🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 30 (from laksa104)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa030.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/","crawl_time":1775013713,"first_indexed_time":1757495962,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"org,thegospelcoalition!www,\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/ s443","src_root_hash":"13966925389505938030","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Review: ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson","meta_descriptions":["Benjamin Vribicek reviews ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson (Crossway, 2025)."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge.\nAs often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating.\nI’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know.\nIn\nMemoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson\n, Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace.\nThis book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well.\nMemoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson\nD. A. Carson\nCrossway\n.\n176 pp\n.\nD. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s.\nThrough Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history.\nCrossway\n.\n176 pp\n.\nGod Loves Ordinary Pastors\nTom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow.\nFrom a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s\njournal\n. Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality.\nYet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ.\nSome ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95).\nTom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\nOrdinary Pastors Love Their Families\nBalancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150).\nGod sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\nA significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than [their] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62).\nI must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors.\nOrdinary Pastors Finish Well\nTom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions.\nTom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life.\nTom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John.\nAnd he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “[It’s] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74).\nMost Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release,\nMemoirs of an Ordinary Pastor\nstill encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter.","attrs_markdown":"[×]()\n\n###### Browse\n- [Ancient Gospel, Future Church Campaign](https:\/\/pages.thegospelcoalition.org\/agfc)\n  - Featured Essay\n    The Love of God\n    An essay by\n    \n    Sam Storms\n    \n    [Read Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-love-of-god\/)\n  - ###### Trending\n    - [Prayer](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-doctrine-of-prayer\/)\n    - [Faithfulness of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-faithfulness-of-god\/)\n    - [Saving Grace](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/saving-grace\/)\n    - [Adoption by God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/adoption\/)\n  - ###### Most Popular\n    - [Repentance](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/repentance\/)\n    - [Gender Identity](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/gender-identity-and-sexual-orientation\/)\n    - [Trusting God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/trusting-god\/)\n    - [The Holiness of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-holiness-of-god\/)\n  - [See All Essays](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essays\/)\n- [AI Christian Benchmark](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/ai-christian-benchmark\/)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n- [TGCW26](https:\/\/www.tgcw26.com\/)\n- [Cohorts](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/cohort\/)\n- [Articles](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/articles\/)\n  - Featured Essay\n    Resurrection of Jesus\n    An essay by\n    \n    Benjamin Shaw\n    \n    [Read Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/bodily-resurrection-jesus\/)\n  - ###### Trending\n    - [Death of Christ](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-death-of-christ\/)\n    - [Prayer](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-doctrine-of-prayer\/)\n    - [Resurrection of Jesus](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/bodily-resurrection-jesus\/)\n    - [Church and State](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-relationship-of-church-and-state\/)\n  - ###### Most Popular\n    - [Sovereignty of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-sovereignty-of-god\/)\n    - [Repentance](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/repentance\/)\n    - [Faith and Works](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/faith-and-works\/)\n    - [The Holiness of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-holiness-of-god\/)\n  - [See All Essays](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essays\/)\n- [Best Commentaries](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/best-commentaries\/)\n  - Featured Essay\n    Resurrection of Jesus\n    An essay by\n    \n    Benjamin Shaw\n    \n    [Read Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/bodily-resurrection-jesus\/)\n  - ###### Trending\n    - [Death of Christ](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-death-of-christ\/)\n    - [Prayer](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-doctrine-of-prayer\/)\n    - [Resurrection of Jesus](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/bodily-resurrection-jesus\/)\n    - [Church and State](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-relationship-of-church-and-state\/)\n  - ###### Most Popular\n    - [Sovereignty of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-sovereignty-of-god\/)\n    - [Repentance](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/repentance\/)\n    - [Faith and Works](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/faith-and-works\/)\n    - [The Holiness of God](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essay\/the-holiness-of-god\/)\n  - [See All Essays](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essays\/)\n- [Commentary](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/commentary\/)\n- [Conference Media](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/conference-media\/)\n- [Courses](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/courses\/)\n- [Essays](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essays\/)\n- [The Carson Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/the-carson-center\/)\n- [The Keller Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/thekellercenter\/)\n- [New City Catechism](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/new-city-catechism\/)\n- [Newsletters](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/newsletters\/)\n- [Podcasts](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/)\n- [Publications](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/publications\/)\n- [Read the Bible](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/read-the-bible\/)\n- [Store](https:\/\/store.thegospelcoalition.org\/tgc)\n- [TGC Pastors](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/pastors\/)\n- [Women's Initiatives](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/tgcwomen)\n- [Themelios](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/themelios\/)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n- [Videos](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/videos\/)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n- [TGC Collective](https:\/\/pages.thegospelcoalition.org\/collective)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n- [TGC Store](https:\/\/store.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n- [Blogs](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/)\n  - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14200743\/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/evangelical-history\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182458\/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182634\/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/ray-ortlund\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182700\/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/erik-raymond\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182550\/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/scotty-smith\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/14182222\/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/justin-taylor\/)\n  - [![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/19131530\/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevin-wax\/)\n\n###### Filter By\n- [Scripture](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/scripture\/)\n- [Topics](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/topics\/)\n- [Sections](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/)\n- [Authors](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/authors\/)\n- [Series](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/series\/)\n\n[Explore]()\n\n[![TGC Header Logo](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/themes\/luther\/images\/tgc_logo.png)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n\n[U.S. Edition]()\n\nEditions\n\n[×]()\n\n[Africa](https:\/\/africa.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [عربي](https:\/\/ar.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [Australia](https:\/\/au.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [Brasil](https:\/\/coalizaopeloevangelho.org\/)   [Canada](https:\/\/ca.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [正體中文](https:\/\/tc.tgcchinese.org\/)   [简体中文](https:\/\/www.tgcchinese.org\/)   [Español](https:\/\/www.coalicionporelevangelio.org\/)   [Français](https:\/\/evangile21.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [India](https:\/\/in.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [Italia](https:\/\/tgcitalia.org\/)   [한국어](http:\/\/www.tgckorea.org\/)   [Nederlands](https:\/\/www.tgcnederland.nl\/)   [Norden](https:\/\/norden.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [Shqip](https:\/\/koalicioniungjillit.org\/)   [Русский](https:\/\/ru.