The Ministers Job

253 * 2 PITm 64-09841

Palmer
..The Minister f s Job*-

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SEP 1964

While the Christian ministry is primarily a
vocation } its successful prosecution depends on
proper technical equipment. High ideals call
"for high standards in presentation. The aim of
The Minister's Professional Library is to supply
the modern minister with a series of authorita-
tive boo\s covering the professional side of his
wor\: the actual techniques of worship, preach-
ing, the pastoral office, running the physical
plant of the church. It will present and ex-
emplify those high professional standards
which are as necessary in the ministry today as
they are in medicine or law. It will include
only boo\s addressed directly to the minister
in his professional capacity. It is essentially a
working library which will, in time, cover the
whole "field of ministerial activity.

MINISTER'S JOB

THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN PREACHING
By Carl S. Patton

PLAIN THOUGHTS ON WORSHIP
By Edwin A. Goldsworthy

THE BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION OF A CHURCH
By Robert Cashman

THE MINISTER'S JOB
By Albert W. Palmer

THE PREPARATION AND DELIVERY OF SERMONS
By Carl S. Patton

Other volumes to follow

THE
MINISTER'S JOB

BY

ALBERT W. PALMER

4.-

President, The Chicago Theological Seminary

WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK

Copyright 1937 by
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY

Manufactured in The XL S. A. by The Plimpton Press
Norwood, Mass.-La Porte, Ind.

Second Printing

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION i

I. THE MINISTER AS PREACHER 4

II. THE MINISTER AS PRIEST . . 12

III. THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR 26

IV. THE MINISTER AS ADMINISTRATOR 35

V. THE MINISTER AS TEACHER 43

VI. THE MINISTER AS A HUMAN BEING .... 50

VII. THE MINISTER'S TRAINING ........ 57

VIII. THE MINISTER'S WIFE . 67

IX. A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 79

X. THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 91

6409841

vil

THE MINISTER'S JOB

Wide was his parish,, scattered far asunder ?
Yet none did he neglect, in rain, or thunder*
Sorrow and sickness won his kindly care;
With staff in hand he traveled everywhere.
This good example to his sheep he brought,
That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught.

To draw his flock to heaven with noble heart,
By good example was his holy art.
No less did he rebuke the obstinate,
Whether they were of high or low estate.
For pomp and worldly show he did not care,
No morbid conscience made his rule severe.
The love of Christ and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himself.

Chaucer, Leonard's Translation

INTRODUCTION

'HE MINISTRY holds new appeal for the youth of today.
JL It Is an old vocation with a modern meaning. How old
It Is Chaucer's picture of the ideal parson in his day clearly re-
veals. Chaucer died in 1400. There Is something reassur-
ingly permanent and stable about a calling whose profes-
sional standards and ideals had crystallized on so high a level
more than five hundred years ago.

And yet the minister's task is also perennially new and
never more so than today. Life is ever in flux and the work
of a spiritual leader is to reinterpret it on its highest levels to
each new generation. He has, as it were, to teach a horse-and-
buggy age how to fly an airplane and yet preserve its under-
standing and appreciation of old Dobbin and the one-hoss
shay! It is just because life has changed so completely in a
thousand ways that the ministry continues to be so indispen-
sable and exciting a calling.

The following pages describe the minister's job today.
They are not written primarily for ministers although
probably many a parson will read them, and I hope with
interest, as he checks up on his own program and procedure.
I have written primarily for the young man who is in the
valley of decision regarding the choice of a vocation and for
his counselors in courses on vocational guidance. I am per-
suaded that many a youth who is really fitted for the pastorate
and thinks of it more wistfully than he would be willing to

2 INTRODUCTION

confess, fails to choose the ministry as a life work because he
has inadequate, false or prejudiced views as to what religious
work is all about. To reveal the realities of this great calling,
root out prejudices and clear the road for a new generation of
Christian leaders is the purpose of this book.

But, someone might ask, is there really a need for more
ministers isn't the profession overcrowded already ? My
answer is that no profession today is overcrowded with first-
class, adequately trained men, least of all the ministry. Even
during the depression the seminary with which I am con-
nected had no trouble in placing its graduates within a few
weeks after graduation. Of course the question may arise :
It's easy to place eager young men right out of school but
what about the man of forty or fifty ? Well, that is the critical
age in every vocation, isn't it ? The answer is that only the
man who chose his life work wisely 5 who secured good train-
ing, who has kept up with the literature, thought and meth-
ods of his profession, attended its conventions, taken graduate
work and adopted new and better techniques as they have
come along, is secure in medicine, dentistry, law, engineering
or business management. Ought he to expect any greater
security in the ministry ? For men who will stay alive and
keep growing, serving the Christian church presents an
unparalleled opportunity today. But, as I frequently say to
candidates for ordination., " Plan to do your best work after
you are fifty years of age," No man ought to enter the min-
istry unless he is determined to keep young, resilient, In-
formed, growing and open-minded at least that long.

It may be objected that no one man can possibly be suffi-
ciently versatile to measure up to all the requirements set forth
in the following pages* No one is more painfully conscious of

INTRODUCTION 3

that fact than the author. He has had more than twenty-five
years' experience In the pastorate and this book is by no means
a self-portrait or a record of achievement. Will not such a
portrayal of the minister's job, then, tend to discourage the
neophyte and especially the young man who is examining
different vocations in the attempt to find his true life work ?
The answer, of course,, is that some temperaments will kindle
to one phase of the parson's work and some to another.
What I have tried to present is a fairly balanced account of
the rich total possibilities of the Christian ministry today. I
hope that many a young man will find them calling out to
him for accomplishment, and will rejoice to choose and pre-
pare for no shallow,, superficial task but one which will chal-
lenge all he has of imagination^ fortitude and good will. But
if he tried to do and be all the things that this book suggests
are within the range of the ministry as a vocation, he would
probably die the death of the proverbial chameleon on the
Scotch plaid ! But I have warned him!

CHAPTER ONE
THE MINISTER AS PREACHER

|REACHING is exciting business! It always has been
ever since the days of Amos or the Franciscan friars or
Martin Luther. More, it has to be, for if it isn't the congre-
gation goes to sleep or stays home, and the preacher might
better plow corn. It is exciting business because it deals with
the primary interests of life and seeks to answer the great
questions which arise in the human heart in every generation:
What am I ? Why am I here ? What are the supreme values
In life ? What ought I to do ? What are my right relations
with other men ? What is the universe ? How is it created,
upheld and guided ? If I get out of harmony with life, if I
feel that I have sinned, how can I find peace and poise and
righteousness again? Who and what and where is God?
What is my duty toward him ? What might it mean to be in
tune with the Infinite? What awaits me after death?
These are ever recurrent questions. Trying to answer them
in terms appropriate to the knowledge and problems of each
new generation makes preaching an exciting business in
every age.

The preacher has his difficulties today. He has more com-
petition than ever before in history. He has to be more ver-
satile than the Sunday paper, more alluring than a baseball
game, more interesting than the movies, better informed than
the latest book, more enticing than a drugstore window filled
with different brands of whisky! And he lacks some of the

THE MINISTER AS PREACHER 5

advantages which reinforced the preachers of other days: he
has no universally accepted authoritative book, no social com-
pulsion for church attendance, no unique possession of edu-
cation or of social status. And he confronts an age apparently
absorbed in material comforts and mechanical gadgets
autos, radios,, airplanes and a general taste for streamlined
luxury. The men he addresses are pre-committed to getting
rich quick and have probably been conditioned in their think-
ing by a prejudice against religion. They think of faith as
contrary to science and of the Bible as a collection of dis-
credited superstitions and unbelievable fish stories. Some of
them regard religion as the opiate of the people and others
as an impertinent social disturber and breeder of revolution.
So, caught between the two, how shall the preacher present
both the social gospel and the ministry of comfort ?

Nevertheless,, the preacher has certain advantages on his
side and if he really knows his business he can meet all these
difficulties and overcome them. For he deals with life at first
hand. All these other things touch it at second hand, but the
preacher deals directly with the human soul For that reason
religion is always and must ever be more real, more gripping,
more authoritative in the lives of people than all these second-
ary things. There is nothing so thrilling as to get religion!

Great preaching is more than entertainment or information
or even physical well-being, for it meets man himself in
his inner need of satisfactory adjustment to life. The secret
of its power and precedence over all other interests may be
seen in the old Negro spiritual, " It's me, Lord, standin' in
the need of prayer." Because humanity senses that need re-
ligion will always stand first in human concern and great
preaching will never be disregarded.

6 THE MINISTER'S JOB

Moreover, the modern preacher has certain compensations
to balance his handicaps. For one thing, he has freedom, of
utterance. No other man is so free not the editor, nor the
politician, and certainly not the businessman, who is pro-
verbially timid. The minister Is expected to tell the truth as
he sees it without fear or favor. He has no personal financial
ax to grind, and men look to him for an honest appraisal of
life's values. His function has also been marvclously enlarged
in recent days. Once he was supposed to Interpret only the
Bible, but now he is expected to interpret all of life. In inter-
preting life he will make large use of the Bible, but he must
include more; he must also interpret life In the light of his-
tory, of science and of philosophy, and add to that common
sense and current literature and everyday experience! A
large order ? But that is what makes preaching such exciting
business. And where preaching is done with honesty and
fervor people will prefer it to the movies, the Sunday paper
and the auto all put together!

Another thing that helps the minister today is the recovery
of God as an Inescapable fact and force In the world. We are
passing out of the age in which God was to many people little
more than an oblong blur, as the old lady once said he was to
her. And we long ago left behind the age when God was just
a character in the Old Testament who spoke Hebrew and
lived In the neighborhood of Mount Sinai. God has become
a contemporary once more. We find him In the creative
order of the cosmic process as revealed by science. We find
him In the all-pervasive, invisible, yet ever present wisdom
and power that upholds and guides the universe. We find
him in the moral law, in conscience, in the quest for beauty.
Economics, sociology, psychology are only new ways of learn-

THE MINISTER AS PREACHER 7

ing the order and truth at the heart of things, new insights
into the will of God. Great preaching has always been born
out of great convictions about God. No age has ever seen
God more grandly or more clearly than the best thought of
the world is seeing him today. Great preaching, on fire with
a sense of the living God, is sure to come out of this vision.

Add to this the recovery of Jesus, and you see why preach-
ing is entering a new era of authority and power. Fifty years
ago Jesus as ordinarily presented in Sunday school was a
strange, unearthly figure, the second person of the Trinity,
walking the earth thinly disguised as the Carpenter of Naza-
reth but knowing all the time that he was God Almighty,
subject to none except self-imposed human limitations. We
no longer think of our Lord Jesus Christ in so unhistorical
and unhelpful a fashion. The Christ of the Gospels has come
back to us, thanks to modern biblical scholarship, and we see
the great Galilean as Peter and Andrew saw him. Sometimes
he almost seems to walk with us as he walked with them!
We know him as one who sat wearied by the well-curb of
human life, who wondered if faith would survive on the
earth, who prayed in agony of spirit, who was a man of sor-
rows, well acquainted with grief. But we also know him as
one who spake as never man spake, as one the beauty of whose
life and greatness of whose ideas bind our hearts to him in
deathless loyalty. We have the doctrine of the incarna-
tion back again! He is for us both human and divine, our
highest, holiest manhood and also our deepest insight into
the character of God and the possibilities of the universe. We
bring all life before the judgment seat of Christ. There
is something to preach about that can set men's souls on
fire!

8 THE MINISTER'S JOB

Against such a background, where does the preacher of our
age find themes for his sermons and how does he set about
preparing them ?

The best sermons grow out of the preacher's insights into
the life problems round about him. He sees the struggles,
sins, frustrations and discouragements of men and women in
this modern world setting. But he also sees the heroism, the
dogged endurance, the deeper spiritual insights, the unex-
pected beauty and inspiration with which life at its best may
be lived. Then he goes back into the Bible, back into great
literature, back into poetry and music and the beauty of na-
ture, back into the experience of his own soul, back to Christ,
and along this way he finds the answer. He has not only the
Bible as written in the Old and New Testaments, inexpressi-
bly precious as that great document of the human spirit is to
him; he has also the continuing bible of the human race.
St. Francis, John Bunyan, the Pilgrim Fathers, Lincoln,
Kagawa, Gandhi and a hundred more are in it. All that is
noblest and truest in science, art, biography, music, philoso-
phy and poetry all that the human race has learned or
sought to know of God is there. What a bible to preach!
What a privilege and responsibility to be a preacher!

Nor does he preach just to individuals alone. He preaches
to the state, to the social order, to the modern mood, to civili-
zation, to barbarism ! Jesus' Idea of the kingdom of God, the
conception of a social order based on justice, love and mercy,
has come back to earth again. Over against war, race preju-
dice, economic exploitation, ruthless greed, the preacher en-
visions a civilization of brotherly men and a social order
wherein Chrlstlikeness can find expression. He walks with

THE MINISTER AS PREACHER 9

the Hebrew prophets, he shares the impulse that drove Sir
Thomas More to write Utopia and Plato the Republic. No
delicately perfumed little essays are delivered from his pulpit
Sunday morning he knows that " the Lord hath spoken,
who can but prophesy " ! The very urgency of the times, the
appalling possibility of a world tragedy if peace and good will
do not replace militarism and economic greed, put a thrilling
note of prophetic appeal into all great preaching these days.
We preach to men as in the days of Noah!

