Book Review: Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls, by Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite
January 15, 2025
January 15, 2025
Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite, Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers. Crossway, 2023. 234 pages.
Timothy and Titus learned pastoral ministry at the feet of the apostle Paul. If you’re a pastor, my guess is that you also learned by observing and imitating a faithful pastor. Some are still living, following the Lord, and only a phone call away. Others have gone on to glory. Their faith has become sight.
Like many, I’ve learned from both the living and the dead. I’ve especially enjoyed the rich retrieval of pastoral theology from the Puritans. I aspire to Richard Baxter’s pastoral visitation, and I hope to imitate Richard Sibbes’s sweetness in preaching Christ. But when it comes to the church fathers, I only turned to them initially for their trinitarian doctrine. In Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls, Coleman Ford and Shawn Wilhite teach us that the church fathers were not only faithful theologians, but also faithful pastors. What can we learn from them?
Ford and Wilhite divide the book into three parts that offer three lessons for pastors on virtue, theological vision, and ministry.
First, the church fathers can teach us a thing or two about virtue. While the vice of pride is seen today in fallen pastorates, Ford and Wilhite encourage us to follow the footsteps of pastors like Basil of Caesarea. Along with defending the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Basil’s aim was “promoting humility as integral to a flourishing Christian life and ministry” (23). While the world strives for glory, Basil preached against the pitfalls of pride in a sermon now titled On Humility. As pastors, we need to cultivate humble hearts ourselves and also exhort our congregations towards humility.
How can we cultivate humble hearts if we’re obsessed over numbers or tirelessly laboring to inch our way up public platforms? Or how can we grow in humility if we can’t even hand over aspects of our ministry to helping hands? What we need to recover is a rightly directed glory and a posture of humility that receives help. Pastors don’t need self-actualization, but self-denial (22). Basil follows the lead of Paul in Philippians 2:3, saying, “Come, let us imitate [the apostles], so that out of our humility there may arise for us everlasting glory, the perfect and true gift of Christ” (25).
If Christ’s glory is our aim, not our own, it will be seen in our aspirations for the kingdom and not just our own local church. Instead of obsession over our baptismal numbers, our private prayers will be marked by petitions for the faithfulness and fruit of other pastors and other churches. Our posture of humility will also be heard in our requests to brothers and sisters for help. For Basil, “allowing oneself to be served by another is just as much an act of humility as one performing the action itself” (28). Pastors, are we known for being a one-man-band or for equipping the whole orchestra? Are we known for refusing help, or humbly requesting it?
Second, the church fathers can help us examine our theological vision. Pastors can’t faithfully minister without grounding their work in the Word. And pastors can’t separate their work in the Word from their love of God and neighbor. Ford and Wilhite show how Augustine was a model of contemplative theology that fills up on love for God and then spills out in love for neighbor. Indeed, in On Christian Teaching, Augustine ties the two together: “Anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine Scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them” (142).
For those pastors who find it unproductive to spend time engaging in theological reflection, Ford and Wilhite point back to Jesus’s words, “You shall love the Lord . . . with all your mind.” And for those pastors who find it difficult to step out of the study and spend time with the sheep, Ford and Wilhite encourage pastors to “put in the necessary time to train their minds for the sake of properly administering spiritual care” (emphasis added, 143).
Third, the church fathers can help us avoid modern pitfalls like busyness without limits. Ministry is busy. In any given week, we preach, pray, counsel, visit, plan, train, and prepare. Some days it feels like all we did was rush from one meeting to the next. Yet even if ministry’s busyness is inevitable, we have limits. If we go an hour or two without sleep one night, we’ll pay for it the entire next day. We can schedule meetings back-to-back, but they’ll be increasingly ineffective. The church fathers remind us that both “the desire for acceptance at any cost and the commitment to busyness without limits are spiritual vices” (181).
Sometimes it takes ancient voices to help us heed modern sins. As an antidote, the church fathers remind us of our need for contemplation. As misconceptions of contemplation abound, Ford and Wilhite remind us that it shouldn’t be confused with “isolationism or monasticism, which often includes permanently removing oneself from society” (185). It also doesn’t include “emptying the mind or practicing relaxation exercises” (187). Instead, contemplation includes solitude, resting in God, and remembering our union with God.
Drawing upon Gregory the Great, Ford and Wilhite show that contemplation allows pastors to give spiritual attention to their own soul and to the church. Gregory says, “No one presumes to teach an art that he has not first mastered through study. How foolish it is therefore for the inexperienced to assume pastoral authority when the care of souls is the art of arts” (190–191).
Contemplation is key to caring for souls, beginning with our own. It’s no surprise that the church fathers drew the practice from Jesus’s own teaching: “But when you pray, go into your room, and shut the door, and pray in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).
Instead of quickly skipping from the apostles to the Reformers and then to the Puritans, Ford and Wilhite remind us to slow down and follow the church fathers also. Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls is especially helpful to introduce a new generation to their pastoral writings. It would be a fruitful book to discuss as an elder board or with a brother who aspires to the pastorate. But don’t stop with Ford and Wilhite’s work of retrieval; pick up Basil’s sermon On Humility, Augustine’s On Christian Teaching, and Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule. Let the fathers’ time-tested wisdom shape your pastoral ministry today.