Brian and Cara Croft, The
Pastor’s Family: Shepherding Your Family Through the Challenges of Pastoral
Ministry. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013. 171pp. Paperback.
Reviewed by Dr. Ryan
M. McGraw
Today, the phrase, “the pastor’s kid,” often conjures images
in our minds of a child who make unchurched children look tame. It is too easy
to blame this phenomenon on the doctrine of election. While it is true that
there are Esaus in the church as well as Jacobs, it is also true (if we may
believe the Crofts’ testimony) that many ministers spend little time with their
wives and children, neglect family worship, and do not set parameters for the
church to respect in order to protect their families. Governing his own
household and training obedient children are some of the primary qualifications
for any man who is called to the pastoral ministry. Brian and Cara Croft’s
little book on The Pastor’s Family
sets a finger on the pulse-beat of today’s ministry and offers a much-needed
call to encouragement and repentance.
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The Croft Family |
In the late seventeenth century, William Perkins urged
pastors to make the ministry attractive to their sons so that more of them
would desire to serve in the ministry themselves. His desire was often realized
in Reformed families multi-generationally. Now it is common for a pastor’s
children in many circles not only to avoid the ministry like the plague, but
perhaps even the church itself. We must always hope in the grace of God to do
what we cannot do in the hearts of wayward children. But we must also take up God’s
call to use the divinely appointed means of grace in the lives of our children.
Woe to us if we trust those means, but woe to us if we neglect them. Brian and Cara
Croft, in this book, have given the church a clear call to reset the priorities
of the pastor and of the church with regard to the pastor’s family. May we
listen to and build upon it.
This review first
appeared in the August 2014 edition of New Horizons.