What are the marks of a good sermon ?

First of all it must have a message, something with which
the preacher is so on fire that he is bound to say it no matter
how. The sermon may be a work of art or it may not, but
it must be a work of reality. It must ring true. Its note of
urgency must have no quavering.

Second, it must have variety. Some men have only one ser-
mon and wear it threadbare. A great preacher will be like
an organ with many stops, not like a piano with just one set
of strings.

Third, it must have a definite theme. Better announce the
topic so that the congregation will know what you are trying
to talk about. Usually it is well to have a text, too. A great
text puts tried and tested authority and mellow age behind
the transitory human being in the pulpit.

Fourth, it needs a good introduction, brief but interesting;
a problem stated with all its challenging difficulties, as Fos-
dick does it; or a story which carries at its heart the sermon's
message, as Charles Gilkey does it; or a thrilling, arresting
sentence, as Charles R. Brown sometimes does it.

The fifth thing is a logical outline. Your thoughts must

io THE MINISTER'S JOB

march determinedly from one point to die next. A sermon
is not a merry-go-round ; it must get you somewhere you
and the congregation!

Point six is imagination. It is said that art teaches us to see
it teaches us what to see and it teaches us to see more than
we see! Preaching is an art, an imaginative art. Its interest
depends partly on its ideas and partly on the imaginativeness
with which those ideas are unfolded and illustrated.

In the seventh place, a sermon must be definite and con-
crete. " Don't I argufy and sputif y ? " asked the old Negro
preacher of the committee demanding his resignation. " Yes,
but you don't show wherein," was their annihilating answer.
The preacher must always show wherein !

And finally, the eighth and most important point, the ser-
mon must be profoundly and genuinely spiritual. You are
not a radio announcer mechanically recommending some-
thing you never use yourself. You are to reveal your own
soul and its experience with God.

And if there were a ninth point it would be brevity. You
must not be too long nor too short either ! Souls have been
saved after the first twenty minutes !

Does your heart thrill to this conception of preaching?
Are you willing to pay the price of equipping yourself to
preach in this large and vital way ? Are you willing to read
and think and study; to plow your way through economics,,
sociology, psychology, history, science, literature and art; to
expose yourself to all that will quicken your human sensitivity
through music, drama, nature, travel and, perhaps most of
all, through human service and suffering? Then perhaps
you are one who ought to be a minister.

THE MINISTER AS PREACHER n

But a minister is more than a preacher, he
is also a priest. So maybe you had better
read the next chapter before deciding.

CHAPTER Two
THE MINISTER AS PRIEST

" ANY PROTESTANTS do not like the word " priest "
A V A and the average young man would probably recoil
from the idea of being one. It may be interesting to note.,
however, that the word comes from the same root as " presby-
terian " ! " Priest " is only a shortened form of the word
" presbyter/ 7 which means " elder." The most Protestant of
denominations and the most typically Roman Catholic of
titles are both derived from the same word.

But " priest/ 5 as I am using it in this chapter, does not mean
a man in a rear-entrance collar and a black suit, pledged to
celibacy and empowered to perform mass. Such a man may
be a priest in the meaning here set forth or he may not it
all depends. But a priest,, in the large and universal meaning
of the word,, is any man, or woman too, who becomes a chan-
nel whereby men and women become conscious of God. The
priestly function is the God-revealing function. He who
ministers to human souls so as to make God real to them is a
priest in this larger sense of the word.

Protestantism has its priesthood. One of its most ancient
doctrines is the priesthood of all believers. This doctrine
means that each soul can have immediate personal access to
God and has no need for the intervention or intercession of
any ecclesiastical ceremonial or official. But it also means
that we can all interpret God to one another so far as we have
experienced him. No truly priestly soul can ever refrain from
sharing the divine fire. He is a Promethean spirit and lives

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 13

to serve his fellow men. The Protestant minister is not a
priest in any exclusive sense. He has no use for sacerdotalism.
He is a priest only as any spiritually sensitive soul may be one.
His only advantage is that he has the time, training and vo-
cational place which give him. great opportunity to use what
priestly gifts he has. But ever and anon he will meet some
thoughtful layman, some noble and mature personality, even
some unspoiled youth, whose clear-eyed priestly insight and
sensitive discernment will leave him humble and longing for
greater spiritual gifts.

The minister will fulfill his priestly functions both as a
pastoral counselor and as a leader of public worship. The
next chapter will deal with counseling; let us devote this one
to the organization and leading of worship.

In far too many Protestant churches, especially those of a
nonliturgical tradition, the so-called worship service is often
hardly more than a collection of " preliminary exercises "
preceding the sermon and interspersed by the arrival of late-
comers. People who would not think of being late for a
wedding or a dinner engagement and who catch the eight-
fifteen train with unfailing punctuality seem to feel that if
they reach church before the sermon, or at least before the col-
lection has been taken up, they are not unduly late.

The minister, therefore, has a primary responsibility for
making the Sunday morning worship service a truly mystical
experience for all who are in any degree capable of it. Here
is one of his great opportunities to break down the walls of
sophistry and pride, of drab routine and deadening material-
ism, and let the light of the divine presence shine into the
hearts of those who attend his church.

How shall he set about it ?

14 THE MINISTER'S JOB

First of all, he must be himself a worshiper. He must be
responsive to the divine beauty all around him in nature, in
music, in art, in human life, in the Bible. And he must long
with an unalterable yearning to bring his people in touch
with all these riches until the hard sophisticated businessman
shall go out of church on Sunday morning saying: " There
is a God ! I have been strangely uplifted this morning " ; until
the waster and the worldling, if they have been present, shall
say: " That was the real thing this morning! I wish I could
experience such faith and joy "; until the mourner or the
frustrated and beaten-down shall say: " I can lift up my heart
again! There is something undefeated at die heart of the
universe that will uphold me "; until youth with its hopes
and plans shall say: " That is what life means to me God
and a better world and life set to the music of great ideals ! "

Much will depend upon the choir. They may sing well or
not quite so well, but their skill is of secondary importance.
The primary thing is that they shall be delivered from the cor-
rosive influence of the concert psychology. Somehow the
minister must bring it to pass that they do not sing to the con-
gregation for their approval, not even to the music committee,
but that they count their music an offering to God himself,
" singing and making melody in their hearts unto the Lord."
To that end he will need an organist or director who under-
stands or is willing to learn about worship as well as music.
Then he will do well to share with the choir in frequent brief
conferences his understanding of worship and his conception
of what a particular service might do for people. Under such
teaching anthems and solos will lose their undue individual-
istic emphasis and merge into the symphony of worship.
They may, indeed, often be replaced by responses, softly sung

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 15

without announcement, quietly and unobtrusively leading
the movement of the worship service on to its great goal.

It will also help the choir greatly if their location in the
church is as inconspicuous as possible in a rear gallery
from which their music can float down in antiphonal re-
sponses, or in a chancel where they join with the congrega-
tion about the altar or communion table with its cross or open
Bible or other symbol of our Christian faith. Let us hope that
the day is passing when the organ, the choir and the preacher
seem to be the central objects of adoration in church. Better
that the congregation should gather around the Ark with its
sacred Scriptures, as in the Jewish synagogue, or around an
altar or communion table with Its cross and lighted candles,
as all denominations of Christians are coming more and more
to do.

There is no time here to go into the details of a really great
service of worship. It may well have a processional sym-
bolizing the going up of the soul into the sanctuary, and the
service itself should move in a great sequence which will in-
clude the vision of God, the confession of sin, the sense of
cleansing, new insight Into the divine beauty and a final dedi-
cation to work the will of God. It should leave the congrega-
tion hushed and receptive to the words of the preacher, whose
sermon, after such a service of worship, will find Itself
cleansed and purified, less prone to harsh and irritating self-
assertive judgments but more powerful to awaken self-criti-
cism and real humility in all who hear.

The priestly function of the minister would be greatly
helped if we had better hymnbooks in the pews or if such
hymnbooks could be supplemented by books of worship ma-
terials. My ideal hymnbook would be one having well

16 THE MINISTER'S JOB

chosen hymns with such words and tunes as the congrega-
tion can sing with sincerity and joy, plus a treasury of ma-
terial out of which the leader may draw what he needs for his
service of worship according to the occasion. In place of the
long stiff responsive readings from the Psalms, or the com-
pletely worked out worship services which must be used in
their entirety or not at all, there should be Scripture passages
of varying lengths chosen not only from the Psalms but from
all parts of the Bible having liturgical beauty and dignity.
Some may be read responsively but the shorter ones should
be read in concert. Moreover, there should be selections
drawn from the religious poetry of all the world and from the
great storehouses of the literature of devotion and social as-
piration in all the centuries. There should be confessions of
faith, collects and longer prayers, litanies and other respon-
sive prayers, and also antiphons and responses for the choir.
Given such a hymnbook, the minister will be able to make his
worship service much richer in spiritual beauty and emotional
uplift for the worshiper.

But, after all, with or without a good hyrnnbook and with
or without a helpful choir, it is the minister himself who will
largely determine how fully the worship service fulfills its
priestly function. His bearing and demeanor will have some-
thing to do with it he must not be fidgety or trivial or self-
conscious or pseudo-impressive. His very clothes may play
their part they must be appropriate; a khaki shirt and trou-
sers may do beside a campfire but I prefer a gown in church.

But the greatest contribution the minister makes will be his
prayers. The pastoral prayer is, in. the Protestant service of
worship, what the elevation of the host is in a Roman Catho-

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 17

lie mass the supreme symbolic moment of communion
with the divine. Inasmuch as a living person pouring out his
soul to God is a greater and nobler symbol than anything in-
animate or physical, this prayer should lift the service to the
highest level of aspiration, mystical power and hushed ex-
pectancy. That this is not always so, that it may be even a
time of boredom and relative inattention, is the fault of the
minister, due perhaps to his lack of appreciation of its sig-
nificance or to his inadequate understanding of how to lead
his congregation in prayer. It is better for a church service to
be known for its worship than for its eloquence; and a min-
ister, while he may feel a passing sense of satisfaction at a
word of appreciation for his preaching, knows that such
words are superficial indeed compared with a quiet and even
faltering syllable of gratitude for the prayer.

A good pastoral prayer depends first of all on the depth
and intensity of the minister's own sense of the reality of the
God to whom he prays. The religious press some time ago
was agitated with the question, " Can the humanist pray? "
I think he can for the present, at least. It is not the correct-
ness of his idea about God which conditions the prayer so
much as the sincerity and intensity of his conviction of the
reality of the particular God to whom he prays. Better
prayers may come from men tremendously in earnest about
a very partial, vague and inadequate sort of God than from
men of much theism but little fire. Of course, if this Is so, it
follows all the more that the nobler and more adequate the
prayer leader's conception of God, the better; and in. the end
one cannot but feel that prayer will hold its deepest emo-
tional potency only when God is supremely real and personal

1 8 THE MINISTER'S JOB

to him who prays. It Is hard to see how a sub-personal God
can continue to awaken the emotion of prayer after the lan-
guage and unconscious Influence of a theistic tradition have
passed away. Even your humanist prays in anthropomorphic
terms and personalizes his prayers.

The first step, then, in a good pastoral prayer is a spirit o
hushed and devout waiting, by the minister himself, before
God as the supreme Oversoul of the universe. If the min-
ister Is not in the noblest sense a priest at the moment of pub-
lic prayer he only goes through a mummery and empty form.

The second step is also a priestly one In the finest, broadest
meaning of the term. He who leads in prayer must gather
to himself with a sympathetic and understanding heart all
the varying needs of the waiting congregation. Aye, and
more, for he must feel the world outside and its needs the
disinherited., the prisoner, the foreigner, the forgotten. But,
particularly, he must enter with a constructive imagination
Into the lives of the men and women here before him. Let
him say to himself: Here are the troubled, the bereaved, the
wistful; here is the tired mother, the harassed businessman,
the numb victim of routine; here are the lonely, the stranger
and the unemployed, the injured and mistreated, the disil-
lusioned and the superficial, the tempted, the fearful and the
sinning. Even the hypocrite Is here! But the minister will
do well to remember that the joyful and triumphant are also
present youth with Its vitality and hope, maturity with its
mastery and achievement. Religion must not seem to such
merely a consolation and a caring for the wounded; it must
also sound a trumpet In the dawn. All the intimate knowl-
edge and winnowed wisdom of his pastoral experience,
gained In the course of his going in and out among his people

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 19

or through their coming to him with their troubles, will be
the background of his prayer. What a thrilling task it is for
the minister thus to catch the varying moods of the congre-
gation, gather them all together and bring them, hushed and
humble and expectant, into the attitude of worship.

How shall he do it? Now the issue will depend largely
upon his sense and power of emotional leadership. He is to
lead not only their minds but their hearts and wills. Much
will depend on the service which has just preceded. In gen-
eral it is well to precede the pastoral prayer by a brief but
deeply devotional responsive service designated the " Call to
Prayer," followed by a verse of some old hymn sung softly by
the choir, and then by a period of absolute silence before the
spoken prayer begins. This silence should not be too long
and it should be preceded by a definite invitation: " Let us
now wait before God in silent prayer."