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [Slovenský](https:\/\/spolocenstvoevanjelia.sk\/)   [Українська](https:\/\/ukr.thegospelcoalition.org\/)   [United States](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n\nBrowse\n\n- [Editorial](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/)\n  - [Articles](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/articles\/)\n  - [Blogs](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/)\n  - [Read the Bible](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/devotionals\/read-the-bible\/)\n  - [Courses](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/courses)\n  - [Commentary](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/commentary\/)\n  - [Essays](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/essays\/)\n  - [New City Catechism](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/new-city-catechism\/)\n  - [Publications](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/publications\/)\n  - [Reviews](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/)\n  - [Series](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/series\/)\n  - [Themelios](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/themelios\/)\n  - [Videos](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/videos\/)\n  - [Arts & Culture](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/arts-culture\/)\n  - [Bible & Theology](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/bible-theology\/)\n  - [Christian Living](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/christian-living\/)\n  - [Current Events](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/current-events\/)\n  - [Faith & Work](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/faith-work\/)\n  - [The Carson Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/the-carson-center\/)\n  - [The Keller Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/the-keller-center\/)\n  - [Ministry](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/ministry\/)\n- [Podcasts](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/)\n  - [Gospelbound](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/gospelbound\/)\n  - [Recorded](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/recorded\/)\n  - [TGC Podcast](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/tgc-podcast\/)\n  - [The Carson Center Podcast](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/carson-center\/)\n  - [The Deep Dish](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/deep-dish\/)\n  - [The Everyday Pastor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/everyday-pastor\/)\n  - [As In Heaven](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/as-in-heaven\/)\n  - [Churches Planting Churches](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/acts-29\/)\n  - [Glo](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/glo\/)\n  - [Help Me Teach The Bible](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/help-me-teach-the-bible\/)\n  - [Let's Talk](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/lets-talk-podcast\/)\n  - [Post-Christianity?](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/post-christianity\/)\n  - [TGC Q\\&A](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/q-a-podcast\/)\n  - [Word Of The Week](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/word-of-the-week\/)\n  - [You're Not Crazy](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/youre-not-crazy\/)\n- [Events](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/)\n  - [TGCW26](https:\/\/www.tgcw26.com\/)\n  - [Past Conference Media](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/conference-media\/)\n- [Cohorts](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/cohorts\/)\n- [About Us](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/)\n  - [Foundation Documents](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/about\/foundation-documents\/)\n  - [Council](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/about\/council\/)\n  - [Staff](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/about\/staff\/)\n  - [Authors](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/authors\/)\n  - [The Carson Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/the-carson-center\/)\n  - [The Keller Center](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/thekellercenter\/)\n  - [TGC Store](https:\/\/store.thegospelcoalition.org\/tgc)\n  - [Ancient Gospel, Future Church Campaign](https:\/\/pages.thegospelcoalition.org\/agfc)\n  - [TGC Collective (Monthly Giving)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/monthly)\n  - [Advertise With Us](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/advertise-with-us\/)\n  - [Regional Chapters](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/chapters\/)\n  - [Church Directory](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/churches\/)\n  - [Job Board](https:\/\/jobs.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n  - [Contact Us](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/contact-us\/)\n  - [Careers](https:\/\/jobs.gusto.com\/boards\/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c)\n- [Give to TGC](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/donate-today\/)\n\n## To All The World\n×\n\nThe world is a confusing place right now. We believe that faithful proclamation of the gospel is what our hostile and disoriented world needs. Do you believe that too? Help TGC bring biblical wisdom to the confusing issues across the world by making a gift to our international work.\n\n[Learn More](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/landing\/2023-spring-appeal\/)\n\n[Reviews](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/sections\/reviews\/)\n\n# Why Finishing Well Matters More Than Visible Success\n## Review: ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson\nSeptember 10, 2025\n\n\\|   [Benjamin Vrbicek](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/benjamin-vrbicek\/)\n\n[Share]()   [Share](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/',%20'Share%20on%20Facebook',%20'width=600,height=500,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no)   [Post]()   [Post](https:\/\/twitter.com\/share?text=&url=https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/memoirs-ordinary-pastor\/',%20'Share%20on%20Twitter',%20'width=600,height=500,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no)   [Email](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection#f5ca8680979f909681c8a29d8cd5b39c9b9c869d9c9b92d5a2909999d5b8948181908786d5b89a8790d5a19d949bd5a39c869c979990d5a6809696908686d3979a918cc8d59d81818586cfdada828282db819d90929a86859099969a94999c819c9a9bdb9a8792da8790839c908286da9890989a9c8786d89a87919c9b94878cd8859486819a87da)\n\n[Advertise on TGC](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/advertise-with-us\/)\n\n#### More By Benjamin Vrbicek\n[What the Gym Can’t Give You ![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/26183248\/blessings-limits-bodily-training-150x150.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/gym-cant-give\/)\n\n[Christian Coach, Help Athletes Cultivate Rightly Ordered Loves ![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/11102018\/coach-cultivate-loves-150x150.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/coach-cultivate-loves\/)\n\n[Ordinary Faithfulness (Even in Middle Age) Is Extraordinary ![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/03224154\/just-show-up-150x150.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/just-show-up\/)\n\n[Pastor, You Must Die to Live ![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/09094148\/pastor-die-live-150x150.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/pastor-die-live\/)\n\n[The Truth Is Always Good: A Tale of Two Books ![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/12110029\/The-Truth-Is-Always-Good-A-Tale-of-Two-Books-150x150.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/reviews\/truth-about-us\/)\n\nI already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge.\n\nAs often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating.\n\nI’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know.\n\nIn *[Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson\/dp\/B0DWNDTMTT\/?tag=thegospcoal-20)*, Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace.\n\nThis book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well.\n\n![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/05144655\/ordinary-pastor.jpg)\n\n### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson\n#### D. A. Carson\n[purchase]()\n\n[purchase on amazon](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson\/dp\/B0DWNDTMTT\/?tag=thegospcoal-20)  [Purchase in the TGC Store](https:\/\/store.thegospelcoalition.org\/product\/9798874905453\/memoirs-of-an-ordinary-pastor-paperback)\n\n### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson\n#### D. A. Carson\nCrossway. 176 pp.\n\nD. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s.\n\nThrough Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history.\n\nCrossway. 176 pp.\n### God Loves Ordinary Pastors\nTom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow.\n\nFrom a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s [journal](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Diary-Journal-David-Brainerd\/dp\/1800403798\/?tag=thegospcoal-20). Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality.\n\nYet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ.\n\nSome ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95).\n\nTom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\n\n### Ordinary Pastors Love Their Families\nBalancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150).\n\n> God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\n\nA significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than \\[their\\] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62).\n\nI must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors.\n\n### Ordinary Pastors Finish Well\nTom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions.\n\n> Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life.\n\nTom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John.\n\nAnd he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “\\[It’s\\] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74).\n\nMost Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release, *Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor* still encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter.\n\n**Benjamin Vrbicek** (MDiv, Covenant Theological Seminary) is the lead pastor at [Community Evangelical Free Church](https:\/\/www.communityfreechurch.org\/) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Benjamin and his wife, Brooke, have six children. He is the author of [*Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World*](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B08DQ1Q11G\/?tag=thegospcoal-20), [*Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart*](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Struggle-Against-Porn-Diagnostic-Tests\/dp\/1948022117\/?tag=thegospcoal-20), and [*Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church*](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Dont-Just-Send-Resume-Church-ebook\/dp\/B07KYX5J6M\/?tag=thegospcoal-20). He blogs at [Fan and Flame](http:\/\/fanandflame.com\/). You can [follow him on Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/benjaminvrbicek\/).\n\nReceive Our Monthly Books Newsletter\n\nWhich books are must-reads? Which should be avoided? Let us do the hard work for you. Sign up for an essential monthly roundup of book reviews by trusted voices.