03.00.3. Pastoral Problems (Author/Introduction)
PASTORAL PROBLEMS
Out of his fifty years of experience as a pastor and teacher of homiletics, Dr. Riley prepared this handbook on every question pertaining to the work of the Christian ministry: appointment, preaching, administering the ordinances, performing a wedding service, conducting a funeral, untangling church quarrels, visiting, church music, finance, church organizations, the pastor and missions, and transacting church business. The book is Biblical and practical. Its chief authority is the Bible and every chapter has Scriptural quotations enforcing its thesis. It is practical because of the rich experience of the author and his skill in making that experience available to his readers.
These forthright directions and suggestions have been tested out by Dr. Riley in the classroom and in the field. They have proved helpful to preachers just beginning their ministerial experience and to those still seeking solutions to so many of the common problems. $1.50 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
W. B. RILEY, world-renowned Bible teacher and evangelist, served as a pastor and educator in Minneapolis for several decades. He helped to found the Bible and Missionary Training School, Northwestern Seminary and a liberal arts college in that city.
INTRODUCTION Of the making of books there is no end—and most of them die quickly, once they have been made and published. Only the best, the healthiest, survive. Few stand the test of time, as this one has; published some twenty years ago, Pastoral Problems met an immediate and continuing popularity, and became a classic in its field. Popular demand has kept it in print.
Dr. Riley was divinely called and peculiarly equipped to write this book: he had a wide and enriching experience not only in theory, but in practice. What he taught at Northwestern Evangelical Seminary he put into pastoral practice as minister of the famed First Baptist Church of Minneapolis. In the pulpit he was one of the nation’s great champions of historic evangelical Christianity; on the campus he was an inspired and inspiring evangelist and an invaluable instructor in the methodology of the ministry.
He seems to have missed nothing, in this book, in his consideration of pastoral problems: from the appointment of the pastor through his work in preaching, teaching, administering the ordinances and offices of the Church, and the management of money, music, missions and evangelism, he offers the benefit of a counsel and experience the obtaining of which would cost the average minister twenty years of his life. We are proud to present Pastoral Problems in its new dress —a revised and popular-priced edition. THE PUBLISHERS