Andrew R. Rollinson, Conversations by the Sea: Reflections on Discipleship, Ministry and Mission (Handsel Press, 2023), 194 pp. £10.00
Reviewed by Rev Dr Paul Goodliff.
This is a wonderfully rich, eminently readable and wise book by one of the most experienced and gifted of Baptist mInisters, Andrew Rollinson. After pastorates in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Edinburgh, Andrew was Ministry Advisor for the Baptist Union of Scotland, overlapping for much of the time with me while I was Head of Ministry at the Baptist Union of Great Britain (which meant we often 'chewed the cud' together on matters ministerial), and finally a fruitful ministry in St Andrews before retirement (although I can hardly imagine Andrew 'retiring'!)
Structured as meditations around John 21, each chapter takes a different scene from that narrative, and takes a look at matters as diverse as discipleship, resourcing a missional community, leadership, unity and failure. This is the accumulated experience and wisdom of half a century of ministry, and we are all the richer for it.
If I take a sample of the voices which speak into this book, you'll see how broad are Andrew's interests and how wide his reading: Colin Gunton (oh, hurrah! and his Bampton Lectures, The One, the Three and the Many to boot,) Bonhoeffer, Eugene Peterson, Michel Foucault and Miroslav Volf. Here is the evidence of a pastor who has continued reading widely throughout his ministry — a vital resource for the feeding of the pastor and an almost absolute necessity for every minister, both in its continuation and its breadth.
It is also a deeply theological book, written by one who has engaged throughout his ministry with the great themes (and writers) of theology. It is by no means a purely pietist meditation on discipleship and ministry, but Andrew does not shy away in embarrassment from the evangelical giants of the spiritual life — Richard Baxter or A W Tozer, for instance — or those from wider traditions, such as Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, or Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. Here is evidence of a truly ecumenical spirit at work, ready to draw from the treasury of wisdom, wherever its roots may lie.
I found the chapters on leadership and power; ministry starvation and its remedy; ministry failure and restoration and self-awareness and self-deception in ministry of particular significance. I wish every pastor might read them and benefit from them. Their ministries would be safer and richer for it.
I hope that Andrew continues to read and write in retirement for many years, but meanwhile we have Conversations by the Sea: a book that ought to be on the reading list of every newly-ordained minister and minister in formation, and near the top of the list of books that more experienced ministers read in their sabbatical (if not sooner!) in order to feed both mind and soul. This is, in short, one of the best books on ministry and discipleship I have read in many a long year.
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