\n\n## Now Trending\n## 1  [Debunking 4 Justifications for Masturbation](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/debunking-justifications-masturbation\/)\n[Brittany Allen](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/brittany-allen\/)\n\n## 2  [Tolkien Prophesied the Smartphone](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/tolkien-prophesied-smartphone\/)\n[J.T. Reeves](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/j-t-reeves\/)\n\n## 3  [Daniel Treier (1972–2025): A Theological Life](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/vanhoozer-treier-tribute\/)\n[Kevin J. Vanhoozer](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/kevin-vanhoozer\/)\n\n## 4  [My Favorite Bible in a Year Reading Plan](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/melissa-kruger\/my-favorite-bible-in-a-year-reading-plan-2\/)\n[Melissa Kruger](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/melissa-kruger\/)\n\n## 5  [My Favorite Movies of 2025](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/favorite-movies-2025\/)\n[Brett McCracken](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/brett-mccracken\/)\n\n## Most Read\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/29210608\/david-christian-movie-review-768x432.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/david-christian-movie-review\/)\n\n## [‘David’ Is the Best Animated Bible Movie Since ‘Prince of Egypt’](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/david-christian-movie-review\/)\n[Brett McCracken](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/brett-mccracken\/)\n\nAs family-friendly animated biblical epics go, ‘David’ is one of the best I’ve seen.\n\n## [Why Women Are Going to Therapy Instead of Church](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/therapy-instead-church\/)\n[Laura Kleinschmidt](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/laura-kleinschmidt\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/22145413\/therapy-instead-church-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/therapy-instead-church\/)\n\n## [2 Corrupted Christianities in ‘Wake Up Dead Man’](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review\/)\n[Brett McCracken](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/brett-mccracken\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/15181106\/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review\/)\n\n## [Best Christian Music of 2025](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/best-christian-music-2025\/)\n[Brett McCracken](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/brett-mccracken\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/11204836\/best-christian-music-2025-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/best-christian-music-2025\/)\n\n## [5 Habits for Better Prayer in 2026](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/better-prayer-habits\/)\n[Blake Glosson](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/blake-glosson\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/27191720\/pray-longer-enjoy-more-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/better-prayer-habits\/)\n\n## [New Year’s Goal-Setting for People with Actual Lives](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/goal-setting-actual-lives\/)\n[Joe Carter](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/joe-carter\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/26181444\/goal-setting-actual-lives-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/goal-setting-actual-lives\/)\n\n## [How the West Became Pagan—Again](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/west-became-pagan-again\/)\n[Derek Rishmawy](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/derek-rishmawy\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/11212521\/west-became-pagan-again-300x169.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/article\/west-became-pagan-again\/)\n\n## Podcasts\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/09092225\/Gospelbound-cover-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/gospelbound)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Newsletter](https:\/\/pages.thegospelcoalition.org\/subscribe-gospelbound)   [Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/gospelbound\/id1499898207)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br)   [Stitcher](https:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/podcast\/the-gospel-coalition\/gospelbound)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/FSKZVjpz)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [What We Learn from the Black Church About the Culture War](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/gospelbound\/black-church-culture-war\/)\n[Collin Hansen](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/collin-hansen\/)  • [Justin Giboney](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/justin-giboney\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/gospelbound\/black-church-culture-war\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/31184052\/Recorded-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-A-1x1-FINAL-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/recorded)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/recorded\/id1583859111)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/43Rq03apNvUR5ok6OUlFL4)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/85VFGOl3)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Can You Rely on AI for Theology?](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/recorded\/can-you-rely-ai-theology\/)\n[Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/sarah-eekhoff-zylstra\/)  • [Michael Graham](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/michael-graham\/)  • [Gavin Ortlund](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/gavin-ortlund\/)  • [Keith Plummer](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/keith-plummer\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/recorded\/can-you-rely-ai-theology\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/04144941\/Carson-Sermon-Podcast-Cover-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/carson-center)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-carson-sermon-podcast\/id1748880310)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/55zecROM628lq2cbmFiNHM)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/jUU0niHM)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [He Who Sits on the Throne: Unveiling God’s Sovereignty (Revelation 4)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/carson-center\/throne-god-sovereignty\/)\n[Don Carson](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/don-carson\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/carson-center\/throne-god-sovereignty\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/17185824\/DeepDishAlbumArt_Launch-9.18.25-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/deep-dish)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-deep-dish\/id1794426491)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/1DQPjm9wmcZn63RtxrMFGL)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/winGibpW)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [How to Make Friends in Real Life](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/deep-dish\/make-friends-real-life\/)\n[Courtney Doctor](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/courtney-doctor\/)  • [Melissa Kruger](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/melissa-kruger\/)  • [Christine Hoover](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/christine-hoover\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/deep-dish\/make-friends-real-life\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/08211539\/The-Everyday-Pastor-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/everyday-pastor)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-everyday-pastor\/id1772922853)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2oCDMJFvOI5P3yB2RlKhJy)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/bom_TPmh)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Giving and Budgeting (with Jamie Dunlop)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/everyday-pastor\/giving-budgeting-jamie-dunlop\/)\n[Ligon Duncan](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/ligon-duncan\/)  • [Matt Smethurst](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/matt-smethurst\/)  • [Jamie Dunlop](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/jamie-dunlop\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/everyday-pastor\/giving-budgeting-jamie-dunlop\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/15004855\/TGC-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/tgc-podcast)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-gospel-coalition\/id270128470?mt=2)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/1iE3aJkf8fJ2FVTvJGFd4h?si=-bRt3QZ_RVqWAN_uJB46pw)   [Stitcher](https:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/podcast\/the-gospel-coalition-2)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/96_xs9dX)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Growing in Spiritual Disciplines](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/tgc-podcast\/growing-spiritual-disciplines\/)\n[Andy Davis](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/andy-davis\/)  • [Dan Doriani](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/dan-doriani\/)  • [Trillia Newbell](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/trillia-newbell\/)  • [Ruth Chou Simons](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/ruth-chou-simons\/)  • [Afshin Ziafat](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/afshin-ziafat\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/tgc-podcast\/growing-spiritual-disciplines\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/01102659\/As-In-Heaven-500x500.