Pastors and those who desire to be pastors, if your idea of pastoral ministry is limited to the pulpit, then you are no heir of the Reformation regardless of the length or theological weight of your sermons. The Reformers, mirroring Christ and the apostles, were deeply involved in the lives of their people, aware that they would be called to account for the oversight of their souls (Heb 13:17). A passion for souls requires the knowledge of specific souls and involvement in the messiness of their everyday lives.

The Reformation itself was a pastoral care movement growing directly out of care for the salvation of the soul.2

The Reformation is often dismissed as an academic discussion involving debates about the finer points of theology and lofty ideas of interest to some people but disconnected from real-life issues, struggles, and heartache. It is important for us to be rescued from such notions lest this important event in our history become yet one more dusty item on the shelf, pulled out for special occasions but otherwise forgotten.

The Reformation was a diverse movement. But at its center was a pulsing, yearning concern for the well-being of souls. Its leaders were pastors at pains to lead their flock—and others from around the world—to forgiveness before God and the resultant living hope, the knowledge of God’s care and presence in the real hardships of this world and the certain hope of resurrection.

1. Pastoral Care

One of the objects the Reformers most commonly attacked was the overly speculative theology of the medieval Scholastic theologians.3 Take, for example, the event pointed to as the launching pad of the Reformation: Luther’s posting his 95 theses. What provoked this? Not academic subtleties or political aspiration, but instead a moment of pastoral, “Oh, no you don’t!” The issue was that Johann Tetzel arrived telling Luther’s people they could buy God’s grace and forgiveness without any concern for faith or repentance.4 Tetzel was toying with the fears of the people and manipulating their emotions: “Are you so tight-fisted not to pay now so that dear grandma can escape the torments of purgatory? Are you so hard hearted as to not give your last penny to allow your dear, departed mother to find relief? As soon as a coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs!”

Luther, in light of his new understanding of justification, recognized this treachery and the damning effects it would have on unsuspecting souls duped by it. His opposition sprang from an earnest desire to shepherd souls and guide them safely to heaven.5

Luther elsewhere said of pastors,

Men who hold the office of the ministry should have the heart of a mother toward the church; for if they have no such heart, they soon become lazy and disgusted, and suffering, in particular, will find them unwilling. . . . Unless your heart toward the sheep is like that of a mother toward her children—a mother, who walks through fire to save her children—you will not be fit to be a preacher. Labor, work, unthankfulness, hatred, envy, and all kinds of sufferings will meet you in this office. If, then, the mother heart, the great love, is not there to drive the preachers, the sheep will be poorly served.6

It is this love for people that drove Luther’s ministry. He not only wrote theological treatises, took on the powers of the world of his day, and endured death threats, but also counseled hundreds in person and in his letters and attended to countless aspects of daily ministry, including writing a guide for teaching children. Once his barber told him he struggled with prayer, so Luther went home and wrote a brief treatise on prayer for his barber! Luther opens with, “Dear Master Peter: I will tell you as best I can what I do personally when I pray. May our dear Lord grant to you and to everybody to do it better than I!” Luther directs him to the Psalms and other parts of Scripture to use in shaping his prayers.7

This was the concern of the Reformers, helping their people learn how to live and relate to God.8 They knew they had rediscovered the life-giving gospel and were surrounded by people in desperate need of it.9

Next we can turn to Calvin, of whom it was said, “Though he may be first thought of as a theologian, he was even more a pastor of souls.”10 In 1538 the people of Geneva ran Calvin off; they kicked him out. The following year the city received a letter from a Catholic archbishop urging them to return to Rome. Unable to respond, they sought out Calvin, the pastor they had rejected just the previous year. We might understand if, in such a situation, a pastor said, “Forget it! I’m not bothering with you. You didn’t want me, remember?” But that was not Calvin’s response. Instead he wrote a careful, pointed response, protecting Geneva and giving them ground to stand on:

For though I am for the present relieved of the charge of the Church of Geneva, that circumstance ought not to prevent me from embracing it with paternal affection—God, when he gave it to me in charge, having bound me to be faithful to it forever. Now, then, when I see the worst snares laid for that Church, whose safety it has pleased the Lord to make my highest care, and grievous peril impending if not obviated, who will advise me to await the issue silent and unconcerned? How heartless, I ask, would it be to wink in idleness, and, as it were, vacillating at the destruction of one whose life you are bound vigilantly to guard and preserve? . . . assuredly I cannot cut off that charge any more than that of my own soul . . . my ministry (which, knowing it to be from Christ, I am bound, if need be, to maintain with my blood).11

This is no ivory-tower academician! This is a shepherd willing to spill his blood to protect his flock even when that flock despises his care for them.

Elsewhere, Calvin made this comment on pastoral care:

[W]e who have charge to teach the people must not only see what is profitable for them all in general, but we must also deal with everyone according to his age.

But we must mark also, that it is not enough for a man who is a shepherd in the Church of God, to preach, and cast abroad the word into the air, we must have private admonitions also. And this is a point that many deceive themselves in. For they think that the order of the Church was made for no other end and purpose but that they should come to Church one hour in the week, or certain days, and there hear a man speak, and when he has come out of the pulpit, he should hold his peace. Those who think so, show themselves sufficiently, that they never knew, either what Christianity, or God’s order, meant.