Something depends upon the minister's voice. It should be
low but not too low, deep but not too deep, and there should
be in it a warmth and vibrant quality which is sympathetic
without being sentimental, honeyed or artificial. Reality,
reverence, reassurance, expectancy are communicated by the
voice even before the thoughts are uttered. A minister may
well guard his health and deny himself rich food, late hours.,
cigarettes or any other dissipation if thereby he can preserve
his voice as a better instrument for the worship of God.

But a voice is a vain thing unless it has something to say.
And so the content of the prayer is all-important. First o
all, the prayer should not contain too much. We don't need
to give information to God he knows before we tell him.
The purpose of the prayer is to bring us to God, not God to
us; its keynote, as Fosdick says, should be not " Give me " but

20 THE MINISTER'S JOB

" Use me-" It must deal, then, with the vital concerns of the
congregation either with the things that are keeping them
apart from God or with the open doors through which they
may pass into the inner sanctuary. It should never be a sort
of disguised bulletin of the week's events or a concealed an-
nouncement like the famous petition devised by the college
president, " O Lord,, bless the French class which thou know-
est will not meet at the usual hour of ten forty-five this morn-
ing! " And yet it may, and indeed often must, deal with
what is in the focus of attention. For example, what min-
ister could help praying for President Roosevelt when in those
dark and somber days of March, 1933, he took over the presi-
dency of the United States ?

Is there any preferred order in public prayer ? Order there
should be in the leader's mind, but it may well be changed
from time to time lest, to the congregation, it become rou-
tine and stereotyped. In general, the writer finds his pastoral
prayer tending to arrange itself as follows: First comes the cry
of the soul for the presence of God :

O God, in whom we live and move and have our being,
gather us close to thee now in the hour of morning
prayer. . . . Out of the turmoil of the week, out of the
dust and smoke of daily life, out of all our troubles, out
of all the cheap and trivial things of the passing hour, we
come, O Lord, into this sacred place and this holy hour
that we may listen for thy voice and hear that only.

Sentences like these lead easily and naturally into the mood
of confession. What the prayer book calls " a prayer of hum-
ble access " follows almost inevitably:

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 21

We recognize, O God, that merit lives from man to
man and not from man, O Lord, to thee; and so we come
with no false pride or sense of undue importance but
humbly and simply, as children to a well beloved Father.

Petitions for forgiveness, new light, added strength, con-
tinued guidance, follow naturally and then the prayer lifts
itself to look out on wider horizons and we pray for others
the stranger, the tempted, the bereaved, the overburdened,
the ill. On it goes to yet wider concerns and interests - the
church, the missionary, the city, the nation, the world. And
then, before it closes, let it come back to the personal again:

O Lord, beyond these spoken prayers, each one of us
brings to thee in the quiet of this holy hour his own per-
sonal, intimate, inarticulate longings and aspirations
all we could never be, all we aspired to be and were not,
thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act, fancies
that broke through language and escaped. . . . O Lord,
hear these unspoken yearnings of our as yet unrealized
and nobler selves as we lift them to thee in the peace and
quiet of this hour, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And then, very softly, as though an echo far away, the or-
ganist plays a verse of some old beloved hymn against a back-
ground of distant chimes, and the prayer is done.

Of course it is quite obvious that all this requires, in the
noblest, truest sense, literary skill; only it must not be a self-
conscious, pretty, ornamental, flamboyant or rococo kind of
literary skill. It must have at times the ruggedness of the
hills and the realism of a Doric column. The language must

22 THE MINISTER'S JOB

be that of reverence and of dignity: it is better not to call God
" you/' though with uneducated men that may sometimes be
the acid test of reality; neither do men want any easy famili-
arity with that august and mystic Spirit which broods over
the universe, and yet there must be something which is be-
yond reverence and dignity there must be intimacy. In-
timacy but not familiarity ! For a man must be intimate with
the God of his own soul, yet he must never be familiar.

How shall a man master the language of devotion? By
loving it and making it a part of himself. Some of this lan-
guage is in the Bible there is the f ountainhead, of course.
But it is also in the prayer book and in modern books of
prayer like Joseph Fort Newton's Altar Stairs, McKee's Com-
munion with God, Orchard's The Temple, Rauschenbusch's
Pray en of the Social Awakening and Stevenson's Vailima
Prayers. A verse or phrase from an old hymn will often lift
a prayer to a new emotional level. Finally, a man must love
and cherish poetry if he would pray. He must not use long
quotations never that! but faint and far-off echoes of
the great poets which will fill his prayer with overtones that
people will hear, not always knowing what they hear, with
spiritual joy and uplifted hearts.

Other things being equal, the minister's public prayers will
be impressive and uplifting in proportion as they are truly
and deeply intercessory. A man may well forget his sermon
when he begins to pray lest he preach it twice! A prayer is
not an essay or a philosophical debate. It may well be a con-
fession of faith, however, especially as it gets under way:

O God, we believe that beyond our wavering sense of
right and wrong there is a justice that shall never know

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 23

defeat, and that beyond our imperfect appreciation of the
beautiful there is a beauty which is eternal and un-
dimmed. We reach out to the supreme goodness and
cast ourselves upon the mercy that cannot fail.

All this is good. But the prayer must go on to plead for some-
thing. It is the intercessory note that stirs the human heart.
" Here is a man talking to God and asking for something
that he needs and that we all need " when the congrega-
tion begin to say that to themselves they also are lifted on the
wings of prayer.

The objects of intercession should be changed from week
to week. Keep the prayer short; one Sunday you may plead
for doctors and nurses, another Sunday for teachers, and yet
another for missionaries and social workers. Pray frequently
for the ill, the tempted, the troubled in mind or body or estate,
the stranger. People will be grateful to you for constant re-
membrance of " those we love and those who love us, wher-
ever they may be," and for " the gratitude we owe to those
whose devotion has been a benediction to our lives and who
have brought us light and healing." Also, as Charles W.
Gilkey has well said, " while you cannot preach about the
social gospel every Sunday, you can pray about it! " There-
fore with all your soul be an intercessor for peace, for racial
and economic justice, for the city of love and beauty, for a
civilization of brotherly men, for childhood.

Should the minister write his prayers and read them ? Per-
sonally I do not do either. We of the Protestant tradition
have a great word in connection with prayer we do not
" read " prayers, we " make " them. A prayer should be
made, it should strike the creative note ! Of course there is a

24 THE MINISTER'S JOB

place for liturgical and responsive prayers,, and the writing
of prayers is one way of learning how to use the language of
devotion. But in the supreme moment the congregation will
be lifted higher by one who makes his prayer, pours out his
soul to God in spontaneous adoration., than by any reading.
Perhaps a word should be added about what may be called
" minor " prayers. How may a man learn how to deliver an
invocation or say grace without wandering all over the lot ?
Here a study of the special form of prayer called the " col-
lect " might teach the minister how to combine brevity with
dignity, impressiveness and spiritual appeal. Just an ascrip-
tion, a petition, a reason for the petition and a remembrance
of Jesus Christ, and the prayer is done.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all de-
sires known and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse
the thoughts of our minds by the inspiration of thy Holy
Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily mag-
nify thy holy name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.

What could be more perfect ?

Do you see what this chapter has been getting at ? What
feeling have you regarding the need for worship as a con-
tribution to the strength and comfort of men's lives ? Do you
sense the possibilities in being a priest as well as a preacher ?
Then possibly you are one who ought to choose the ministry
as a vocation.

THE MINISTER AS PRIEST 25

But there is more to this priestly side than
just leading public worship ; there is pas-
toral counseling. So turn to the next
chapter.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR

BETWEEN a new and more appreciative understanding
of the value of the Roman Catholic confessional and the
new insights into mental conflict which are coming out of
the psychiatrist's consultation room, the pastoral work of the
Protestant minister bids fair to be reborn. I do not look to
see confessional stalls with green curtains and kneeling
benches set up in Protestant churches, and I certainly do not
want the minister to become a psychiatrist he has a big
enough job already. But it does seem clear that in fulfilling
his priestly function as a counselor the minister has much to
learn from both the confessional and the psychiatrist which,
wisely used, would make him on occasion possibly an even
more helpful adviser than either the padre or the practitioner.
Pastoral counseling is nothing new in Protestantism.
Preaching, for instance, is a kind of pastoral counseling done
impersonally. It has always been understood that if the coat
fits it may be put on ! Of course the preacher must never say
that, and part of the power of preaching has been its ano-
nymity. The preacher is never supposed to hit at particular
members of his congregation. If he is wise and considerate
he will observe this principle to the letter. But, nevertheless,
faithful preaching will carry good advice and searching coun-
sel home, and not infrequently to places where they are des-
perately needed although no one outside suspects the need.

2.6

THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR 27

Worship may also sometimes prove to be pastoral counsel-
ing at its highest potentiality. It may be far more effective
to pray in church for a forgiving spirit than to tell a man on
the street his duty of forgiveness. To pray for the homes of
your parish may go far deeper into the needs of some par-
ticular home represented in church that morning than could
any pastoral advice.

The Protestant minister also has a great advantage in that
he is traditionally expected to make pastoral calls throughout
his parish, as the Catholic priest is not. And he has an ad-
vantage over the psychiatrist in that he does not have to be
paid for services to the soul or wait to be called before render-
ing them. As a pastor he can tactfully offer his services where
the situation needs them. These two advantages work to-
gether. By his pastoral calling he learns inside facts about
the home, family and business life of his parishioners which
are important in helping him to be a wise counselor. Viewed
in this light, pastoral calling ceases to be a mere perfunctory
ringing of doorbells and becomes a most valuable opportu-
nity for acquiring wisdom and understanding and often for
rendering spiritual first aid.

Moreover, pastoral calls are not the only contacts which
the minister has with individuals. If he is a good pastor he
meets his men, where he is welcome to do so, in the round of
their day's work or on the golf course. He sees people in
committees and at all sorts of social functions. In all these
contacts his attitude is always one of good will and friendship.
If he is psychologically wise and knows what to look for and
what to listen for, he may learn much that will help him be of
service later on.

The good pastor's relationship to his people differs in still

28 THE MINISTER'S JOB

another important respect from that of either the priest or the
psychiatrist. It is much more informal. The minister carries
his confessional and his consultation room around with him
even though he may and ought to have office hours at his
church for people who want to lay their troubles before him.
But some of his best leads and greatest opportunities will
come quite casually along the way. It was that way with
Jesus, wasn't it ? But they will come only if, like Jesus, the
minister knows what is in man and appreciates his opportu-
nity to speak the ministering word.

How, then, does a minister become a wise pastoral coun-
selor ? First of all by study. Seminaries now offer courses in
mental hygiene, personality disorders and pastoral counseling
from a psychiatric point of view. And if he has never had
such courses, or even if he has had them, good books are con-
stantly appearing which the minister can read. But, as
Robert Louis Stevenson once remarked, " literature is a
mighty bloodless substitute for life," and so he who would
be a counselor must know much about the real lives that
people live.

Travel is another way of coming to know life because in a
different environment we become alert to things which are
taken for granted at home. But, though a trip to Europe or
Japan is worth all it costs and more, travel need not be long
and expensive, for there are stay-at-home journeys which are
almost equally educational.

Did you ever, for example, see the inside of the jail in your
town, ever spend a day in a mental hospital, ever visit the
juvenile court ? Did you ever stay over night in a perfectly
respectable cheap hotel like one of the Mills hotels in New

THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR 29

York City ? Did you ever hunt for a job, ever work in a print-
ing office, drive a delivery wagon, cross the ocean on a trans-
port, preach in a leper settlement, sleep with a bunch of sol-
diers in an army camp, act as a " super " on the stage, travel
two thousand miles in a freight car, earn your living as a can-
vasser? Ministers have done all these things and more in
their relatively sheltered lives, not as a preparation for coun-
seling but just in the line of duty. And they have thereby
gained sympathies and insights which have helped mightily
when it came to dealing with men and women in the pastoral
relationship.

The first preparation for pastoral counseling, then, is to *
know the theory of it the best books and courses on mental
hygiene and psychological insight; and the second prepara-
tion, which must go right along with the first, is to know life
the rough-and-tumble sea of its realities and not just its
protected coves and placid harbors.

But there is a third preparation, if the counseling is to be
pastoral counseling, and that is to know religion!

If you are going to be a good pastoral counselor you must
hammer out a theology and a practical philosophy of life.
You will need to have some working conception of God,
some idea of the significance of personality and of man's place
in the universe, some basic ethical convictions and a fairly
clear conception of the character of Jesus. If to these you can
add a faith in the eternal life and its abiding values, a vital
experience with prayer and a knowledge of the Bible, you'll
have a very helpful background for your task.

What kind of problems come up in the pastoral counselor's
experience? All kinds! At least all that people think he

30 THE MINISTER'S JOB

might possibly help them with. It depends largely on what
kind of man he is, what he preaches about on Sunday, how
realistic he is in dealing with questions tentatively raised in
conversation with him. Some ministers will have relatively
little pastoral counseling to do. Their sermons are so remote
from life and their bearing so austere, or so frivolous, that
people would never dream of inviting them into the inner
sanctuary of their lives. They would rather tell their troubles
to the policeman.

