In my reading for my class on Personal Spiritual Disciplines recently, I came across an interesting and sobering anecdote about the Puritans in J.I. Packer's A Quest for Godliness. Making a point about the Puritans' ministry being focused on spiritual revival, Packer contrasts the ministries of Richard Greenham and Richard Baxter, two English Puritans who ministered about 70 years apart.
Greenham, a pastoral pioneer, was incumbent [pastor] of Dry Drayton, seven miles from Cabridge, from 1570 to 1590. He worked extremely hard. He rose daily at four and each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday preached a sermon at daybreak, to catch his flock before they dispersed into the fields; then on Sunday he preached twice, and in addition catechised the children of the parish each Sunday evening and Thursday morning. Mornings he studied, afternoons he visited the sick or walked out into the fields 'to confer with his Neighbours while they were at Plough.'
...Yet, for all his godliness, insight, evangelical message and hard work, his ministry was virtually fruitless. Others outside his parish were blessed through him, but not his own people. 'Greenham had pastures green, but flocks full lean' was a little rhyme that went round among the godly. 'I perceive noe good wrought by my ministry on any but one family' was what, according to Holland, he said to his successor. In rural England in Greenham's day, there was much fallow ground to be broken up; it was a time for sowing, but the reaping time was still in the future.
Contrast this with Richard Baxter:
Finally, we glance at Richard Baxter, who ministered at Kidderminster from 1641 to 1660, with a five-year break during the Civil War. Kidderminster was a town of some 2,000 adults, and most of them, it seems, were converted under his ministry. He found them, he tells us, 'an ignorant, rude and revelling people, for the most part...they had hardly ever had any lively serious preaching among them.' But his ministry was wonderfully blessed.The Congregation was usually full, so that we were fain to build five Galleries [balconies] after my coming thither...In a word, when I came thither first, there was about one Family in a Street that worshipped God and called on His Name, and when I came away there were some streets where there was not past one Family in the side of a Street that did not so; and that did not by professing serious Godliness, give us hopes of their sincerity.
These two Puritan pastors both worked remarkably hard, laboring for decades harder than most pastors do today. Both were extremely godly men. Yet, for whatever reason, Baxter's ministry was blessed by God in ways that Greenham's was not. Yet Greenham's faithfulness has borne fruit for over four hundred years in the lives of those who have read his works and looked to his example, fruit that he never saw in his lifetime. No doubt Greenham was extremely discouraged at times, yet he persevered. And the seeds that he and his contemporaries sowed helped to enable Baxter's generation to see such fruit from gospel ministry in England.
Most pastors today will probably have ministries that resemble Greenham's more than Baxter's. But they need to remember that they will be judged according to their faithfulness, and not necessarily by their fruitfulness.
|