Customer Reviews

With a Shepherd's Heart: Reclaiming the Pastoral Office of Elder

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This is a great resource for Teaching Elders or lead pastors and Ruling Elders. Alongside books on this subject by Jay Adams, Alexander Strauch, and Edmund Clowney's little book, "Called to the Ministry", it goes well beyond Berghoef's "Elders Handbook". It is a call to return to fidelity to the biblical mandate of elders as pastors. It speaks to the need for a pastor's heart for his people. Included are helpful individual and group study questions. Pastors and elders would do well to work through this book together, and implement it's biblical principles. I heartily recommend it also for those who may be considering the office of elder.

This is a book, I think, every Christian church member and leader should read. Far to often in my Christian experience in North American evangelical churches, it seems to me that a lot of church "elders" haven't a clue as to what the pastoral office of Christian elder is all about. "Elders" who think / act primarily in terms of "administration" in a business sense will clearly fall short of the mark and fail the people in their charge. Dr. Sittema points out with great clarity and firm scriptural support what it means to have a "shepherd's heart". The book includes "case study" examples from his own pastoral experience that helped drive the point home with me.