But the pastor whose sermons reveal experience with life,
a humble spirit and an understanding heart, from whom
people feel they can reasonably expect sympathetic help in
analyzing their problems and not just denunciation or ex-
communication such a pastor will find all the varied prob-
lems of life brought to his door. Some of them will be ab-
surdly simple and foolish, others so difficult that he can only
pray for light to deal with them, for he will find no solution
without God's help.

The catalogue will include difficulties growing out of
adolescent tensions, parents' misunderstandings of their
growing children, children's need of insight into the baffling
ways of worried adults. Problems of sex ignorance or mis-
information or emotional reaction. Problems of family ad-
justments homes headed for the rocks because of disregard
of the basic principles of complete financial, intellectual,
sexual and emotional cooperation in marriage. Problems
of business ethics, of economic disaster, of poverty, destitu-
tion and relief. Problems of vocational guidance and unem-
ployment. Problems of quarrels, suspicions and long cher-
ished feuds. Problems of advancing age and its fears, of
loneliness, of helplessness. Problems of divorce and hasty

THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR 31

marriages and of people who have never been married. Prob-
lems of sickness, invalidism, death. Problems of drink, in-
sanity and crime.

What can the minister do when all these things are brought
to him for counsel and solution ?

Well, first of all, he can listen! What most people need,
or at least desire, is an" audience. Remembering that people
are supposed to listen to him on Sunday, he can return the
compliment by listening to them during the week. This is a
large part of the technique of the psychiatrist. If people can
only express themselves fully and completely to someone they
trust, the very release of getting all their troubles out of their
system will sometimes clear up the difficulty. Having said
all they have to say, they may at last be able to analyze their
own problem, with perhaps the help of a few hints from the
outside. If they think they have solved their problem them-
selves, so much the better.

In the second place, the wise pastoral counselor will learn
not only to listen but what to listen for. He will come to
detect certain overtones or undertones which will reveal to
him things he needs to know. Here is a woman, for example,
who praises her husband with such eloquence and so ubiq-
uitously that all the men in the parish wish their wives, too,
had been gifted with similiar insight and expressiveness. But
a wise observer notes that she talks too much about her hus-
band. She does, and there's a reason. Six months later they
are divorced!

Here is a man who comes to you with a perfectly plausible
story. At least it seems so at first. But as you talk with him
you find that he makes no concessions to any difficulties you
point out, but, on the contrary, has an answer to everything

32 THE MINISTER'S JOB

all thought out in advance. You can make absolutely no
impression upon his utterly relentless logic. Mere facts
mean nothing to him. At last you realize he is either a high-
pressure salesman or the victim of a fixed idea, headed for
paranoia or already there.

After he has listened,, what can the pastoral counselor do ?
He can talk things over in the light of such psychological
wisdom as he has been able to acquire., plus practical common
sense and ordinary Christian ethics and good will It will
be best to draw out the counselee on the question of what
these common-sense Christian principles should be in this
particular case. What., does it seem to him, would be the
fair, generous, gracious, cooperative solution ? What would
be the first step toward it ? How can that step be taken ?

Sometimes the problem seems insoluble. Both pastor and
consultant, after pooling all their knowledge, are still baffled.
What then ? Well, perhaps there is other wisdom that can be
drawn upon. Maybe this case requires more expert analysis
and advice. Let's talk it over with a trained social worker, or
a wise woman perhaps the minister's wife or a lawyer,
or a doctor, or a psychiatrist. Then too, time solves many
problems. Sometimes all that can be done is to wait. But
since the consultation has taken place, the troubled soul does
not have to wait alone. One can wait so much more patiently
if his anxiety is shared and he knows that his pastor waits
with him.

Two things the pastoral counselor must never do: he must
never be shocked and he must never betray a confidence. He
must never be shocked because all reciprocity stops the mo-
ment his voice or expression registers shock. Or possibly it
was the hope and intention of the person telling the story to
shock him; then he must not permit such easy satisfaction.

THE MINISTER AS COUNSELOR 33

In any case, in reacting negatively the minister blocks the way
to any common ground of realistic approach toward the so-
lution of the problem.

There is an old story of a man who had committed murder
and who, overtaken by remorse, felt an impulse toward con-
fession. Being in front of a church he found his way to the
pastor's study and burst in crying, " I have committed mur-
der! " The pastor replied: " Wait a minute. I must speak
to my secretary/' and stepped into the adjoining room.
" Miss Smith, call the police ! I have a murderer in my of-
fice! " When he returned the man was gone. Wandering
down the street, the murderer came to a Catholic church and
thought he would try again. Within he saw a priest just
entering the confessional. Hastily he knelt before the little
grating: " Father," he whispered, " I have committed mur-
der! " Clear and cool and undisturbed came back a friendly
voice: " How many times, my son? "

As to betraying a confidence, that would not often happen
deliberately. The peril of betrayal lies in the nature of the
minister's job. As a preacher he is always on the search for
apt and vivid illustrations. The temptation to use what has
been told him in confidence in order to drive home the point
of a sermon is sometimes almost irresistible. " It occurred
so long ago, or in another parish, or it can be disguised by
changing the names," he says to himself. But he should
never forget that gossip travels across the miles and across
the years. Moreover, the very fact that he used a confidence
as an illustration may be just the thing that will keep away
from him some sensitive and troubled soul. " I wouldn't
want my case to be exploited that way," she says and keeps
her problem to herself. The fact that courts have ruled that
a minister is not obliged, any more than a priest, to reveal

34 THE MINISTER'S JOB

what is told him as a pastoral counselor ought to impose
upon the pastor a special responsibility to be very reticent
about the use he makes of such material. Such reticence will
be rewarded by the increasing trust and confidence of his
parishioners.

Finally, the pastoral counselor must never forget that his
is a priestly function, that his supreme service is to bring the
troubled soul into harmony with God. Other adjustments
may be made along the way but they are only partial and pre-
paratory. The truly adjusted life is adjusted to God. This
does not mean that the minister should flood his caller with
pious talk. He may not mention God at all at first and may
even seem to avoid conventional religious phrases and pro-
cedures. His patient may be conditioned against such lan-
guage, or, more pathetic still, may accept it too easily. But
insofar as he brings his patient into touch with reality, into
harmony with truth and love and forgiveness, he is putting
him in tune with those qualities which are at the heart of any
real God. He may have first to reconstruct the patient's
whole theology without the patient's realizing it, dropping
the conventional language of religion for the time being.
But in the end his work will not be complete until adjust-
ment, conscious and accepted, has been made to God, to Jesus
and the Bible, and to the church. The altar fires of prayer
and worship will once more be kindled within the sanctuary.

But the minister doesn't spend all his time
counseling. He has an organization to
run. Hence the next chapter.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MINISTER AS ADMINISTRATOR *

THE MINISTER these days rarely founds the church of
which he is the pastor; he inherits it. And, like all
things inherited, it has some characteristics which are inex-
pressibly precious, some which ought to be discarded, and yet
others which must be retained but reconstructed. How to
recognize these three classes of things and deal with them ap-
propriately and effectively will test a minister's tact and good
judgment.

A wise and experienced pastor once said to me : " Make no
changes the first year. Devote yourself to preaching and
pastoral work. When you have set their souls afire and they
have come to know you and to trust you, then you can do
things which would have caused a riot if they had been at-
tempted prematurely." Sound advice and ordinarily to be
followed to the letter in the case of an old and stable church.
But it should also be remembered that there are unstable
churches which would die on your hands if you did nothing
to improve their organization the first year.

* This chapter could well be shorter than the others because so much of the
ground has been admirably covered in another book in this same series, The Busi-
ness Administration of a Church, by Robert Cashman. But the student considering
his vocational choice may not have that volume available and, in any case, it
represents the viewpoint of a layman. Since I am speaking as a minister there
will be a different accent as well as additional material in this chapter which may
possibly be of value as a sort of footnote to Mr. Cashman's excellent and practical
manual.

35

36 THE MINISTER'S JOB

Before he sets out to organize or reorganize his church the
minister will do well to consider carefully questions like the
following:

What is the denominational background and genius of
this church ?

What peculiarities are there in its local history and situa-
tion?

What type of people make up its constituency and with
what sort of secular organizations are they accustomed
to deal?

What attempts at reform were made and failed in the
past and why ?

What deep-seated prejudices and personality problems
are involved ?

Where is the strategic place to begin ?

By the time he has acquired sufficient knowledge to answer
these questions the pastor will probably decide that the re-
organization needed is not a one-man job, that the church
belongs to its members and they need to be aroused to its
problems and educated and organized for their solution. To
this end he may organize a planning commission to study the
whole problem and bring in a report. He will, of course,, give
the various subcommittees through which this commission
operates a lot of hunches and feed them as much good ma-
terial on their particular problems as he can find or as they
can digest. The commission ought to be a composite affair
some of its members being church officials., some chosen
for their interest or knowledge of the questions involved.
And it may also be wise to have some very conservative mem-
bers, so that they may make their criticisms in advance. Be-

THE MINISTER AS ADMINISTRATOR 37

Ing on the commission and exposed to its discussions may
convert them and, in any case, will lessen the force of their
opposition later on. It will be like having a member of the
Supreme Court inside the President's Cabinet.

As a pattern for such an analysis of a parish, the following
outline might serve. It comes largely from a form prepared
by President Albert W. Beaven of the Colgate-Rochester
Divinity SchocVt^ftil SfenM-additions from Dr. Ozora S.
Davis and myself. While not a complete or scientific survey,
it will help church and minister to see their parish problems
in relation to one another and in perspective.

(1) What is the church's worship program ? Is it really
worship ? Where does it fall short? Why ?

(2) What is the church's teaching program? Is it real
and effective? Is it Christian? Is it intelligent?
Does it help the church or compete with it ? Does it
meet community needs? Does it reach both adults
and children ?

(3) What is the church's evangelistic program? Has
the church any evangelistic mood ? If one method is
outworn or repudiated, what other method could be
used ? Is the church really propagating the Christian
religion ?

(4) What are the church's community relationships?
Does it do anything for the community ? Is it an iso-
lated club or an instrument for service ? Is it of any
use during the week ? A map of the parish, locating
all other churches and social agencies, would help here.

(5) What is the church's Kingdom vision? Has it in-
formation and vital relations to Christian work abroad

38 THE MINISTER'S JOB

or at home outside Its parish ? Has it an aggressive
message as to war, race relations, social justice, civic
welfare ?

(6) Does the church have any denominational coopera-
tion? Is it a free-lance church or does it cooperate?
How?

(7) What equipment does the church own ? Has it the
kind of tools needed to work with ? If not, why not ?
Laziness? Lack of vision? Lack of money? Is it
well located for its task?

(8) What is the state of the church regarding finances
and what stewardship ideas and methods may be built
up? What about Its credit and business standing?
Are the community resources being fully cultivated ?
Debt ? Plans for its payment ?

(9) What is the tone of the church's spiritual life ? Is it
a secularized church ? What are its spiritual ideals ?
How expressed ?

(10) What social life does the church have ? Is it an in-
strument of fellowship ? Or Is it cold ?

(n) What are the church's special problems ? Ebb tide
of population ? Change of racial makeup ? Economic
changes? Extreme poverty? Extreme wealth and
frivolity? Isolation? Competition of other institu-
tions? Overchurched community? Past record of
quarrels or scandals ? Is it a " one-man church " ?
Other problems not listed ?

(12) What should the future policy be ? Broad outlines
of the best strategy for future development and service
(a) for one year, (b) for five years.

THE MINISTER AS ADMINISTRATOR 39

Out of the report of such a planning commission, and out
of the educational discussions and debates which it will
arouse, there should finally emerge a policy, a program and
an organizational pattern adapted to your church and to its
local situation. The report will be expressed not only in
words but in charts and diagrams. Duties, responsibilities
and goals will be clearly allocated and officers, committees,
boards appointed, departments organized.

What then ? Well, then all that remains is for the minister
to be a good executive and keep the plan working. That is
not so easy. It involves several things, among them these:

(1) The minister must see to it that each officer, com-
mittee or department is adequately informed as to its
area of responsibility and the work expected. Definite
training may be necessary.

(2) Provision must be made for regular reports from
time to time, either at church meetings or in the church
calendar or parish paper. People work toward definite
goals, not for vague general aims. They must have
an opportunity to see and tell what has been done.

(3) Due recognition and generous but not fulsome
praise must be given. This is the only recompense an
unpaid volunteer staff receives apart from the individ-
ual's own inner satisfaction at having shared in a good
work.

(4) There must be rotation in office, not too frequent but
not too long delayed either, so that new leadership can
constantly be developed.

(5) The plan itself must likewise be kept growing and
flexible, to meet the changing needs of the parish. A

40 THE MINISTER'S JOB

small carefully selected committee may be charged
with this responsibility alone.

(6) The minister may well keep himself In the back-
ground as much as possible. He should train the
church to operate on its own. Besides, his time and
energy need to be concentrated on preaching and coun-
seling.

I shall not attempt to outline any particular plan of church
organization, for such a plan will depend largely on the de-
nominational pattern and this is a book for all denominations.
But let me now pass to what is often the critical point in the
success or failure of church or any other kind of administra-
tion: the art of dealing with difficult individuals.