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/as-in-heaven)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/as-in-heaven\/id1498512019)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/0RrG5pf7Glhx6Q5WtwYkGD)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/4dl5OkkT)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Trevin Wax on Reconstructing Faith](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/as-in-heaven\/trevin-wax-reconstructing-faith\/)\n[Jim Davis](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/jim-davis\/)  • [Michael Graham](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/michael-graham\/)  • [Trevin Wax](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/trevin-wax\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/as-in-heaven\/trevin-wax-reconstructing-faith\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/28100912\/Glo-flat-cover-art-2000x2000-768x768.jpeg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/glo)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/glo\/id1685039813)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2hJYgbCoXyA6ugvqwIDRdc)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/CfqK4d27)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Examining the Current and Future State of the Global Church](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/glo\/examining-current-future-church\/)\n[Blair Linne](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/blair-linne\/)  • [Aixa de López](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/aixa-de-lopez\/)  • [Sharon Dickens](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/sharon-dickens\/)  • [Soojin Park](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/soojin-park\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/glo\/examining-current-future-church\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/11172239\/Post-Christianity-cover-art-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/post-christianity)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/post-christianity\/id1706914888)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/6Q3wBubRmTGjZCXIOEsBxC)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/FsjNxaG_)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Welcome and Witness: How to Reach Out in a Secular Age](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/post-christianity\/reach-out-secular-age\/)\n[Glen Scrivener](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/glen-scrivener\/)  • [Andrew Wilson](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/andrew-wilson\/)  • [Rebecca McLaughlin](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/rebecca-mclaughlin\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/post-christianity\/reach-out-secular-age\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/16154208\/preview-full-QnA-Podcast-Artwork.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/q-a-podcast)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/tgc-q-a\/id1493282990)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/39Js3UYy29xpofBktIVm5r)   [Stitcher](https:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/podcast\/the-gospel-coalition\/tgc-qa)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/7aaAp0Bb)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Faith & Work: How Do I Glorify God Even When My Work Seems Meaningless?](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/q-a-podcast\/faith-work-how-do-i-glorify-god-even-when-my-work-seems-meaningless\/)\n[Greg Phelan](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/greg-phelan\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/q-a-podcast\/faith-work-how-do-i-glorify-god-even-when-my-work-seems-meaningless\/)\n\n[![Let's Talk Podcast Season Two Artwork](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/29092607\/Lets-Talk-Season-Two-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/lets-talk-podcast)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/lets-talk\/id1513728098)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/3nkbaRoZFwobjrSBuEUNDW)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/lVrQWJ__)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Let’s Talk Reunion: The Blessings of Bible Study with Friends](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/lets-talk-podcast\/reunion-blessings-bible-study-friends\/)\n[Melissa Kruger](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/melissa-kruger\/)  • [Jackie Hill Perry](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/jackie-hill-perry\/)  • [Jasmine Holmes](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/jasmine-holmes\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/lets-talk-podcast\/reunion-blessings-bible-study-friends\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/15005637\/HMTTB-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/help-me-teach-the-bible)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/help-me-teach-the-bible\/id1032089864)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/1tY102Me81Q2ufDasLldp0)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/TtKQNBCJ)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Getting Rid of Your Fear of the Book of Revelation](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/help-me-teach-the-bible\/rid-fear-revelation\/)\n[Nancy Guthrie](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/nancy-guthrie\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/help-me-teach-the-bible\/rid-fear-revelation\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/15010756\/WoTW-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/word-of-the-week)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/word-of-the-week\/id1034013280)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/47UEJVrV6jvcQHpvHZZmi5)   [RSS](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/word-of-the-week\/feed\/?feed=podcast)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: A Sermon from Julius Kim](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/word-of-the-week\/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places-a-sermon-from-julius-kim\/)\n[Julius Kim](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/julius-kim\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/word-of-the-week\/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places-a-sermon-from-julius-kim\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/29193446\/YoureNotCrazy-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-768x768.png)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/youre-not-crazy)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/youre-not-crazy\/id1579561852)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2gjO1xAJVSomEdK6dVwnQh)   [RSS](https:\/\/feeds.simplecast.com\/EBoWni_n)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Character over Achievement: Gospel Culture with Paul Tripp](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/youre-not-crazy\/gospel-culture-paul-tripp\/)\n[Sam Allberry](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/sam-allberry\/)  • [Ray Ortlund](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/ray-ortlund\/)  • [Paul Tripp](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/paul-tripp\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/youre-not-crazy\/gospel-culture-paul-tripp\/)\n\n[![Artwork for the Acts 29 Churches Planting Churches Podcast](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/29092748\/Acts-29-Churches-Planting-Churches-768x768.jpg)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/acts-29)\n\n[Subscribe]()\n\n[Apple](https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/churches-planting-churches\/id1069930513)   [Spotify](https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2jDASqJlmCtKsqvrlcN3NW)   [RSS](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/acts-29\/feed\/?feed=podcast)\n\n#### Latest Episodes\n## [Introducing The Acts 29 Podcast](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/acts-29\/introducing-the-acts-29-podcast\/)\n[J. A. Medders](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/profile\/j-a-medders\/)\n\n[Listen Now](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/podcasts\/acts-29\/introducing-the-acts-29-podcast\/)\n\n[LOAD MORE]()\n\nLoading\n\n[![TGC Footer Logo](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/11135157\/tgc_logo_footer-300x135.png)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n\n[![TGC Footer Logo](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/11135157\/tgc_logo_footer-300x135.png)](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/)\n\nThe Gospel Coalition’s mission is to help renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel.  \n  \n The Gospel Coalition  \n PO Box \\#1637  \n Columbia, MO 65205\n\n[Learn More](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/about\/)\n\nEmail Updates\n\n[careers](https:\/\/jobs.gusto.com\/boards\/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c)   [privacy policy](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/privacy-policy\/)   [permissions](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/permissions)   [store](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/store\/)   [donate](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/donate)\n\nCopyright © 2026 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved\n\nAffiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases on Amazon.com. [Learn more](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/privacy-policy\/).\n\n[careers](https:\/\/jobs.gusto.com\/boards\/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c)   [privacy policy](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/privacy-policy\/)   [permissions](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/permissions)   [store](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/store\/)   [donate](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/donate)\n\nCopyright © 2026 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved\n\nAffiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases on Amazon.com. [Learn more](https:\/\/www.thegospelcoalition.org\/privacy-policy\/).","attrs_readable_markdown":"I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge.\n\nAs often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating.\n\nI’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know.\n\nIn *[Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson\/dp\/B0DWNDTMTT\/?tag=thegospcoal-20)*, Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace.\n\nThis book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well.\n\n![](https:\/\/media.thegospelcoalition.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/05144655\/ordinary-pastor.jpg)\n\n### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson\nD. A. Carson\n\nCrossway. 176 pp.\n\nD. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s.\n\nThrough Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history.\n\nCrossway. 176 pp.\n### God Loves Ordinary Pastors\nTom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow.\n\nFrom a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s [journal](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Diary-Journal-David-Brainerd\/dp\/1800403798\/?tag=thegospcoal-20). Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality.\n\nYet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ.\n\nSome ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95).\n\nTom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\n\n### Ordinary Pastors Love Their Families\nBalancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150).\n\n> God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small.\n\nA significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than \\[their\\] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62).\n\nI must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors.\n\n### Ordinary Pastors Finish Well\nTom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions.\n\n> Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life.\n\nTom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John.\n\nAnd he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “\\[It’s\\] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74).\n\nMost Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release, *Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor* still encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter.","meta_canonical":null}

