I believe Peter Jeffery’s book will be a blessing not only to those who know him, but also to ministers beginning their training or ministry, and even to future ministers not yet born.
Peter Jeffery’s ministry was rounded and balanced. He most certainly taught the great doctrines of the faith and yet always did the work of an evangelist. This book will challenge today’s preachers and tomorrow’s to go and do likewise.
The author rightly reminds us that although preachers are born they can most certainly learn from those who have gone before them. There is a danger that young preachers may ‘serve up two meals’ every Sunday but never preach the gospel — reasoning that unbelievers do not come in.
Certainly they won’t, replies the author, when we don’t preach the gospel in one of our Sunday services! Peter Jeffery did so preach the gospel, and that ‘in season and out of season’.
Peter never loses sight of the place of the Holy Spirit in our pulpit ministry and a need for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in revival. If this book gives us revived ministers, we will soon have revived churches.
Peter Jeffery’s story doesn’t cover over the problems and troubles encountered in the ministry. Ill-health and suffering have dogged his steps for several years. He challenges us to stand for the faith, no matter how painful it is for us personally.
His testimony of how God’s grace has sustained him will help and encourage ministers experiencing such times — and will keep any who regard the ministry through ‘rose-coloured spectacles’ from entering it unadvisedly.