The sociologist tells us that people work for four great
motives security, recognition, mastery or a sense of crafts-
manship, and adventure or new experiences. Where any or
all of these are frustrated there Is bound to be friction and un-
happiness. When Industrial management discovers these
motives and takes them seriously a new day will dawn in
labor relations. But, meanwhile, a new day might dawn In
many a church If these four objectives were posted directly
over the minister's desk and ultimately registered in his un-
derstanding. Except for its relatively small employed staff
the church has little to do with people's security, but the min-
ister who understands his parishioners' need for the other
three satisfactions of life can go far toward making a happy
church. Give people a chance to do something well,, open
avenues of exploration and new experience for them, give
ample recognition to their personalities and contributions to

THE MINISTER AS ADMINISTRATOR 41

the total program, and your church, esprit dc corps will
flourish.

And if trouble and antagonism do arise, the wise executive,
after reviewing these four motives and finding nothing amiss,
will try to analyze the difficulty further. Is this friction due
to a misunderstanding of facts, or to a misapprehension of
motives ? These errors can be cleared up by frank and gra-
cious conference. Or is the friction due to an honest differ-
ence of philosophy and values ? This deacon thinks coopera-
tives are a purely economic matter, for example, while the
parson feels that they may be a valuable experiment station on
the way toward a less selfish social order. Well, here again
there can be frank and honest conference with mutual re-
spect and courteous recognition of the other's viewpoint.
The motto of a famous Christian conference in China was,
" Agreed to differ but resolved to love "; that is a basic Chris-
tian attitude, but we must beware lest it get twisted around
into, " Agreed to love but resolved to differ."

Two words of warning may be useful here. The first is,
never question motives! You can keep contact with a man
and you may ultimately win him so long as you do not ques-
tion his motives or even his rationalization of them. Give
him a chance to save his face I And the other warning is one
I learned from one of Chicago's outstanding business execu-
tives: " Concerning pleasant things, write; concerning diffi-
cult things, confer." In other words, if you have to discharge
the organist, don't write her a snippy little note. Be brave
enough to talk it over with her. Let her feel in your tone of
voice the genuine kindness of heart which no letter can
convey. She may be angry and say some unpleasant things

42 THE MINISTER'S JOB

but you must see to It that her ultimate memory Is of a man
who was courageous enough to talk things out, who main-
tained his composure, and whose every word and tone con-
veyed nothing but good will

And this perhaps suggests one other warning, and that Is
that many people are quite deficient in sense of humor. I
may be misled by the quality of my own jokes, but my obser-
vation is that a minister can never depend on It that his jokes
will be understood. Especially is this true of irony, which
should be Indulged in sparingly. As for sarcasm, that is re-
served for the heroes and villains of the screen; it is not for
ministers ! Of course a minister must have a sense of humor,
otherwise he would die, but It must be like the humor In
McCutcheon's cartoons, without sting or bitterness.

Does some minister or prospective minister say: " I am will-
ing to preach and pray and counsel. But deliver me from
this administrative job, I can't be chained down to that! "
Yes, but do you realize that it is precisely on the administra-
tive side of his work that the minister comes nearest to shar-
ing the life and experiences of his laymen ? They have to
deal constantly with problems of organization and routine.
They have to learn how to get along with all sorts of people.
Who are you to preach to them on Sunday if you are not
capable of bearing efficiently and cheerfully the same kind of
burdens and Irritations they bear all week long?

Perhaps this is a good place to turn to a
more appealing side of the minister's work
and consider him as a teacher.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER

TESUS was frequently addressed as " Teacher." The man
J who would be a Christian minister may well learn, there-
fore, all he can of the teacher's art. I say this in spite of the
fact that the epistle of James says, " Be not many of you
teachers! "

The teacher's technique requires knowledge of both the
subject and the person to be taught. It involves patience,
slow but steady progress toward distant goals, and great re-
sourcefulness in awakening interest in the unknown, arous-
ing latent abilities, and stimulating an imaginative and con-
structive attack on life. The teacher's approach is one of
invincible good will and his personal attitude that of modesty
and humility. He counts himself a channel through which
knowledge flows rather than the sole artesian well where it
originates. Now let us apply this conception of the teacher's
job to the minister's and see where we come out.

First of all, the minister must understand the subject he is
to teach. He must be in some sense a scholar. A later
chapter will deal with the minister's educational training but
it may not be amiss to indicate here that his whole life long
he must keep alive and develop that scholarly approach to
the problems of his profession which it is to be hoped he has
acquired in the theological seminary. Happy the pastor
whose church has a fund for buying books which may not be
diverted to any other object. But even without this, and on

43

44 THE MINISTER'S JOB

a very meager salary, he will still find the seminary library
ready to loan him books for the postage, and most public
librarians are very generous about ordering books which min-
isters indicate they would like to read.

The importance of studying human nature and of under-
standing the people whom he would serve has already been
suggested in the chapter on counseling, but a word should
be said about the teacher's spirit of patience and his method
of making slow, steady gains toward distant goals. A very
excellent book written some years ago is The Impatience of a
Parson. Parsons should be very impatient but they should
not show it too much ! A display of impatience never gets a
teacher anywhere; it is contrary to his whole plan of cam-
paign.

Lyman Abbott never attended a seminary; he secured his
early theological education in the old-fashioned way by study-
ing with an uncle who was pastor of a rural church in Maine.
Because his uncle's farm was called " Few Acres," Abbott
used to refer to it as the " Few Acres Theological Seminary."
In his autobiography he says that the greatest lesson he
learned there was that, in order to move an object from one
point to another, you must move it through all the intermedi-
ate points. Many a seminary would justify all its endow-
ments and atone for some of its theological sins if it could be
sure of convincing every student of that very elementary
proposition.

It is very thrilling to be a prophet and very noble to be a
martyr, and it may seem drab and commonplace to be a
teacher finding out where people are in their religious and
social ideas, starting with them at that precise point, and then

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER 45

skillfully awakening curiosity, discontent, interest, self-criti-
cism., vision,, progress. But it should be remembered that the
greatest prophets were also very resourceful teachers. Note
the psychological skill of Isaiah with his yoke or of Jeremiah
buying that corner lot in Anathoth. And as to martyrdom
well, to teach a stiff-necked, unresponsive generation year
after year with patience and with unfailing urbanity and
hopefulness may not be as picturesque as being burned at the
stake, but who shall say it is not martyrdom?

What I mean is this. Any man can come into town with
a line of denunciatory sermons of which every syllable is true,
and get everybody by the ears in no time. At the end of three
months the American Legion, the D. A. R., the Chamber of
Commerce, the Ladies' Aid and even the Central Labor
Council will be so incensed at him that he will have to look
for another job. What has he accomplished ? Added to a
reputation for lack of tact, he has left a divided church and a
disgruntled community and has made things twice as hard
as they ought to be for his successor. And, while he is ad-
justing the mental halo of his self-inflicted martyrdom in
some new parish, another man with the same essential con-
victions but with a teacher's technique can come into that
community, smooth its ruffled feathers, win its confidence in
his personal kindliness and good sense, touch its conscience,
appeal to its human sympathies, feed it a few thousand facts
in moderate quantities of from one to half a dozen per ser-
mon, and sooner or later the community itself will say:
" There is a lot in what he says. Of course we don't swallow
it all. He has some pretty radical ideas, but we believe in
him. And on some matters we've changed a good deal since

46 THE MINISTER'S JOB

he came. He's given us a new slant on this Council for Social
Action, for instance. We used to think it was in the pay of
Moscow but now we recognize its value as a safety valve.
The church has got to face these problems. And, say, that last
number of their little magazine did have some facts in it that
make you sit up and take notice, didn't it ? "

The minister's teaching program will be a many-sided one,
depending on his community's situation. It will vary with
the size of the church and with its location suburb, a great
city, an industrial section, a town or village or the open coun-
try. But in one or the other of these places it will employ
the following teaching opportunities.

First of all, the sermon, whatever else it may be and it
should be a great deal else will lodge as many important
facts and good ideas as the congregation is capable of absorb-
ing, and probably a few more. David Starr Jordan once told
me his objection to most preachers was that if they had two
ideas they used one and saved the other for next time. The
preacher should not be economical with his ideas. But at the
same time one irritating idea is about all a single sermon can
carry. It is better to balance it with several others easier to
assimilate. The worship service, in which the sermon is em-
bedded, is also in part, but only in part, a teaching function.
We certainly learn about some things, and open the door to
learn a great deal more about them, by praying for them. As
Charles Clayton Morrison has so vividly brought out in his
book, The Social Gospel and the Christian Cultus, the impli-
cations of the religion of Jesus for social action will not really
grip the conscience until we have woven them into the liturgy
of our worship.

Another valuable teaching opportunity is in the Sunday

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER 47

evening or weekday forum. An outsider who does not have
to live in the community, if he knows his facts and is an in-
teresting speaker, can often say provocative and challenging
things, and answer both sincere and nasty questions in a way
that will forward the cause of clear thinking in the com-
munity. One of the most strategic moves the church can
make in these days of threatening totalitarianism, whether
communist or fascist, is to build up a tradition of free speech.
No real or searching education is possible without it, except
possibly in the field of pure mathematics.

Other teaching opportunities will be found in the midweek
meeting and in the adult Bible classes. Many a women's
society, also, could be quite transformed and vitalized by an
adequate teaching program concerning missions, Bible study,
personal religion, child guidance or civic welfare. Moreover,
the minister has frequent opportunities to address Rotary
clubs, high schools, colleges, women's clubs and all sorts of
conventions. On such occasions he has his choice between
giving deft and skillful entertainment and starting some
really educational thoughtfulness in his audience. " Many's
the lecture I'se listened to and wondered whether I'se been
receivin' education or entertainment," says Uncle Eph. Well,
the minister ought not to leave his audience in too great
doubt. Even the opportunity to give a book review may serve
his turn. If there were no ideas in the book, why not suggest
a few that ought to have been in it ?

All the foregoing has to do primarily with the education of
adults. But the great field for teaching is with young people,
and this educational companionship with youth is one of the
minister's greatest privileges. There is the Sunday school to
start with. Does it really teach the Bible and make it glow

48 THE MINISTER'S JOB

with interest and contemporary meaning? Read Halford
Luccock's Preaching Values in the Newer Translations of the
Bible or Carl Patton's Use of the Bible in Preaching and you
will see what may be done to make the Bible a living book.
If the minister does not teach the Bible or get it taught so that
it kindles enthusiasm and appreciation, no one else is likely
to do so, and the race will lose some very great literature and,
incidentally, a lot of very important ethics and religion.
" You can't be near that man without learning something
about the Bible," is not a bad recommendation even for a
modern minister. If the devil shouldn't have all the good
tunes it is still more true that the fundamentalists shouldn't
have any monopoly on the Bible. Their theories prevent their
making any good use of large parts of it anyway.

But the minister must see to it that his Sunday school is far
more than a Bible school It must be a school of life where
youth confronts real situations and sees them in the light of
sound ethical ideals against the background of human experi-
ence as revealed in great biography, drama and philosophy.
The teaching need not be all literary either. Social explora-
tion trips will make these problems still more vivid and un-
forgettable. Religious drama may well be given an impor-
tant place in this educational process, and, beyond what we
ordinarily call drama, that which is the highest drama of all,
namely, worship. For in a rich and well conducted worship
service the individual soul lives through that most dramatic
of all inner experiences, the coming into right relations with
the universe and into harmony with God, Share a well pre-
pared and impressively conducted candle-lighting service
with a group of young people and you'll learn more about
worship than you teach.

THE MINISTER AS TEACHER 49

And then, on the mundane side again, there is the scout
troop or the summer camp where the minister who is a good
swimmer or a good woodsman or a good banjo player al-
most any accomplishment will do can live with youth,
and enter into its thoughts, and prepare to say something in-
telligible and even gripping to the rising generation later on.
Meanwhile what he is may have spoken more deeply than
anything he will ever have the chance to say.

And this is a good point from which to
pass on to the next chapter and consider
the minister as a human being.

CHAPTER Six

THE MINISTER AS A HUMAN BEING

' UCH MORE of normal human liberty is allowed the
minister today than was customary in days gone by.
In some parts of the country the minister may even smoke
and dance, and nowhere is he any longer required to wear a
Prince Albert coat and a white bow tie. Personally I neither
smoke nor dance, but I do appreciate being delivered from
the long-tailed coat and the white lawn tie. Perhaps the best
advice as to his personal behavior and appearance ever given
to a young minister was this: " When you go to a new com-
munity, do not dress or behave in such a way that everyone
will immediately spot you as a minister. But on the other
hand, don't dress or behave in such a way that they will be
shocked when they learn that you are one ! "

Shall the minister wear a clerical collar and a high-cut vest ?
The answer depends largely on personal taste, the custom of
his denomination and section of the country, and the prac-
tice of his fellow ministers. Most men will prefer not to be
conspicuous and for that reason may choose to dress in quiet
good taste like other men. Dressing so, they feel that they
see and hear life as it really is. The wind of masculine pro-
fanity and outspoken opinion is not tempered to the shorn
lamb of professional dignity as it would too often be if the
minister dressed so that all men recognized his calling at
once. On the other hand, my friends who wear clerical garb

5

THE MINISTER AS A HUMAN BEING 51

tell me that in making calls, visiting a hospital or even taking
a long railway journey, they find that people turn to them
more readily.

