Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (Paperback)

"How can the application of a Bible-saturated mind (Don's) to a Bible-saturated life (Tom's) produce an even more helpful story to encourage pastors? Let the 'mind' be carried on a river of love because the 'life' is his father's. Then add a kind of narrative creativity. That's how." - John Piper, DesiringGod Ministries

Publisher's Description: A memorable firsthand account of not only the sacrifices and triumphs of full-time ministry but of remaining faithful in a brutal era in recent North American church history. This ordinary pastor's life and times, dreams and disappointments will ring true for all who have devoted themselves to the Lord's work.

D. A. Carson's father was a pioneering church-planter and pastor in Quebec. But still, an ordinary pastor—except that he ministered during the decades that brought French Canada from the brutal challenges of persecution and imprisonment for Baptist ministers to spectacular growth and revival in the 1970s.

It is a story, and an era, that few in the English-speaking world know anything about. But through Tom Carson's journals and written prayers, and the narrative and historical background supplied by his son, readers will be given a firsthand account of not only this trying time in North American church history, but of one pastor's life and times, dreams and disappointments. With words that will ring true for every person who has devoted themselves to the Lord's work, this unique book serves to remind readers that though the sacrifices of serving God are great, the sweetness of living a faithful, obedient life is greater still.

Author Information: D. A. Carson is Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he has taught since 1978. He earned a doctorate in New Testament Studies from Cambridge University. He is an active guest lecturer, and he has written or edited more than forty books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.

160 pages
Published February 2008