Memoirs Of An Ordinary Pastor
Author D.A.CARSON
Publisher CROSSWAY
ISBN 1-4335-0199-6
Here is a book for ‘ordinary’ pastors. A book to encourage those in the Christian ministry who may be somewhat put off by the oft times ‘hero’ status accorded to the stories of the mega churches of our day and their pastor leaders. The average size of a church in Nth America is between seventy and ninety persons, the mega church scenario tends to present a false picture and so do the larger than life personalities who often head those churches. Don Carson has honored his father, a man who labored, along with his wife, through difficult years in a difficult area of Canada. Quebec and other parts of Francophone Canada were almost entirely Roman Catholic and into this situation went Tom Carson, English speaking and so having to learn French as he went along. This book is drawn from the memories of his children, especially Don and from his own memoirs written, not throughout his life, but from time to time. Here we follow the story of one of God’s quiet servants, a man, and his wife, who served faithfully, diligently and steadily. A man, perhaps too hard on himself, a perfectionist, it would seem, but one who visited, cared and preached regularly. A man whose integrity was well known and who did not flinch from upholding the truth of God in a gracious way when there were contentions and difficulties within the Baptist groups of which he was a part. The years of Thomas Carson were 1911 through 1992. The going was tough for many of them, the ministry painstakingly slow and then a breath of the Spirit coming later, in the late seventies and early eighties. Don Carson, who has compiled this book and written much of it around the story and memoirs of his father, is a well-known writer. He has authored at least forty-five books and speaks all around the world. He has done us all a service in both contextualizing himself and honoring his father and mother in taking time to give us this book with its confirmations of what it really means to be one of God’s faithful ministers. Most of us work hidden from much public view, here we see the family life, the devotional life, the ministerial life that should underlie all God’s ministers whether in prominent large churches or small out of the way places. This is a book of history a valuable record of the true priorities in pastoral ministry.
