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Diary of a Pastor’s Soul: The Holy Moments in a Life of Ministry
M. Craig Barnes
Brazos (2020). 240 pp.
Retiring Princeton Theological Seminary president Craig Barnes caps off his over four decades of ministry as a pastor, theologian, seminary professor, and president with this remarkable volume that engages the gift, call, and responsibility of pastoral ministry and the pastoral life with gravitas. Throughout his career, Barnes has been a pastor to pastors, mentoring two generations of ministry practitioners, including this writer, and he has done so with thoughtful, insightful, prayerful, resilient and steady leadership as only a poet can.
Diary of a Pastor’s Soul is his first novel, but those who are familiar with Barnes’s previous publications on pastoral theology and pastoral ministry know that his writing prose is thoroughly poetic. This book embodies and deepens his thoughts from two of his prior works: his monograph, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (Eerdmans, 2008) and his essay “Searching for Gravitas” in Schools of Faith: Essays on Theology, Ethics and Education in Honour of Iain R. Torrance, eds. David Fergusson and Bruce McCormack (T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2019).
The fictional character is the retiring pastor of the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church who invites the reader on a yearlong, week-by-week journey beginning with Ordinary Time on the liturgical calendar in July through the following June. As a diary account, the fictitious pastor peers into the subtext of his own reflection of life, vocation, relationships, and faith as he engages in the context of marriage, parenting, the community, and the church which he serves. The pastor and his wife Ellie want to finish their ministry service well, to retire well, and to send off their daughter Mackenzie in the right way that leaves faith open to the possibilities and power of God’s unseen intentions. Only a pastor who has served in the trenches, as it were, and who has recovered well and learned from the wounds and scars of ministry can offer salutary insights as Barnes does. You can go from cover to cover on the journey, or pick-and-choose an arena of ministry that is applicable to your situation and glean wisdom from what he says. For example, his Week 3 entry for May has the pastor reflecting on ministry with “The Adored Director of Music” named Jon. The pastor wisely observes: “Upon my arrival as the new pastor, it was immediately clear to me that Jon was a force to be reckoned with in the congregation” (210). This is followed up with this poignant observation: “The subtext of all those ‘great job today’ comments after worship service was, ‘I’d rather not be your enemy’” (211). Or take the Week 3 November entry as the pastor reflects on his skin cancer diagnosis. We pastors have officiated at hundreds of funerals/memorial services and comforted congregants and their loved ones in hospice. The pastor thinks about the diagnosis in this way: “I am mostly focused on letting it sink in that I have a lethal disease . . . I’ll figure out the meaning of this along the way” (98, 100).
Diary of a Pastor’s Soul is an invitation to consider God, yourself, your relationships, faith, and life—the who, the whom, the why, the what, and the “so what.” You will laugh, you will nod your head, you will sit with the story because what Barnes does is tell our story and the unfolding story of what so many pastors—past, present, and all those to come—have come to discover in the beauty and messiness of our sacred vocation. This may well be Barnes’s last book publication before his retirement next year, but I certainly hope that it won’t be his last one. And I won’t forecast what the next diary entries will be. As with the fictitious pastor in his retirement, we can say: “The devotion these days is simply to these days” (235).
Neal D. Presa is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the interim associate vice president for admissions and a faculty member at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey. He also helps lead the World Council of Churches Central and Executive Committees. He’s the author of numerous books and is a member of the St. Augustine Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
