A pastor can spend an entire week solving problems and still miss the deeper question: What does it mean to shepherd people? That question matters when we read Dr. Stan A. Toler’s Stan Toler’s Practical Guide for Pastoral Ministry, because Toler was not writing as someone who had only studied pastoral leadership from a distance. He had spent more than forty years in pastoral ministry before becoming a general superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene in 2009. He served in that office for four years and was given emeritus status in 2013.
That background changes how I approach this book. Toler’s practical concern was not an abstract interest in church administration. His ministry included pastorates in Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, leadership development work, church planting, and eventually the general superintendency. The Church of the Nazarene’s account of his election records that Toler described himself simply as a pastor and said he had never aspired to be anything else. That statement is worth remembering when reading a book filled with practical advice. The practical was not necessarily the opposite of the pastoral; it could be the place where pastoral experience became useful to others.
The book itself is deliberately practical. Bibliographic descriptions identify seventy-five ministry topics covering areas such as personal growth, family life, ministry responsibilities, teaching, communication, leadership, and administration. In other words, Toler does not pretend that pastoral ministry happens only in the pulpit. Pastors deal with people, volunteers, money, leadership, communication, expectations, conflict, and the ordinary pressures that can quietly consume ministry. A pastor who ignores those realities may have a beautiful theology of ministry and still struggle to serve an actual congregation.
But here is where I think the title of this article becomes important: practical ministry needs a shepherd.
There is a danger in making pastoral ministry so practical that the pastor becomes primarily a manager. Churches need organization. They need plans, responsible administration, healthy communication, financial stewardship, leadership development, and people who can turn good intentions into action. Toler’s emphasis on practical ministry recognizes something real: ministry takes place in the world of ordinary responsibilities.
Yet the New Testament does not describe Christian leadership merely in organizational terms. Peter tells elders to shepherd God’s flock willingly, eagerly, and by example rather than by domineering over those entrusted to them. He then points beyond the elders to Christ as the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1–4). That changes the meaning of pastoral leadership. The pastor is not the owner of the flock. The pastor serves under the Shepherd.
Jesus pushes the distinction even further. In Mark 10:42–45, He contrasts the leadership patterns of worldly rulers with the pattern expected among His disciples. Greatness in the kingdom is expressed through service. Jesus Himself becomes the model, not simply by giving instructions but by giving His life. Pastoral leadership therefore cannot be reduced to the ability to make a church function efficiently. Christian leadership has to ask a more searching question: Are the people being served, formed, protected, encouraged, and pointed toward Christ?
This is also where the shepherd image needs to be handled carefully. A shepherd is not merely a gentle person who avoids difficult decisions. Biblical shepherding includes oversight, protection, teaching, correction, sacrifice, and example. First Timothy 3:1–7 also reminds us that Christian leadership involves character and spiritual maturity, not simply competence. Practical skills matter, but they cannot compensate for a life that contradicts the message being preached.
Toler’s own history makes this tension particularly interesting. He entered the general superintendency after decades of pastoral work, and his leadership reputation extended beyond the Nazarene church through his work in leadership development. The Church of the Nazarene later remembered him as a pastor, author, leadership teacher, and general superintendent whose ministry had affected many pastors. His four-year general-superintendent period therefore belongs to a much larger pastoral story rather than standing alone as an administrative chapter.
Reading Toler beside Eugene L. Stowe makes the question even more interesting. Stowe’s The Ministry of Shepherding, published in 1976, approached pastoral ministry through the shepherding image. Toler’s later practical guide represents a different generation and a broader collection of pastoral concerns. I would not force the two books into opposition. The church needs both pastoral vision and practical wisdom. The real question is what happens when practical wisdom loses its pastoral center.
That is why I find Toler’s book worth revisiting. I do not read the word practical as a warning sign. Practical ministry can be deeply pastoral when it helps a minister care for real people in real circumstances. But practical ministry becomes thin when success is measured mainly by systems, growth, efficiency, visibility, or organizational control.
The biblical shepherd has another center. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep and lays down His life for them (John 10:11–15). Peter calls Christ the Chief Shepherd. Christian pastors therefore lead under a Lord whose authority is expressed through sacrificial love. That is a much higher standard than simply getting the work done.
Perhaps this is what I most want to carry away from Toler’s practical approach. Pastors really do need practical wisdom. Churches are made of people, schedules, buildings, budgets, sermons, meetings, conflicts, families, expectations, and countless small decisions. Ignoring those things is not spirituality. But neither is mastering them the same thing as shepherding.
The best reading of practical pastoral ministry must therefore move in both directions. It must come down to the ordinary realities of ministry while continually returning to the character of Christ. Toler reminds us that pastors need practical tools. Scripture reminds us why those tools matter. We are not managing an organization merely for its own sake. We are caring for people who belong to Christ.
That is why practical ministry still needs a shepherd. Not because practical leadership is unimportant, but because Christian ministry becomes something different when every practical responsibility is placed beneath the care of the Chief Shepherd.