Should the minister wear a gown in the pulpit? By all
means, if the architecture of the church is not too incongru-
ous with such a costume and if the choir is also gowned.
There is a curious prejudice and inconsistency widely preva-
lent which allows a robed choir without dissent but feels that
if the minister were likewise vested it would indicate that
he, and maybe the whole church, was headed straight for
Rome. As a matter of fact the black Geneva gown is the
most Protestant of garments. John Calvin wore one. Need
any more be said ?

What shall the minister be called ? I know ministers who
are called by their first names throughout the parish, and this
informality is an expression of affection. But generally the
minister will prefer to be just plain " Mr. Smith." The un-
dertakers in the north and everybody down south will prob-
ably call him " Doctor." That is the chief argument for a
theological student's getting a Ph.D. while in college it will
save him lifelong embarrassment in handing back " doctor-
ates " or feeling that he ought to. But whatever else he is
called, he should never be called a " Reverend." That is a
widely prevalent barbarism which all friends of good Eng-
lish should suppress. " Reverend " is always an adjective and
never a noun. The proper form is " the Reverend John
Smith " or " the Reverend Mr. Smith " never just " Rever-
end Smith." One can no more say " Reverend Smith " than
he can say " good Smith." One has to say " good John
Smith " or " the good Mr. Smith." Protestants need an ade-
quate title for their ministers corresponding to the Catholic's

52 THE MINISTER'S JOB

* Father " and the Jew's " Rabbi" The Lutherans use " Pas-
tor/' which serves admirably. I wish the rest of us could do
likewise or else revive the good old English title of " Parson "
before we all become " Reverends " willy-nilly.

But there are more important human problems before the
minister than what he shall wear or by what name he shall be
called. There is the problem of his business affairs. He
ought to be " an utterly honest man/' as a Japanese student
once quaintly told me in an examination paper. That in-
cludes paying his bills and not issuing rubber checks. If he
needs money he had better take the chairman of his board of
trustees into his confidence and arrange to borrow on a busi-
nesslike basis rather than ruin his credit and the credit of the
church by unpaid bills. His best form of saving will be life
insurance plus membership in the pension fund of his
denomination. He has no business going into business.
Preaching is the only business for him to follow and it will
require all his brains and energy. He must also beware of
the commercial enterprise that may want to exploit his name
and standing. They are not for sale.

Certain minor problems of morals arise in the minister's
life. Shall he play cards ? It's a terrible waste of time, except
perhaps on a six weeks' voyage around Cape Horn. But
whatever he plays, he will not gamble no Irish sweep-
stakes for him! Shall he smoke ? I always advise against it,
but must admit my advice is largely disregarded. Some of
our greatest preachers have been and are smokers. Shall the
minister go to the theater ? How out of date that question
has become with the universal presence of the movies ! Shall
tie dance ? His problems will be fewer if he does not. Shall
he drink ? That he simply cannot do and retain his standing

THE MINISTER AS A HUMAN BEING 53

in the community and he will not want to if he has read
Haven W. Emerson's Alcohol and Man. Moreover, as his
pastoral experience widens and he sees what alcohol does to
youth,, to family life, to some of the finest people in the world,
he will turn his glass down with emphasis and without the
slightest longing for the great deceiver that steals men's brains
and opens the door to every kind of tragedy.

Does he, as a minister, have certain professional standards
of conduct which he must ever keep in mind ? Yes, and they
ought to be more definitely understood. Here are the ten
commandments of ministerial ethics as I see them.:

(1) No sheep-stealing! The minister must never deflect
people from loyalty to their church in order to build
up his own.

(2) No tale-bearing! If he knows or hears anything to
the discredit of another minister he should either keep
silent about it or go directly to the minister concerned
or, if necessary, to his responsible ecclesiastical su-
periors, and to no one else.

(3) Loyalty to his -predecessor! He will never be in any
way a candidate for a church until the incumbent min-
ister has resigned. He will not take too seriously criti-
cisms he hears about his predecessor, remembering that
similar tales follow every pastorate. They reveal the
disgruntled or the ingratiating.

(4) Consideration for his successor! He will try to leave
ample and accurate records, an organization set up and
going, and a spirit of anticipatory good will for the
man who is to follow him. Then he will keep out of
parish affairs and return for no funerals or weddings

54 THE MINISTER'S JOB

except in cooperation with or because of the absence
of his successor. Give the man who succeeds you a real
chance to succeed!

(5) Play the game with the ecclesiastical authorities!
The minister is part of a denomination and, beyond
that 3 of the church universal. As a representative of
organized Christianity he cannot be a " lone wolf."
He owes his education and security in part to a Chris-
tian fellowship which he in turn should support and
strengthen.

(6) Be a good citizen! As a minister he is ordinarily
exempt from jury duty and military service. All the
more, therefore, must he contribute his share in all ap-
propriate good works for the common good. But his
chief public service will be rendered as a fair, free and
fearless voice speaking truth in love on all matters of
public welfare where he is qualified to speak at all.

(7) Devote full time to the job! He has to punch no
time clock and his product cannot be weighed and
measured. But he must be sure he earns his salary and
sets an example of honest work and loyal service.

(8) Serve regardless of compensation! No true minis-
ter will charge for his services. If he cannot live on the
support given let him say so to some trusted leader, but
he will make no demands. He will serve all regard-
less of compensation. He may be impecunious but
never mercenary. In addition to salary he may receive
payment for articles and outside addresses, also royal-
ties for books he has written, providing these things
do not encroach upon his regular duties. Wedding
fees he turns over to his wife and requires from her

THE MINISTER AS A HUMAN BEING 55

no accounting. Funeral fees he does not accept from
his parishioners. From outsiders they may be accepted
practice differs but, many ministers stipulate,
only as contributions to some charitable fund.

(9) 'Remember the minister s special responsibility re-
garding women! His work in general, and his pas-
toral calling in particular, give him a privileged posi-
tion. It must never be abused. Slander and gossip
may end his usefulness if they have any basis either in
reality or only in careless indiscretion. He must never
quarrel with a woman, on the one hand, and should
avoid all familiarities, on the other. He had better not
call even his secretary by her first name. If there is no
foolishness in his ^dealings with women he will gain
in greater measure the love and respect of all men
as well as women. There is nothing which depresses
a church so much as any hint of scandal about the
minister.

( 10) Ma^e a success of home! Sometimes the minister's
home is his greatest success. Sons of ministers out-
number proportionally the sons of any other profes-
sion in achieving a place in Who's Who, in happy
refutation of popular misconceptions about them.
The leading layman in many a church is a son of an
earlier pastor. But the minister must remember that
his wife and children live in the glare of pitiless pub-
licity. They suffer acutely at times from a reaction due
to his vocation. Therefore he owes it to his home to
be especially loyal, considerate and tender. If his home
is a manifest success the welfare of all homes in his
parish increases. If his home fails but I forbear!

56 THE MINISTER'S JOB

If you have survived this chapter and the
ministry still glows for you as a great vo-
cation, you are ready at last to consider
how to prepare for the task.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MINISTER'S TRAINING

DEADLY, a man's training for any profession ought to
Ji begin about a hundred years before he is born, but that is
difficult to arrange. Sometimes men with three generations
of the culture and discipline of the Christian parsonage be-
hind them turn out to be aviators or politicians, and all that
training is lost so far as the ministry is concerned. Then,
on the other hand, up out of mine or factory or farm comes a
youth with little churchly background but with an authentic
vision that will not be denied. We have to make ministers
out of the men who recognize a call when it comes to them.
What is a call to the ministry and what makes it possible ?
A call to the ministry is not ordinarily, or preferably, a spec-
tacular emotional experience, although sometimes pent up
emotions and delayed decisions may finally register them-
selves in one dramatic moment never to be forgotten. With
far more ministers, however, the call has been an adventurous
hope and a growing conviction that here at last is a vocation
into which one could put all he had and find great joy and
reward in doing so. Professor George Herbert Palmer used
to say, concerning his love of teaching, that Harvard Uni-
versity paid him for doing something for the privilege of do-
ing which he would gladly have paid Harvard University,
had that been necessary. When a man, after having had
enough experience to judge, feels that way about any profes-
sion there is little doubt that he has been " called." God gives

57

58 THE MINISTER'S JOB

us joy and suffering in the tasks we were meant to do, and the
two are close akin.

It would be better, however, not to judge the validity of
one's call to the ministry by purely emotional reactions,
though the emotions are wiser than some people think. A
certain amount of self-analysis is possible. Let the young
man ask himself, not " Do I look well in a pulpit ? " or " Ana
I conspicuously pious and unusually fluent in religious talk ? "
or " Do all the old ladies think I'd be a lovely minister ? "
but rather mor,e searching questions like these : " Am I will-
ing to tackle four years of college and three years of graduate
study ? " " Can I do good enough intellectual work to justify
what all that education will cost me or someone else ? " " Do
I really love folks enough and am I sufficiently concerned for
human welfare to abandon all dreams of wealth or power
and devote myself to service ? " " How competent am I or
can I become in English, history, sociology, psychology and
public speaking ? " and finally, " Have I any real and kin-
dling enthusiasm for Jesus and his philosophy of life ? "

But self-analysis suffers notoriously from blind spots; so
check up your " call " with some competent and trusted ad-
viser. He may be a pastor, a high school teacher, a college
professor, an editor or a businessman preferably one who
has been to college. He will want to know what alternatives
you have considered and why you rejected them, and what
about the minister's job you really know. He will ask you if
you have read this book! Let us hope he is direct and cou-
rageous enough to give you his honest reaction. But, even so,
his direction is not final, one way or the other.

There is still a third way of checking up and that is by a
trial trip. Many a man has not made his final vocational de-
cision until a year in the seminary and a summer on his own

THE MINISTER'S TRAINING 59

in charge of a little home missionary church out on the plains
or up in the mountains have given him the " feel " of the
thing and shown him its realities.

One thing is certain: the decision for or against the minis-
try ought never to be made on financial grounds. Don't give
up the ministry because of poverty. There is always some
way of earning your way through college and seminary if
you mean business. And, on the other hand, the man who
chooses the ministry because it seems to be a comparatively
easy financial road to an education will only clutter up some
theological seminary and lose his own self-respect in the end,
unless he happens to get converted somewhere along the way.

Studies in theological education reveal that the most
promising students are often those who did not wake up to
the possibilities of the ministry until late in their college
career. There is something to be said for late-blooming va-
rieties. Such students thought that they were headed for
engineering or law or architecture, until a course in English
poetry or sociology or philosophy, or a glimpse at the back
alleys of a city slum, or a talk in chapel finally woke them up.
Then they saw some gleam of the glorious possibilities of the
Christian church which has served humanity through the cen-
turies and is still calling for young men to carry on that serv-
ice today. They discovered they were most concerned about
human engineering and the laws of God and the architecture
of things to come.

But it would be dangerous to depend solely on the late-
blooming varieties for our supply of ministers. Many a man
who wakes up to the ministry as a possible vocation about his
senior year in college, or even after three years in a law school
or a graduate school of business administration, could have
been saved a good deal of time if the nature of the ministry

60 THE MINISTER'S JOB

had been adequately presented to him in high school. After
ail, that is when youth more frequently makes up its mind on
basic questions than the world realizes. Now while colleges
may have departments of religion and considerable organ-
ized Christian work, the high school is almost entirely secu-
lar, and such vocational guidance as the high school gives is
likely to ignore the ministry entirely. This is a critical weak-
ness in the church's strategy for securing strong leadership.
Something ought to be done about it, the program varying
according to the local situations and the cooperation pos-
sible between the local pastors and the high school principal.

What kind of college should the prospective minister
choose? There is no definite answer. For a certain type of
student the small college, if it fosters high scholarship, is ad-
mirable and produces good results. And yet it must be said
that a certain maturity and tough-mindedness seem to be
developed best in a university atmosphere. If the pretheo-
logical student can survive at the university he has proved his
hardiness and probably need not be worried about it any
further.

What shall the pretheological student study in college?
Some would say. Everything except religion ! To follow that
exaggerated advice would be very dangerous. True, the stu-
dent had better not major in religion, but a good basic Bible
course is as important for him at that stage as for anyone else.
College is his golden opportunity, however, to get a grasp on
literature, history, sociology, philosophy and psychology. He
had better emphasize these broadly cultural subjects, major-
ing in one of them and not forgetting to include at least one
good laboratory course in science, preferably biology. The
minister needs to know and appreciate the scientific attack

THE MINISTER'S TRAINING 61

upon a problem. As to languages., he may take enough to
profit by their discipline in ordered thinking and discover
whether he wants to go further along the linguistic road.

Then, too,, there is no reason why the student should lose
himself completely in books and studies. Not all of a college
education is acquired in the classroom. At our seminary we
are proud of the cheerleaders, athletes, editors, star actors,
debaters and headwaiters who have decided to go into the
ministry. But we are still waiting for our first drum major
or cadet colonel!

Certain widely prevalent misconceptions about the theo-
logical seminary itself need to be cleared away. Many a stu-
dent, brought up in the academic freedom and clear white
light of truth as it shines on the college campus, hesitates to
plunge into the murky pool of theological dogmatism. He
has a hazy traditional idea that a seminary is a cloistered back-
water of life, a dismal place where sour-visaged theologians
ram outworn doctrines down the student's throat and de-
nounce him as a poor lost soul if he raises any questions or
objections. Or else he fears that the seminary will be so out
of touch with life that he might as well be living in Tibet.

