistic mentorship.  Reading a short book like this brings home the glory of God’s ways.   Counselling is high on the agenda of church life today, it has driven to the edges of church experience, the wisdom of godly fathers in the faith.  God’s fatherhood, human fatherhood in family life, in church life, in the relationship between younger men and ministers and those who are older in the Lord.  Simple chapter headings give a clue as to contents, Christ and His Father, fathers and love, fathers and the Holy Spirit, what fathers do, fathers and churches.  There is plenty here and perhaps a book, (though simple and straightforward), that takes us to the heart of things being forgotten in many quarters, things vital to the health of churches that desire to be what church should be.   

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