On 14 October 1549 Martin Bucer wrote to a certain Johannes Marbach one of his anxious, agonized letters from England. Bucer wrote with real urgency, almost as if he sensed that Marbach might acquire greater responsibilities in the future, as he did. Fittingly enough, he left his most important message for the end of the letter. There he admonished Marbach always to remember that ‘Nothing in this life is more sacred or greater … than those things that pertain to the sacrosanct evangelical ministry, the ministry of the eternal salvation of humanity itself’.

Near the end of his life and now an émigré, Bucer meant what he wrote. Yet, and in spite of his clear statement, only three scholars – Jacques Courvoisier in 1933, Werner Bellardi in 1934, and Gottfried Hammann in 1984 – have devoted entire volumes to this aspect of Bucer's career. However, even these scholars subordinated Bucer's clear emphasis upon ministry as such to different, perhaps wider, interests. For Courvoisier, the issue was the origins of Calvin's concept of ministry; for Bellardi it was the beginnings of Pietism; for Hammann it is current discussions of the relationship between people's churches (Volkskirchen) and confessional churches (Bekenntniskirchen). Although in dissimilar ways, each of these works finally focuses on Bucer's ecclesiology rather than on ministry as such.