Nothing could be more unrealistic. As a matter of fact,
the modern theological seminary, frequently located adjacent
to or connected with a great university, is as searchingly
scientific in spirit and methods as any other professional
school or graduate department. All problems are ap-
proached historically, all the pros and cons are fearlessly pre-
sented, no dogmatic hedges prevent the freest analysis and
debate. The student comes out where he chooses to come
out after all the evidence is in. He is graded according to his
knowledge of the facts and his ability to handle them, not by

62 THE MINISTER'S JOB

his conformity to a narrow orthodoxy. His particular de-
nomination may hold him up on points of doctrine later on,,
but the seminary is mainly concerned with stimulating him
to " prove all things," which means, to test all things, " and
hold fast to that which is good."

In general, the modern school of the prophets has four
great disciplines by which it seeks to train the minister of to-
morrow. The first of these comprises the whole background
of religion what it is, what its historical development has
been, what it has to say about the great problems of life.
This discipline will always make up the bulk of the student's
academic work. It includes study of the Bible, church his-
tory, Christian theology, the history and philosophy of re-
ligion.

Only with such a sound historical training can the minister
wisely and sanely evaluate and withstand some of the surface
vagaries of the modern mind as well as appreciate and co-
operate with its deeper-running currents of constructive pur-
pose. Contemporary charlatans, demagogues and fanatics
can sometimes best be understood and analyzed by compari-
son with their prototypes of other days whose complete
record is now on file in the archives of history. A doctrine
or an idea which the student has traced through its whole
historical development is less likely to result in fanaticism or
intolerance, while its real values, if any, will survive because
freed from temporary wrappings and local coloring. Back-
ground historical, theological, biblical, philosophical back-
ground is what a scholarly seminary training ought to give
a minister, not just a few snappy sermon outlines, a cocksure
dogmatism, and a bag of tricks which could be learned under
clever teachers in about six weeks.

THE MINISTER'S TRAINING 63

The second discipline is sociological. The minister must
face the major ethical problems of modern life and learn to
analyze its social trends. He must understand the social
facts and forces that surge around the rock of ages on which
his church is founded. He must, therefore, study social
ethics, trends in rural and urban life as they affect the church,
problems of family and vocational life, and the sociology of
religion. He cannot preach the social gospel all the time.
No, but he can't omit it all the time either. So he had better
be trained to preach it intelligently and keep his facts ahead
of his oratory.

The third discipline, both newest and oldest of all, is the
psychological. It is a perfectly sound belief, isn't it, that a
minister ought to know something about the soul? Well,
the modern name for " soul " is " human personality," and
psychology is one key to its understanding. Hence the
courses in mental hygiene and character development, in per-
sonality disorders and pastoral counseling. For these courses
our particular seminary, for example, calls in a chaplain from
a mental hospital, and also gives selected students an oppor-
tunity to study in the hospital under his direction.

The fourth great area of theological preparation includes
all those practical disciplines by which the student learns to
do the actual work of a minister. These include courses in
preaching, church administration, worship, religious drama,
literature and biography, music, religious education and pub-
lic speaking. But, since the most effective learning is by do-
ing, these subjects are supplemented by carefully supervised
field work. All during his course the student has responsi-
bility for certain definite tasks in church, Sunday school,
social settlement, research projects or rural areas. He is

64 THE MINISTER'S JOB

visited " on location " by the director of field work 3 who is a
full-time faculty member trained for that service, and later
he reports and discusses the living problems encountered in
the day's work at a field work seminar meeting one evening
every week. When summer comes the student's field work
may take him to far distant states, but he returns with new
insights into his vocation and deeper interest in his classroom
opportunities.

Usually at about the end of his first year in seminary the
student applies to his denomination for a license to preach.
The granting of a license involves an examination by the
proper ecclesiastical authorities and is the first step toward
the ordination, which is preceded by a more thorough and
searching examination. The ordination, of course, is his goal
after his seminary course is over and he has secured his pro-
fessional degree of bachelor of divinity, B.D. It seems
anomalous that after three years of graduate work the student
should receive only another bachelor's degree while the
young lawyer may claim his J.D., doctor of jurisprudence;
and so some seminaries would like to change the B.D. degree
to a Th,D., doctor of theology. Certainly the student has
worked as hard and learned as much as his college classmate
who after three years may be receiving his Ph.D., doctor of
philosophy, with a thesis on " The Use of the Comma in the
Punctuation of Medieval Icelandic Literature " or some simi-
larly remote subject of alleged research. But the important
thing is to be a " doctor," that is, a learned man, whether the
diploma is inscribed with that title or not

Travel should not be neglected as an important element in
the training of a minister. Many seminaries award to the
most capable student of each year's graduating class a greatly

THE MINISTER'S TRAINING 65

prized fellowship which provides for one or two years 5 study
and travel abroad. Such study used to be undertaken largely
in German universities, but under the present regimentation
of scholarship in that country students in search of academic
freedom will probably turn to the British universities, such
as Oxf ord, Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, which also
have the advantage of no very difficult language barriers.
There are barriers, but they are not insurmountable! The
long vacations customary abroad also give the student a great
cultural opportunity for travel on the Continent and especially
to the Holy Land. Even if the student does not win such a
prize for foreign study he ought by all means as soon as pos-
sible to see Egypt, Italy, Greece and Palestine. All antiquity,
and especially his studies in the Bible, will glow for him with
new reality after such a journey.

But foreign travel is not the only kind which may broaden
the parson's outlook and add depth and color to his preach-
ing. In these days of open roads and inexpensive cars, tourist
camps and trailers, he ought to see his own country. Historic
spots and scenic beauty are important but so also is a first-
hand sight and understanding of the squalor of city slums
and bleak mining camps and the desolation of sharecroppers'
cabins. These will leave him only enraged or disheartened
unless he also sees the gleams of a nobler civilization in those
lighthouses of human brotherhood which he should also
search out and visit such as the Chicago Commons and
Hull House, the Delta Farms in Mississippi, Berea College in
Kentucky, Tillotson College for Negroes in Texas and many
another venture in cooperative living and invincible good
will. In that seminary which I know best of all the students
go on a "spring hike" during Easter vacation, trekking

66 THE MINISTER'S JOB

across the country in a string o nondescript automobiles and
visiting everything from the TVA to a farmers' strike in Iowa.
It is one way to test one's education !

Finally, it should hardly need to be said that the minister's
education and training are never ended. He must read new
books and think new thoughts and face new issues all his life
long. If he does he will remain perennially young wit-
ness Graham Taylor writing his weekly column for the
Chicago Daily News at the age of eighty-six and still bub-
bling over with vitality and contemporary understanding.
The summer schools and pastors' institutes or ministers'
weeks now provided by so many seminaries and other
agencies also conspire to keep the pastor who attends them
mentally alert, resilient and up to date.

Isn't this minister's job a great task ? But
it's too big for any one person, you say ?
True enough, and that is one reason why
almost all ministers are married. Hence
the next chapter!

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE MINISTER'S WIFE

SOME MINISTERS succeed gloriously in their profes-
sional careers without a wife, and occasionally a minister
fails because of a wife who simply could not adjust herself
to the job. Phillips Brooks never married and of course the
pope is a bachelor. Nevertheless, after an experience of over
thirty years, with a good deal of observation on the side, I
heartily recommend that the minister be married. Most
churches take it for granted that he will be. The parsonage
is one of the unique institutions of Protestantism; those who
speak as though all the psychological advantages were on the
side of the Roman Catholic priest with his confessional, his
sacerdotal status and his authoritative relationship to his con-
gregation perhaps forget that Protestantism also has its ap-
propriate and unique institutions and traditions, not least of
them the minister's home in the heart of the parish.

Where shall the minister find his wife ? Perhaps the wisest
answer would be, where she finds him. After all, courtship
is a mutual affair. Some of the happiest solutions to this part
of life's problem, however, are made in college or even in the
theological seminary where these institutions are, happily,
coeducational. I am not saying that the minister's wife must
be a college graduate. That would be a very external and
superficial criterion. Some of the wisest, most gracious and
truly cultured women who ever lived never went to college.
A college diploma is no guarantee of the graces and wisdom

68 THE MINISTER'S JOB

needed in the parsonage. And yet, on the whole, other things
being equal, the pastor's wife who is a college graduate has
a better start than the one who is not The rest depends upon
her insight, character and social genius. College can develop
these qualities but not create them. They are native endow-
ments or at least social inheritances. In general it is safe to
say that the young woman whose native ability and good
sense are reinforced by a knowledge that she has had as good
educational advantages as the other women of the church,
together with the incidental social and organizational experi-
ence which college gives, will begin her career in the parson-
age with more confidence and understanding than one who
lacks this background.

Some girls shrink from the thought of ever being a min-
ister's wife and not a few parents zealously guard their
daughters from any contact with theological students lest this
strange and untoward fate befall them. Because such fears
rest largely upon false assumptions and inadequate knowl-
edge of life in a parsonage, let us look for a while at the job
of the minister's wife. In the opinion of the two people
whose joint experience lies back of this chapter it is one of the
happiest, most worth-while lives a woman can lead.

First of all, the minister's wife should be what every other
married woman would wish to be, a homemaker. As the
mistress of the manse she is the center of the most significant
home in the parish. If she is not interested in creating a home
where peace, joy and order reign, a refuge from the strident
vulgar outside world and a training ground for character, a
home with children in it, a home given to hospitality and
built on mutual confidence and utter loyalty, then she had
better not marry at all. And particularly she had better not

THE MINISTER'S WIFE 69

marry a minister. For if the home she makes has these quali-
ties, its unconscious, unpremeditated influence will quietly
radiate throughout the parish and reinforce all the joint min-
istry of her husband and herself. But if it has them not the
minister will suffer such a handicap as will almost certainly
ruin his career or, through the battle to rise above it, make
him a very great soul indeed. But in either case his wife will
be utterly miserable.

An ideal home is not one in which there are no disagree-
ments, no tensions of opinion or desire, no suffering or sor-
row, but one in which there Is absolute basic loyalty and com-
plete confidence and trust. Love is so vague and sentimental
a word that It needs to be translated into these more prosaic
terms. If there is any cloud of misunderstanding or distrust
between the parson and his wife, you may depend upon it
that the parish will not be long In sensing it. It will be well,
therefore, if minister and wife both live lives which are an
open book wherein anyone may read. " Fierce is the light
that beats upon a throne" and a parsonage. But this
frankness in itself is a considerable protection and guarantee
of happiness to married life. It means that husband and wife
have no secrets from each other, no flirtations or entangle-
ments, no half-loyalties.

Once in a certain city a prominent minister was under fire.
His fearless advocacy of civic decency had won him the
hatred of powerful sinister forces in the community. An at-
tempt to besmirch his name by alleged scandal threatened.
His church board met with him to consider the situation.
The whole community was stirred with apprehension.
Everything cleared up when he quietly said: " I have done
nothing dishonorable. My wife is here. She knows all the

70 THE MINISTER'S JOB

circumstances. We have no secrets from each other. There
is no disharmony between us. She is absolutely and unre-
servedly with me in facing this situation." Nothing more
needed to be said. The church backed up their minister, the
attacking forces retreated, the alleged scandal was never pub-
lished. But suppose that minister had not been protected by
a good wife and a happy married relationship; what a tragedy
he might have faced !

As the presiding genius in the home, the minister's wife is
to a degree inevitably his social secretary. She may indeed
often supply the background of social savoir faire which her
husband, good man and true though he may be, possibly
never acquired in his home or college or even in the theologi-
cal seminary. After all, what mere man really knows how
to give a tea or in whose honor, or how to have the deacons in
to dinner, or give a party for the young people ? If a young
woman likes to do these things the position of minister's wife
opens up almost unlimited possibilities to her. On the other
hand, she may not be much of a social butterfly and prefer to
organize study groups or work in the child-guidance clinic
or coach the drama club. But whichever way her talents lead,
her social opportunities are probably greater than those of
any other woman in the community.

Nor does social life necessarily involve large expense if one
has the wit and originality to do things simply. In a Cali-
fornia city years ago one of the most delightful social occa-
sions of the season was a series of Sunday noon luncheons
which a resourceful host and hostess used to give under the
fig tree in their back yard with bacon, scrambled eggs and
coffee for the menu, all cooked and served outdoors.

In order that this chapter may not be just a man's reaction

THE MINISTER'S WIFE 71

to the topic under consideration I have asked the minister's
wife I know best of all to set down some of her ideas on the
subject and here they are.

" The life of a minister's wife is most interesting first of all
because it is so intimately bound up with her husband's.
Few married couples can share so much. Again, it often in-
volves a good deal of travel and variety in places of residence.
We all like to ' go places ' and see the country, and the min-
ister's career does not ordinarily keep him in just one spot for
life. As a friend of mine remarked, * Here I've got to stick
in little old New York while you are moving from Maine to
California and even the islands of the sea.'

" Of course, in traveling from place to place in the course
of a lifetime, one gathers and enjoys a great group of friends.
Moreover, church people represent a cross section of society
and as one has friends in all groups one comes to know and
understand a wide variety of people. On the whole it is a
privilege to be linked up with a great group of church women
who are, as someone has called them, c the aristocracy of the
race ' an aristocracy of character, service and devotion.
Church people have the international mind; they have com-
parative freedom from race prejudice; their interests and sym-
pathies reach out far beyond their own doorstep. Thus the
minister's wife is fortunate in the people she can work with.