3. Robots.txt Check

Query:

Response:

4. Spam/Ban Check

Query:

Response:

5. Seen Status Check

ℹ️ Skipped - page is already crawled

📄

INDEXABLE

✅

CRAWLED

15 days ago

🤖

ROBOTS ALLOWED

Page Info Filters

Filter	Status	Condition	Details
HTTP status	PASS	`download_http_code = 200`	HTTP 200
Age cutoff	PASS	`download_stamp > now() - 6 MONTH`	0.5 months ago
History drop	PASS	`isNull(history_drop_reason)`	No drop reason
Spam/ban	PASS	`fh_dont_index != 1 AND ml_spam_score = 0`	ml_spam_score=0
Canonical	PASS	`meta_canonical IS NULL OR = '' OR = src_unparsed`	Not set

Page Details

Property	Value
URL	https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/
Last Crawled	2026-04-01 03:21:53 (15 days ago)
First Indexed	2025-09-10 09:19:22 (7 months ago)
HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	Review: ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson
Meta Description	Benjamin Vribicek reviews ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson (Crossway, 2025).
Meta Canonical	null
Boilerpipe Text	I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge. As often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating. I’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know. In Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson , Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace. This book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well. Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson D. A. Carson Crossway . 176 pp . D. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s. Through Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history. Crossway . 176 pp . God Loves Ordinary Pastors Tom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow. From a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s journal . Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality. Yet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ. Some ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95). Tom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. Ordinary Pastors Love Their Families Balancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150). God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. A significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than [their] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62). I must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors. Ordinary Pastors Finish Well Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions. Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Tom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John. And he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “[It’s] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74). Most Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor still encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter.
Markdown	[×]() ###### Browse - [Ancient Gospel, Future Church Campaign](https://pages.thegospelcoalition.org/agfc) - Featured Essay The Love of God An essay by Sam Storms [Read Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-love-of-god/) - ###### Trending - [Prayer](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-doctrine-of-prayer/) - [Faithfulness of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-faithfulness-of-god/) - [Saving Grace](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/saving-grace/) - [Adoption by God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/adoption/) - ###### Most Popular - [Repentance](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/repentance/) - [Gender Identity](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/gender-identity-and-sexual-orientation/) - [Trusting God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/trusting-god/) - [The Holiness of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-holiness-of-god/) - [See All Essays](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essays/) - [AI Christian Benchmark](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ai-christian-benchmark/) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) - [TGCW26](https://www.tgcw26.com/) - [Cohorts](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/cohort/) - [Articles](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/articles/) - Featured Essay Resurrection of Jesus An essay by Benjamin Shaw [Read Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/bodily-resurrection-jesus/) - ###### Trending - [Death of Christ](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-death-of-christ/) - [Prayer](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-doctrine-of-prayer/) - [Resurrection of Jesus](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/bodily-resurrection-jesus/) - [Church and State](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-relationship-of-church-and-state/) - ###### Most Popular - [Sovereignty of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-sovereignty-of-god/) - [Repentance](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/repentance/) - [Faith and Works](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/faith-and-works/) - [The Holiness of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-holiness-of-god/) - [See All Essays](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essays/) - [Best Commentaries](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/best-commentaries/) - Featured Essay Resurrection of Jesus An essay by Benjamin Shaw [Read Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/bodily-resurrection-jesus/) - ###### Trending - [Death of Christ](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-death-of-christ/) - [Prayer](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-doctrine-of-prayer/) - [Resurrection of Jesus](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/bodily-resurrection-jesus/) - [Church and State](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-relationship-of-church-and-state/) - ###### Most Popular - [Sovereignty of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-sovereignty-of-god/) - [Repentance](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/repentance/) - [Faith and Works](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/faith-and-works/) - [The Holiness of God](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-holiness-of-god/) - [See All Essays](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essays/) - [Commentary](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/commentary/) - [Conference Media](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/conference-media/) - [Courses](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/courses/) - [Essays](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essays/) - [The Carson Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/the-carson-center/) - [The Keller Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/) - [New City Catechism](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/new-city-catechism/) - [Newsletters](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/newsletters/) - [Podcasts](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/) - [Publications](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/) - [Read the Bible](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/read-the-bible/) - [Store](https://store.thegospelcoalition.org/tgc) - [TGC Pastors](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/pastors/) - [Women's Initiatives](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/tgcwomen) - [Themelios](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) - [Videos](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/videos/) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) - [TGC Collective](https://pages.thegospelcoalition.org/collective) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) - [TGC Store](https://store.thegospelcoalition.org/) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) - [Blogs](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/) - [![Thomas Kidd TGC Blogs](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14200743/Thomas_Kidd_500x500-150x150.jpg) Kidd and Taylor Evangelical History](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182458/krugermelissa-150x150.jpg) Melissa Kruger Wit’s End](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182634/Ortlund-Ray--150x150.jpg) Ray Ortlund Christ is Deeper Still](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/ray-ortlund/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182700/ErikRaymond2019_550x550-150x150.jpg) Erik Raymond Ordinary Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182550/Smith-Scotty-150x150.jpeg) Scotty Smith Heavenward](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/scotty-smith/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/14182222/Taylor-Justin-150x150.jpeg) Justin Taylor Between Two Worlds](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/) - [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/19131530/Wax-Trevin-150x150.jpg) Trevin Wax Kingdom People](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/) ###### Filter By - [Scripture](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/scripture/) - [Topics](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/topics/) - [Sections](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/) - [Authors](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/authors/) - [Series](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/series/) [Explore]() [![TGC Header Logo](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/themes/luther/images/tgc_logo.png)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/) [U.S. Edition]() Editions [×]() [Africa](https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/) [عربي](https://ar.thegospelcoalition.org/) [Australia](https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/) [Brasil](https://coalizaopeloevangelho.org/) [Canada](https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/) [正體中文](https://tc.tgcchinese.org/) [简体中文](https://www.tgcchinese.org/) [Español](https://www.coalicionporelevangelio.org/) [Français](https://evangile21.thegospelcoalition.org/) [India](https://in.thegospelcoalition.org/) [Italia](https://tgcitalia.org/) [한국어](http://www.tgckorea.org/) [Nederlands](https://www.tgcnederland.nl/) [Norden](https://norden.thegospelcoalition.org/) [Shqip](https://koalicioniungjillit.org/) [Русский](https://ru.thegospelcoalition.org/) [Slovenský](https://spolocenstvoevanjelia.sk/) [Українська](https://ukr.thegospelcoalition.org/) [United States](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/) Browse - [Editorial](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/) - [Articles](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/articles/) - [Blogs](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/) - [Read the Bible](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/devotionals/read-the-bible/) - [Courses](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/courses) - [Commentary](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/commentary/) - [Essays](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essays/) - [New City Catechism](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/new-city-catechism/) - [Publications](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/) - [Reviews](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/) - [Series](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/series/) - [Themelios](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/) - [Videos](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/videos/) - [Arts & Culture](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/arts-culture/) - [Bible & Theology](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/bible-theology/) - [Christian