For as we see in this passage . . . when he who has preached the word has taught the people, he must have an eye to those who have need to be warned of their faults privately. . . . And therefore, if we want to do our duty toward God, and to those who are committed to our charge, it is not enough for us to offer them the doctrine generally, but when we see any of them go astray, we must labor to bring him to the right way. When we see another in grief and sorrow, we must go about to comfort him. When we see anyone who is dull of the spirit, we must prick him and spur him, as his nature will bear.12

Calvin, and the other Reformers like him, was not an aloof preacher simply dispensing information.13 They were shepherds involved in the everyday life of their people, seeing it as their task to help the people know God, pray, worship God, persevere, and one day die well with the hope of the resurrection.14 Calvin stated,

Whatever others may think, we do not regard our office as bound within so narrow limits that when the sermon is delivered we may rest as if our task is done. They whose blood will be required of us if lost through our slothfulness, are to be cared for much more closely and vigilantly.15

David Cornick states that contrary to the Catholic understanding of the confessional, in the ministry of Luther and his followers the work of dealing with sins “was transposed into the relationship of pastor and people, and a pulpit ministry grounded in a genuine knowledge of the congregation.” As a result, “The healing of souls was taken into the home. Visitation became a significant part of the pastor’s life—especially to the sick, the dying and those in prison. As sacrificing priest became preaching minister, visitation became the locus of pastoral care.”16Theodore Beza exemplifies this in his sermon on John 21:15, where Jesus charged Peter, “Feed my sheep”:

It is not only necessary that [a pastor] have general knowledge of his flock, but he must also know and call each of his sheep by name, both in public and in their homes, both night and day. Pastors must run after lost sheep, bandaging up the one with a broken leg, strengthening the one that is sick . . . . In sum, the pastor must consider his sheep more dear to him than his own life, following the example of the Good Shepherd.17

Examples abound, but one clear place to see this is in the coming of the plague. People died at an alarming rate, and the showing of symptoms was regarded as a sign of death. Many fled the cities. But these men stayed at their posts. Twenty-five percent of the people in Zwingli’s town died of the plague, and Zwingli was there ministering to them. He came down with the plague and almost died. When the plague came to Geneva and many fled, the pastors of Geneva met to ask who would visit the infected and care for them. Calvin volunteered, but the other ministers said they could not afford to lose him and held him back.18

This pastoral care can also be seen in the Reformers’ counseling, which we have recorded in their voluminous correspondence.19 One of Calvin’s colleagues in Geneva wrote this of Calvin’s pastoral ministry:

No words of mine can declare the fidelity and prudence with which he gave counsel. The kindness with which he received all who came to him, the clearness and promptitude with which he replied to those who asked his opinion on the most important questions, and the ability with which he disentangled the difficulties and problems which were laid before him. Nor can I express the gentleness with which he could comfort the afflicted and raise the fallen and distressed.”20

Calvin’s correspondence is itself a primary evidence of his pastoral heart, both in how many letters he took time to write and in how he wrote. Many of these letters had to do with diplomatic issues involving nations and the church at large. But as Ronald Wallace notes, “even the diplomatic gives way entirely to an evangelistic motive and we find that his first concern is with his correspondent as a person. Is he or she keeping close to God, listening to his word continually, and likely to continue to resist the temptations of Satan in order to keep running well in the Christian race—in other words, how is it with your soul?”21

In one letter, Calvin wrote to comfort a father who was grieving the death of his son, a student whom Calvin had known well. His letter opens with these words:

When I first received intelligence of the death . . . of your son Louis, I was so utterly overpowered that for many days I was fit for nothing but to grieve; and albeit I was somehow upheld before the Lord by those aids wherewith he sustains our souls in affliction, among men, however, I was almost a nonentity.22

This is no fatalistic, unemotional response. Neither is it a lame, impotent response of an ivory-tower academician. Calvin, as a faithful pastor, begins with joining his friend’s grief and then moves to sharing with this father the truths of God’s providential care that bolstered his own soul. Calvin points to the son’s faith in the gospel and the way it obviously impacted his life so that the father can hope for reunion in heaven.

After reminding the father of these grounds of comfort, Calvin returns to the reality of grief: “Neither do I insist upon your laying aside all grief. Nor, in the school of Christ, do we learn any such philosophy as requires us to put off that common humanity with which God has endowed us, that, being men, we should be turned to stones.”23

Another example of pastoral care is Martin Bucer, who was a mentor to Calvin. Bucer wrote Concerning the True Care of Souls, a significant treatise on pastoral ministry, in which his typical phrase for pastors is “carers for Souls.”24 His book is a gem, full of insight for the work of pastors.25 His pastoral and evangelistic heart is seen throughout the book but especially in this lament:

Where are the innocent servants of Christ who bring Christ’s sheep nothing but the Lord’s voice and word, who are zealous to seek all the Lord’s lost sheep, to bring back those which have gone astray, to heal the injured, to strengthen the weak, to guard the strong and see them aright [Ezek. 34:16]?26

Bucer warns,

[T]hose ministers of Christ who abandon the baptized . . . will find it difficult to give account for them to God and Christ our Lord. . . . [T]he Lord will accuse these unreliable and unfaithful shepherds with great dismay: You have not searched for the lost [Ezek. 34:4].27

Bucer summarizes his aim with this comment: “those who are ordained to the pastoral office in the church are to be the principal physicians of souls and guardians . . . .”28

2. Evangelism

Care for people naturally leads to a desire that they be reconciled to God and find forgiveness of their sins. Authentic pastoral care is always evangelistic, and this is also true for the Reformers. Examples of evangelistic concern, labor, and fervor abound, though I will provide only a few here.29

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