MINISTERS' SHOP-TALK

The author offers this book to his colleagues as written about the environment and life-role of the clergyman, and out of his own years of pastoral experience, including those at the Ascension Episcopal Church in New York. The discussion includes the minister's World, Church, Parish, Life, Words, Works, Ways, and what happens When He Prays, Reads, Calls, and Plays, with a closing chapter on His Future. Much of the writing is personal in tone and anecdotal in support. The essential perspective on the minister is that of an individual who carries on his life and service among people, but with a prevailing sense of his individualistic separateness. The various functions of the minister's work are seen for the most part in traditional terms. A book to reassure those who find such terms acceptable, but hardly one to speak to those who are questioning the role of the clergy for the future.