Primary Authors & Sources
PAST-101 builds its reading list from required primary and classical sources in homiletics, church governance, and spiritual oversight. The authors below are read as teachers across the centuries, not as entries in a bibliography. Charles H. Spurgeon contributes Lectures to My Students: First Series and Lectures to My Students: Second Series, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. John Albert Broadus contributes A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Robert Lewis Dabney contributes Sacred Rhetoric, or, a Course of Lectures on Preaching, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Alexander Taggart McGill contributes Church Government, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
Taken together, these readings form a coherent conversation across centuries — students encounter real arguments, not flattened summaries. William G. T. Shedd contributes Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Richard Baxter embodies pastoral theology in practice — practical, searching, and relentlessly centered on the souls under his care, notably in The Reformed Pastor. John Flavel contributes The Fountain of Life Opened Up, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet contributes Homiletics: Or, The Theory of Preaching, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. James Mason Hoppin contributes Pastoral Theology, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
What You Will Study
Students study pastoral foundations including homiletics, church governance, worship planning, visitation, counseling basics, and spiritual oversight from Scripture and Reformed pastoral theology. The course covers sermon preparation, sacramental administration, membership care, discipline procedures, and the pastor's personal piety and family life as model for the flock. Readings include pastoral epistles, Baxter's Reformed Pastor, and contemporary Reformed works adapted for house church and small congregation contexts. Students prepare sample sermons, visit reports, and governance proposals reflecting biblical eldership rather than corporate management models. Attention falls on practical ministry skills needed for shepherding gatherings across the Florida Keys with limited resources and high accountability.
Course Objectives
Objectives include preparing expository sermon manuscripts from assigned texts, articulating biblical principles for baptism and Lord's Supper in Reformed practice, drafting church governance documents for elder-led congregations, and demonstrating pastoral sensitivity in case study responses. Students will evaluate worship orders, catechism programs, and discipline processes against confessional standards. The course cultivates integrated pastoral identity combining teacher, intercessor, and overseer roles. Students will develop personal rules of life for prayer, study, and Sabbath rest in ministry. Assessments include preached or recorded sermons, pastoral care reflections, and peer review of governance proposals.
Ministry & Life Application
Pastoral foundations equip called men to serve house churches and congregations with skill, humility, and confessional integrity rather than improvisation or imitation of celebrity ministries. Elders across the Florida Keys gain practical tools for weekly preaching, member care, and orderly worship that honors Christ's headship. This course represents the capstone integration of biblical, theological, and historical studies into embodied ministry. Pastoral leaders leave prepared for the daily labor of feeding sheep, confronting sin, and celebrating sacraments. The church is built up when its shepherds have been trained not merely in theory but in the craft of pastoral work under Word and Spirit.