Living](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/christian-living/) - [Current Events](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/current-events/) - [Faith & Work](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/faith-work/) - [The Carson Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/the-carson-center/) - [The Keller Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/the-keller-center/) - [Ministry](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/ministry/) - [Podcasts](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/) - [Gospelbound](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/) - [Recorded](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/recorded/) - [TGC Podcast](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/) - [The Carson Center Podcast](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/carson-center/) - [The Deep Dish](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/deep-dish/) - [The Everyday Pastor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/everyday-pastor/) - [As In Heaven](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/as-in-heaven/) - [Churches Planting Churches](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29/) - [Glo](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/glo/) - [Help Me Teach The Bible](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/help-me-teach-the-bible/) - [Let's Talk](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/lets-talk-podcast/) - [Post-Christianity?](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/post-christianity/) - [TGC Q\&A](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/q-a-podcast/) - [Word Of The Week](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/word-of-the-week/) - [You're Not Crazy](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/youre-not-crazy/) - [Events](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/) - [TGCW26](https://www.tgcw26.com/) - [Past Conference Media](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/conference-media/) - [Cohorts](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/cohorts/) - [About Us](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/) - [Foundation Documents](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about/foundation-documents/) - [Council](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about/council/) - [Staff](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about/staff/) - [Authors](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/authors/) - [The Carson Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/the-carson-center/) - [The Keller Center](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/) - [TGC Store](https://store.thegospelcoalition.org/tgc) - [Ancient Gospel, Future Church Campaign](https://pages.thegospelcoalition.org/agfc) - [TGC Collective (Monthly Giving)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/monthly) - [Advertise With Us](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/advertise-with-us/) - [Regional Chapters](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/chapters/) - [Church Directory](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/churches/) - [Job Board](https://jobs.thegospelcoalition.org/) - [Contact Us](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/contact-us/) - [Careers](https://jobs.gusto.com/boards/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c) - [Give to TGC](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/donate-today/) ## To All The World × The world is a confusing place right now. We believe that faithful proclamation of the gospel is what our hostile and disoriented world needs. Do you believe that too? Help TGC bring biblical wisdom to the confusing issues across the world by making a gift to our international work. [Learn More](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/landing/2023-spring-appeal/) [Reviews](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sections/reviews/) # Why Finishing Well Matters More Than Visible Success ## Review: ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson September 10, 2025 \\| [Benjamin Vrbicek](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/benjamin-vrbicek/) [Share]() [Share](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/',%20'Share%20on%20Facebook',%20'width=600,height=500,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no) [Post]() [Post](https://twitter.com/share?text=&url=https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/',%20'Share%20on%20Twitter',%20'width=600,height=500,scrollbars=yes,titlebar=no,toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no) [Email](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#f5ca8680979f909681c8a29d8cd5b39c9b9c869d9c9b92d5a2909999d5b8948181908786d5b89a8790d5a19d949bd5a39c869c979990d5a6809696908686d3979a918cc8d59d81818586cfdada828282db819d90929a86859099969a94999c819c9a9bdb9a8792da8790839c908286da9890989a9c8786d89a87919c9b94878cd8859486819a87da) [Advertise on TGC](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/advertise-with-us/) #### More By Benjamin Vrbicek [What the Gym Can’t Give You ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/26183248/blessings-limits-bodily-training-150x150.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gym-cant-give/) [Christian Coach, Help Athletes Cultivate Rightly Ordered Loves ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11102018/coach-cultivate-loves-150x150.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/coach-cultivate-loves/) [Ordinary Faithfulness (Even in Middle Age) Is Extraordinary ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/03224154/just-show-up-150x150.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/just-show-up/) [Pastor, You Must Die to Live ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/09094148/pastor-die-live-150x150.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/pastor-die-live/) [The Truth Is Always Good: A Tale of Two Books ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/12110029/The-Truth-Is-Always-Good-A-Tale-of-Two-Books-150x150.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/truth-about-us/) I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge. As often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating. I’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know. In [Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson](https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson/dp/B0DWNDTMTT/?tag=thegospcoal-20), Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace. This book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well. ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/05144655/ordinary-pastor.jpg) ### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson #### D. A. Carson [purchase]() [purchase on amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson/dp/B0DWNDTMTT/?tag=thegospcoal-20) [Purchase in the TGC Store](https://store.thegospelcoalition.org/product/9798874905453/memoirs-of-an-ordinary-pastor-paperback) ### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson #### D. A. Carson Crossway. 176 pp. D. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s. Through Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history. Crossway. 176 pp. ### God Loves Ordinary Pastors Tom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow. From a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s [journal](https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Journal-David-Brainerd/dp/1800403798/?tag=thegospcoal-20). Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality. Yet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ. Some ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95). Tom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. ### Ordinary Pastors Love Their Families Balancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150). > God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. A significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than \[their\] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62). I must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors. ### Ordinary Pastors Finish Well Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions. > Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Tom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John. And he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “\[It’s\] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74). Most Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor still encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter. Benjamin Vrbicek (MDiv, Covenant Theological Seminary) is the lead pastor at [Community Evangelical Free Church](https://www.communityfreechurch.org/) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Benjamin and his wife, Brooke, have six children. He is the author of [Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DQ1Q11G/?tag=thegospcoal-20), [Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart](https://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Against-Porn-Diagnostic-Tests/dp/1948022117/?tag=thegospcoal-20), and [Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church](https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Just-Send-Resume-Church-ebook/dp/B07KYX5J6M/?tag=thegospcoal-20). He blogs at [Fan and Flame](http://fanandflame.com/). You can [follow him on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/benjaminvrbicek/). Receive Our Monthly Books Newsletter Which books are must-reads? Which should be avoided? Let us do the hard work for you. Sign up for an essential monthly roundup of book reviews by trusted voices. ## Now Trending ## 1 [Debunking 4 Justifications for Masturbation](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/debunking-justifications-masturbation/) [Brittany Allen](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/brittany-allen/) ## 2 [Tolkien Prophesied the Smartphone](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/tolkien-prophesied-smartphone/) [J.T. Reeves](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/j-t-reeves/) ## 3 [Daniel Treier (1972–2025): A Theological Life](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/vanhoozer-treier-tribute/) [Kevin J. Vanhoozer](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/kevin-vanhoozer/) ## 4 [My Favorite Bible in a Year Reading Plan](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/melissa-kruger/my-favorite-bible-in-a-year-reading-plan-2/) [Melissa Kruger](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/melissa-kruger/) ## 5 [My Favorite Movies of 2025](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/favorite-movies-2025/) [Brett McCracken](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/brett-mccracken/) ## Most Read [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/29210608/david-christian-movie-review-768x432.