I purchased this book the day before I was installed as a pastor at North Country Fellowship. Being my first pastorate, I thought a book addressing the practical aspects of pastoral ministry might be appropriate.

On Being a Pastor was co-written by Pastors Derek Prime and Alistair Begg, and also includes foreword by R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary. The authors both hail from Scotland, though Begg has spent nearly 30 years ministering in the United States.

Attention is paid to a well-rounded variety of the aspects of pastoral ministry, including calling and character, prayer, scriptural study, preaching. However, the book also touches on a pastor’s personal devotions, how one’s labor can influence his marriage and family, and how to avoid temptations unique to pastoral work. The sections are well-developed, and highly practical.

To support the thesis of each chapter, the manuscript is peppered with quotes and stories from different pastors’ sermons and memoirs. Many of these illustrations are drawn from Reformed ministers of days past, such as Charles Haddon Surgeon, Alexander Whyte, W. E. Sangster, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. As a young pastor, these excerpts were especially helpful, and I regularly found myself checking citations in the back of the book to look for future reading.

They make a point to clarify that they don’t desire to see pastoral ministry become a “professional” pursuit, an idea that John Piper expands upon in his own book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. Early in the book they state that the distinction between clergy and laity, while useful in some ways, has been misunderstood over time and has become an unbiblical and unhealthy paradigm. In many ways, I resonate with that sentiment, and it plays out on how I do pastoral work in my own church.

Prime and Begg write from a significantly different church culture and life-background than my own, which obviously makes for some disconnects in ministry approach and social understanding. However, these differences were eye-opening and helpful to me, and more often than not I found myself saying “Yes!” Overall, I found the book to quite enjoyable.

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