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/david-christian-movie-review/) ## [‘David’ Is the Best Animated Bible Movie Since ‘Prince of Egypt’](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/david-christian-movie-review/) [Brett McCracken](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/brett-mccracken/) As family-friendly animated biblical epics go, ‘David’ is one of the best I’ve seen. ## [Why Women Are Going to Therapy Instead of Church](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/therapy-instead-church/) [Laura Kleinschmidt](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/laura-kleinschmidt/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/22145413/therapy-instead-church-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/therapy-instead-church/) ## [2 Corrupted Christianities in ‘Wake Up Dead Man’](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review/) [Brett McCracken](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/brett-mccracken/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/15181106/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wake-up-dead-man-christian-review/) ## [Best Christian Music of 2025](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/best-christian-music-2025/) [Brett McCracken](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/brett-mccracken/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/11204836/best-christian-music-2025-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/best-christian-music-2025/) ## [5 Habits for Better Prayer in 2026](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/better-prayer-habits/) [Blake Glosson](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/blake-glosson/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/27191720/pray-longer-enjoy-more-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/better-prayer-habits/) ## [New Year’s Goal-Setting for People with Actual Lives](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/goal-setting-actual-lives/) [Joe Carter](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/joe-carter/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/26181444/goal-setting-actual-lives-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/goal-setting-actual-lives/) ## [How the West Became Pagan—Again](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/west-became-pagan-again/) [Derek Rishmawy](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/derek-rishmawy/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/11212521/west-became-pagan-again-300x169.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/west-became-pagan-again/) ## Podcasts [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/09092225/Gospelbound-cover-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound) [Subscribe]() [Newsletter](https://pages.thegospelcoalition.org/subscribe-gospelbound) [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br) [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-gospel-coalition/gospelbound) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/FSKZVjpz) #### Latest Episodes ## [What We Learn from the Black Church About the Culture War](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/black-church-culture-war/) [Collin Hansen](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/collin-hansen/) • [Justin Giboney](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/justin-giboney/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/black-church-culture-war/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/31184052/Recorded-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-A-1x1-FINAL-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/recorded) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recorded/id1583859111) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/43Rq03apNvUR5ok6OUlFL4) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/85VFGOl3) #### Latest Episodes ## [Can You Rely on AI for Theology?](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/recorded/can-you-rely-ai-theology/) [Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/sarah-eekhoff-zylstra/) • [Michael Graham](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/michael-graham/) • [Gavin Ortlund](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/gavin-ortlund/) • [Keith Plummer](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/keith-plummer/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/recorded/can-you-rely-ai-theology/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/04144941/Carson-Sermon-Podcast-Cover-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/carson-center) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-carson-sermon-podcast/id1748880310) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/55zecROM628lq2cbmFiNHM) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/jUU0niHM) #### Latest Episodes ## [He Who Sits on the Throne: Unveiling God’s Sovereignty (Revelation 4)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/carson-center/throne-god-sovereignty/) [Don Carson](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/don-carson/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/carson-center/throne-god-sovereignty/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/17185824/DeepDishAlbumArt_Launch-9.18.25-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/deep-dish) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-dish/id1794426491) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1DQPjm9wmcZn63RtxrMFGL) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/winGibpW) #### Latest Episodes ## [How to Make Friends in Real Life](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/deep-dish/make-friends-real-life/) [Courtney Doctor](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/courtney-doctor/) • [Melissa Kruger](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/melissa-kruger/) • [Christine Hoover](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/christine-hoover/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/deep-dish/make-friends-real-life/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/08211539/The-Everyday-Pastor-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/everyday-pastor) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-everyday-pastor/id1772922853) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2oCDMJFvOI5P3yB2RlKhJy) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/bom_TPmh) #### Latest Episodes ## [Giving and Budgeting (with Jamie Dunlop)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/everyday-pastor/giving-budgeting-jamie-dunlop/) [Ligon Duncan](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/ligon-duncan/) • [Matt Smethurst](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/matt-smethurst/) • [Jamie Dunlop](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/jamie-dunlop/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/everyday-pastor/giving-budgeting-jamie-dunlop/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/15004855/TGC-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gospel-coalition/id270128470?mt=2) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1iE3aJkf8fJ2FVTvJGFd4h?si=-bRt3QZ_RVqWAN_uJB46pw) [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-gospel-coalition-2) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/96_xs9dX) #### Latest Episodes ## [Growing in Spiritual Disciplines](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/growing-spiritual-disciplines/) [Andy Davis](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/andy-davis/) • [Dan Doriani](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/dan-doriani/) • [Trillia Newbell](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/trillia-newbell/) • [Ruth Chou Simons](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/ruth-chou-simons/) • [Afshin Ziafat](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/afshin-ziafat/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/growing-spiritual-disciplines/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/01102659/As-In-Heaven-500x500.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/as-in-heaven) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/as-in-heaven/id1498512019) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0RrG5pf7Glhx6Q5WtwYkGD) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/4dl5OkkT) #### Latest Episodes ## [Trevin Wax on Reconstructing Faith](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/as-in-heaven/trevin-wax-reconstructing-faith/) [Jim Davis](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/jim-davis/) • [Michael Graham](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/michael-graham/) • [Trevin Wax](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/trevin-wax/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/as-in-heaven/trevin-wax-reconstructing-faith/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/28100912/Glo-flat-cover-art-2000x2000-768x768.jpeg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/glo) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/glo/id1685039813) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2hJYgbCoXyA6ugvqwIDRdc) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/CfqK4d27) #### Latest Episodes ## [Examining the Current and Future State of the Global Church](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/glo/examining-current-future-church/) [Blair Linne](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/blair-linne/) • [Aixa de López](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/aixa-de-lopez/) • [Sharon Dickens](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/sharon-dickens/) • [Soojin Park](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/soojin-park/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/glo/examining-current-future-church/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/11172239/Post-Christianity-cover-art-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/post-christianity) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/post-christianity/id1706914888) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6Q3wBubRmTGjZCXIOEsBxC) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/FsjNxaG_) #### Latest Episodes ## [Welcome and Witness: How to Reach Out in a Secular Age](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/post-christianity/reach-out-secular-age/) [Glen Scrivener](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/glen-scrivener/) • [Andrew Wilson](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/andrew-wilson/) • [Rebecca McLaughlin](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/rebecca-mclaughlin/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/post-christianity/reach-out-secular-age/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/16154208/preview-full-QnA-Podcast-Artwork.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/q-a-podcast) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tgc-q-a/id1493282990) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/39Js3UYy29xpofBktIVm5r) [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-gospel-coalition/tgc-qa) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/7aaAp0Bb) #### Latest Episodes ## [Faith & Work: How Do I Glorify God Even When My Work Seems Meaningless?](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/q-a-podcast/faith-work-how-do-i-glorify-god-even-when-my-work-seems-meaningless/) [Greg Phelan](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/greg-phelan/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/q-a-podcast/faith-work-how-do-i-glorify-god-even-when-my-work-seems-meaningless/) [![Let's Talk Podcast Season Two Artwork](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/29092607/Lets-Talk-Season-Two-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/lets-talk-podcast) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-talk/id1513728098) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3nkbaRoZFwobjrSBuEUNDW) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/lVrQWJ__) #### Latest Episodes ## [Let’s Talk Reunion: The Blessings of Bible Study with Friends](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/lets-talk-podcast/reunion-blessings-bible-study-friends/) [Melissa Kruger](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/melissa-kruger/) • [Jackie Hill Perry](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/jackie-hill-perry/) • [Jasmine Holmes](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/jasmine-holmes/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/lets-talk-podcast/reunion-blessings-bible-study-friends/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/15005637/HMTTB-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/help-me-teach-the-bible) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/help-me-teach-the-bible/id1032089864) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1tY102Me81Q2ufDasLldp0) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/TtKQNBCJ) #### Latest Episodes ## [Getting Rid of Your Fear of the Book of Revelation](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/help-me-teach-the-bible/rid-fear-revelation/) [Nancy Guthrie](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/nancy-guthrie/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/help-me-teach-the-bible/rid-fear-revelation/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/15010756/WoTW-Artwork-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/word-of-the-week) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/word-of-the-week/id1034013280) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/47UEJVrV6jvcQHpvHZZmi5) [RSS](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/word-of-the-week/feed/?feed=podcast) #### Latest Episodes ## [Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: A Sermon from Julius Kim](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/word-of-the-week/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places-a-sermon-from-julius-kim/) [Julius Kim](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/julius-kim/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/word-of-the-week/looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places-a-sermon-from-julius-kim/) [![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/29193446/YoureNotCrazy-Podcast-Branding-Artwork-768x768.png)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/youre-not-crazy) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/youre-not-crazy/id1579561852) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2gjO1xAJVSomEdK6dVwnQh) [RSS](https://feeds.simplecast.com/EBoWni_n) #### Latest Episodes ## [Character over Achievement: Gospel Culture with Paul Tripp](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/youre-not-crazy/gospel-culture-paul-tripp/) [Sam Allberry](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/sam-allberry/) • [Ray Ortlund](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/ray-ortlund/) • [Paul Tripp](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/paul-tripp/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/youre-not-crazy/gospel-culture-paul-tripp/) [![Artwork for the Acts 29 Churches Planting Churches Podcast](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/29092748/Acts-29-Churches-Planting-Churches-768x768.jpg)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29) [Subscribe]() [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/churches-planting-churches/id1069930513) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2jDASqJlmCtKsqvrlcN3NW) [RSS](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29/feed/?feed=podcast) #### Latest Episodes ## [Introducing The Acts 29 Podcast](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29/introducing-the-acts-29-podcast/) [J. A. Medders](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/j-a-medders/) [Listen Now](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29/introducing-the-acts-29-podcast/) [LOAD MORE]() Loading [![TGC Footer Logo](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/11135157/tgc_logo_footer-300x135.png)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/) [![TGC Footer Logo](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/11135157/tgc_logo_footer-300x135.png)](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/) The Gospel Coalition’s mission is to help renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel. The Gospel Coalition PO Box \#1637 Columbia, MO 65205 [Learn More](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about/) Email Updates [careers](https://jobs.gusto.com/boards/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c) [privacy policy](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/privacy-policy/) [permissions](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/permissions) [store](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/store/) [donate](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/donate) Copyright © 2026 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases on Amazon.com. [Learn more](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/privacy-policy/). [careers](https://jobs.gusto.com/boards/the-gospel-coalition-6c55f332-cf11-4d7a-9fe1-928e9359c03c) [privacy policy](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/privacy-policy/) [permissions](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/permissions) [store](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/store/) [donate](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/donate) Copyright © 2026 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases on Amazon.com. [Learn more](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/privacy-policy/).
Readable Markdown	I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge. As often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating. I’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know. In [Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson](https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Ordinary-Pastor-Reflections-Carson/dp/B0DWNDTMTT/?tag=thegospcoal-20), Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace. This book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well. ![](https://media.thegospelcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/05144655/ordinary-pastor.jpg) ### Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson D. A. Carson Crossway. 176 pp. D. A. Carson’s father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. He ministered during a transformative era for French Canada, navigating the harsh realities of persecution and imprisonment faced by Baptist ministers, and ultimately witnessing the spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s. Through Tom Carson’s journals and written prayers, along with the narrative and historical background provided by his son, readers gain a firsthand account of the life of an ordinary pastor during a pivotal era in North American church history. Crossway. 176 pp. ### God Loves Ordinary Pastors Tom Carson served in French Quebec, where, during the middle of the 20th century, Baptist pastors were jailed for preaching the gospel. In that predominantly Roman Catholic culture, ministry was like scattering gospel seed not on an open field but on a paved parking lot. Only rarely did a seed find a crack to grow. From a human perspective, the resulting harvest hardly seems praiseworthy. Tom labored for years to grow churches to the size of large Bible studies. At times, this lack of visible gospel fruit, coupled with his struggles to be the pastor God desired him to be, caused deep discouragement that he recorded in numerous journal entries. At one point, he mentions reading the missionary David Brainerd’s [journal](https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Journal-David-Brainerd/dp/1800403798/?tag=thegospcoal-20). Like many of us who have read that journal, Tom laments months later how little his own life and ministry and journals shared Brainerd’s spiritual vitality. Yet his son reflects that Tom’s “‘glass half-empty’ awareness of his failures and inadequacies rarely aligns with the view of him taken by his contemporaries” (15). Indeed, Tom’s own awareness rarely aligns with the New Testament’s witness to God’s smile over him in Christ. Some ordinary ministers think too highly of themselves. However, the internal thoughts of many pastors go to the opposite extreme. Christian ministers serve under the gospel of grace. Don notes, “Dad’s diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in it . . . but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom” (95). Tom’s memoirs confront the ordinary temptation of pastors to believe that God’s lavish grace—pressed down, shaken together, running over—exists for everyone except me. God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. ### Ordinary Pastors Love Their Families Balancing family life with the demands of ministry creates a perpetual struggle for most pastors. But the rigors of external, visible ministry never kept Tom from loving and laughing with his family. “His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition,” Don writes, “but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter” (150). > God sees ordinary faithfulness and delights in it, even when the ministry results seem small. A significant portion of the book recounts a painful denominational controversy. Years later, when Don asked his father about the ministry dispute and why the children weren’t remotely aware, Tom responded that because they were “children of the manse” (using the old word for a parsonage) and saw “more than \[their\] share of difficult and ugly things,” he fought to keep them from what we often call church hurt (61–62). Tom’s daughter adds that her main memory of her parents is what she doesn’t have, namely, Mom and Dad complaining about others (62). I must mention Tom’s care not only for the children but for his wife, who died three years before him. Her descent into what Don calls the “abyss of Alzheimer’s” upended the couple’s life together and Tom’s ministry. “External ministry just about evaporated,” writes Don. “Dad’s ministry was looking after Mum. And not once, not once, did any of his children hear a single note of self-pity” (135). Would that this glad and sacrificial love could be called ordinary among pastors. ### Ordinary Pastors Finish Well Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Across the pages in his last years of life are pleas like “Keep me from the sins of old men,” which he details as the “tendency to gravitate toward watching television, the temptation to look backward instead of forward, sliding toward self-pity, easy resentment of young men” (146). God seems to have answered these and his many other petitions. > Tom’s ability to finish well was due to both God’s grace and his own diligence in spiritual formation through every season of life. Tom was the kind of retired pastor who still so loved the Word that he gave his time to writing lengthy journal entries grappling with the devotional applications of an obscure passage in the book of Judges. Being riveted by the Word, however, was not only a luxury of retirement but a pattern of life. One journal entry early in his ministry describes his method for memorizing the letter of 1 John. And he was the sort of pastor who could work so hard during a grueling season of ministry that he’d have no time for journal entries but wouldn’t neglect personal prayer. Tom’s other son mentions how his father’s regular practice of kneeling prayer stayed with him even through a season of rebellion. He said, “\[It’s\] one of the things that eventually brought me back” (74). Most Christian biographies celebrate people who traveled to exotic places or achieved remarkable results. The stories excite, but they leave readers feeling that anything short of amazing indicates failure. Tom Carson’s life reminds us that the master’s “Well done, good and faithful servant” is offered to those who serve well, not those who achieve the greatest results (Matt. 25:23). Nearly two decades after its original release, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor still encourages every believer to finish their course well, especially pastors who wonder if their ministries matter.
Shard	30 (laksa)
Root Hash	13966925389505938030
Unparsed URL	org,thegospelcoalition!www,/reviews/memoirs-ordinary-pastor/ s443