" There are certain limitations, of course, which the min-
ister's wife may as well make up her mind to accept. She can
possess few things moving about settles that. And she
must have an adaptable mind, putting up philosophically in
one parish with a parsonage that has ten great lofty rooms
and in the next with one that has only six, and making no

72 THE MINISTER'S JOB

demands nor letting her soul be ruffled by these things. Fi-
nancially she will have just enough to live on to place her as
well as the average woman in her church. Hence she needs
to be ingenious about the management of her home. But in
that she has lots of company.

" Many things are expected of her. At a recent gathering
the question was asked: What do you consider your most im-
portant job as minister's wife? Answers such as these came
in: c To be a hostess in my home to the church folk '; * To
take care of my family '; ' To be a buffer between my hus-
band and the public '; ' To secure Sunday school teachers ';
* To keep my mouth shut when I'd like to say something ';
' To support my husband in the program of the church.'

" As a potential leader in the women's work in the church
the minister's wife should keep herself informed on what up-
to-date churches are doing in this field of activity. She
should know what program material is available and what
type of organization is most effective. She can do this or-
dinarily by active cooperation with the denominational or-
ganization o women in her area and with other women's
organizations devoted to special interests such as peace or
civic welfare or missions. In this way she will become well
informed so that her judgment will be of value when she is
consulted as to programs, projects and organization.

" She needs to be alert to new methods and have wisdom
in suggesting changes. She will discover that, on the whole,
church women alter their organizational set-up with great
travail of spirit; most of them are fearful of changes. In a
world of changes this seems most pathetic. Hence the value
of a committee on survey and reorganization to be commis-
sioned in every church at least once in every five years. Mean-
while the minister's wife should visit other denominational

THE MINISTER'S WIFE 73

groups, as opportunity offers, on the lookout for new ideas
and methods. A recent survey of churches east and west
brought to light a church group named the ' Ladies' Benevo-
lent Association. 5 It would doubtless give some of the ladies
concerned great anguish to change that name but they might
well ask themselves what hope there would be of a modern
up-to-date college girl's caring to be a member of such an as-
sociation. Probably this name is itself an improvement upon
the original * Female Benevolent Association,' but it now
ought to be improved still further.

" Should the minister's wife hold office in the women's
group in her church; especially, should she be the president?
There is much against it, for if she does so it means that one
person less from the group itself is being interested and
trained to carry responsibility. She ought rather to stand be-
hind the president, helping her in every way. However, she
should master one thing in particular, namely, parliamentary
law, so that under her guidance meetings of church women
will be conducted with an order and dignity fully equal to
those of any club. She can also help quietly behind the scenes
by being ever on the lookout for good leadership material
among the women of the church, suggesting names to the
nominating committee and getting the right type of women
fitted to the various offices and tasks.

" The Sunday school also will claim her help. Perhaps she
will grow up with the school as her own children progress
through it, though normally she will probably be especially
well equipped to work with the high school age group, one
of the most important and at the same time most difficult of
all ages in the school. As she grows older, it is to be hoped
she will be awake when the time arrives for her to give her-
self more to the adults and secure younger leadership for

74 THE MINISTER'S JOB

youth. Besides her church activities, she ought to have time
to work in some worth-while organizations like the League
of Women Voters, the College Club or the local Woman's
Club.

" If all that has been outlined seems too big a task, never-
theless it can be done. Helpful, noble ways of living day by
day seem to open up before one who will put the really great
and noble things in life first and not be lost in a maze of
trivial and superficial interests.

" Quite recently a certain minister changed his parish.
One member of the congregation which he was leaving was
heard to remark, < I'm not concerned about the next minister
we get, but I know we'll never find another Mrs. Blank '
the minister's wife. Of course, there are just as many good
ministers' wives as there are good ministers, but it was a well
deserved tribute. Many a minister has had a happier pastor-
ate than he knows because the people loved his wife."

Continuing now on my own account, may I suggest some
very definite ways in which a wife can help her husband in
this intricate task of the Christian ministry? There is for
instance the matter of pastoral counseling. People come to
you for advice on all sorts of matters. Usually what they
bring up first is not the real subject of their quest. They first
just try to discover your general attitude. But finally they
may bring up a problem that at first seems too big for you.
Don't let it. Play for time and contrive to consult your wife
before answering. The insights of a good woman are not
infallible, but no discriminating man will disregard them.
The habit of talking things over with his wife fully and un-
reservedly is one very important for a parson to cultivate-

THE MINISTER'S WIFE 75

She will not betray him if she is an intelligent woman,
whereas her hunches and intuitions will often save him from
foolishness and failure.

Should the minister's wife help him with his sermons?
Some wives do a great deal in this respect. They read books,
collect illustrations, suggest topics and, horrible to relate, even
have the sermon preached to them in advance. I have never
considered this last procedure quite sportsmanlike. The min-
ister's wife ought to have the privilege of hearing the sermon
fresh and unspoiled, just as members of the congregation do.
In general I think the less responsibility she has for the
preaching the better. She has enough responsibility in other
matters and the minister had better shoulder this burden
alone, except for such help as she volunteers. Of course she
will be invaluable as a critic but there let her, in turn, be-
ware! To preach every Sunday is a hard enough task, and
there are times when the soul of a creative artist who already
senses his shortcomings can stand criticism, and there are
times when it cannot. I would suggest to all ministers' wives
this rule: Never omit any criticism because you fear wound-
ing your husband. Both of you should remember that
" faithful are the wounds of a friend." But, at the same time,
it will be better to make note of your intended criticism and
reserve it until about Tuesday morning.

What perils attend the career of the minister's wife?
Three major ones: professionalism, lack of tact, and over-
work. All must be guarded against. By professionalism I
mean always talking about the church as well as assuming a
sanctimonious attitude in voice and conduct and, I almost
said, in dress. The minister's wife should remember that she
is first of all a human being, and that pretty clothes are es-

76 THE MINISTER'S JOB

sential for a normal woman. Fortunately the day has gone
by when she was expected to select nothing but black or grey
and wear a bonnet.

As to tact, there is no formula for it. Diplomacy has been
defined as the gentle art of letting other people have your
way. But tact is either inherent or else is learned more or
less imperfectly in the school of hard knocks. Only let them
be knocks received but never given! Here the text, " It is
more blessed to give than to receive," does not apply.

But when it comes to overwork, the matter is largely one of
good judgment, organization and will power. No over-
worked person can do his best and a crisis may find him tired,
peevish, slow of apprehension. Hence the necessity so to or-
ganize your life as to have regular hours of sleep, definite rest
periods, adequate recreation and genuinely relaxing vaca-
tions. If you haven't enough intelligence to manage these
things, you ought to punch a time clock and not attempt any-
thing so exacting as the creative tasks which the minister and
his wife confront together. These are glittering generalities
and each person must translate them into terms of practical
daily living.

But, on the other hand, don't be lazy or self-indulgent. It
is a great and holy spiritual battle in which you are engaged.
This critical day of the world's history is no time in which to
give to the cause of Christ less than one's best even to the
uttermost ounce of effort.

Can the minister and his wife have a social life apart from
the church ? It is almost necessary that they should. Toward
the church members they must of course be absolutely im-
partial. Great social intimacy with one family or group is
likely to be resented by others. Happy the community in

THE MINISTER'S WIFE 77

which the various ministers and their wives can form a con-
genial group, bound together by common professional in-
terests. The best intimate friends for the minister and his
wife are another minister and his wife. Such friendships
suggest no favoritism inside the parish and arouse no an-
tagonism.

Moreover, the minister and his wife for this same reason
are especially dependent on each other and on their children
for their intimate social life. They need to take one day a
week, if possible -say Saturday afternoon and Monday
morning to get out of the parish and have a change of
scene. Just a trip to the theater will do. And, if they can
'own a secluded cabin in the hills or beside a river, or an aban-
doned farm, that is better still. For years, in Hawaii, I went
swimming with my children Saturday afternoons and played
tennis with three fellow ministers on Monday mornings.
How to take the family off the job on a holiday is one of the
fine arts of being a minister's wife.

But, before the chapter ends, someone is sure to ask, But
did the church hire the minister's wife ? The answer is, No !
And while her children are little the minister's wife will not
be able to do more church work than aiiy other young
mother. Nevertheless, it is only good sportsmanship on her
part to give to the service of the church as much time and
energy as other women members similarly situated are giving.

Some women say: My job is to make a good home for my
husband and my responsibility ends there; the doctor's wife
isn't expected to run the hospital. But the woman who takes
that attitude will lose a great deal of fun, for being a minis-
ter's wife is in itself a career. It is really a sort of unique pro-
fession and the woman who realizes its possibilities will find

78 THE MINISTER'S JOB

it a very rewarding life indeed. Many young women today,
when they find that they are going to marry ministers, go to
seminary or training school and take courses in Bible, reli-
gious education, mental hygiene, pageantry and religious
drama, so as to be prepared to make the most of the oppor-
tunities church work will open to them. They become com-
munity-minded; life's larger horizons beckon to them, and
they discover that the minister's wife may become one of the
key women of the community in which she lives.

Mrs. Roosevelt has demonstrated what a career it may be to
be the wife of a president of the United States. Why not re-
gard the position of minister's wife as an opportunity for a
career ?

But perhaps before searching for a wife
the prospective minister had better sit
down and subject himself to careful self-
examination. The next chapter will tell
him how to go about it.

CHAPTER NINE
A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS

r AVING surveyed the minister's job, perhaps the min-
ister, or prospective minister, might find it interesting,
in closing., to survey himself. Many a man will ask himself:
How well suited am I to a pastor's life and responsibilities ?
How can I estimate my powers and measure my capacities
and temperament ?

The following outline of personal self-measurement may
help. It has been prepared by a committee of the American
Association of Theological Schools to assist faculties and stu-
dents in estimating personality development at about the end
of the first year in the theological seminary. But it is capable
of much more extended use. Many a senior in college might
well check himself against it, and not a few men well along
in the work of the ministry will find it highly entertaining
to do so.

Remember that the work of the Christian church is not
carried by paragons of perfection, that people have both the
virtues and defects of their qualities, and that drive and pur-
pose in the end often count for more than mere talent or en-
dowment.

This is not an " objective " test. It cannot be " scored."
However, you can grade yourself by underscoring the de-
scriptive term which comes nearest to accuracy in your case.
In many instances you will mark more than one descriptive
term since the terms used are not always mutually exclusive.

79

8o THE MINISTER'S JOB

And, if you distrust your own appraisal of yourself, have some
wise counselor, some intelligent devoted friend, check your
estimate and so help you to a more secure judgment.

I. PHYSIQUE AND PERSONAL APPEARANCE

(1) Unusual physical traits.

Note any unusual physical traits such as height, weight,
deformity, etc., which may distract attention, impede
normal activity, or otherwise interfere .with effectiveness.

(2) Physical vitality.

Too low* Limited endurance. Fairly vigorous.
Superior endurance. Rugged.

(3) Output of energy.

Lazy. Never exerts himself seriously.
Normal output of energy.
Overenergetic with appearance of rushing.
Constantly at work with good economy of energy.

(4) Voice.

Gruff. Dull and flat. Staccato.
Loud. Natural. Pleasing.

(5) Speech.

Stutters. Lisps.. Stammers.
Natural. Clear and easily heard.

(6) Dress.

Ungroomed. Untidy, Overdressed. Neat.

(7) Cleanliness.

Unpleasant impression. Neutral impression.
Pleasing impression,

(8) Appearance of room.

Untidy. Average. Unusually well kept.

(9) Manliness.

Very effeminate in appearance and bearing.
Effeminate in appearance and bearing.
Masculine in appearance and bearing.
Unusually masculine in appearance and bearing.

A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 81

(10) Personal habits.

Note any personal habits which may interfere with career.

II. MENTAL AND TEMPERAMENTAL

(11) Intelligence.

Intelligence test score if known.

Or estimate: Backward (IQ 80-89. Normal (90-109).

Bright (110-119). Very bright (120-129). Very superior

( 12) Type of personality.

Definitely introvertive. Tendency toward introversion.
Tendency toward extraversion. Definitely extravertive.
Well balanced.

(13) Temperament (underscore one of the five, and the adjective

which comes nearest describing the characteristic mood).
Sanguine: ardent, confident, hopeful.
Choleric: easily fretted, irritable, easily angered, irascible.
Melancholic: easily depressed, melancholy,
Phlegmatic: sluggish, apathetic, cool, composed.
Nervous: tense, keyed up, excitable, highly excitable.

(14) Judgment.

No sense of values or relations. Conclusions frequently

wrong.

Average common sense. Judges quickly and well.
Judgment unusually sound.

(15) Intellectual honesty.

Will never give up a position once taken.

Labeling a man or an idea (" modernist," " fundamentalist,"

etc.) settles an argument for him.

Readily recognizes truth in a position from which he differs.
Devoted to truth wherever found.
Fearless advocate of truth as he sees it, at whatever cost.

(16) Ability to learn.

Learns very slowly. Learns slowly. Average.
Learns rapidly. Learns very rapidly.

82 THE MINISTER'S JOB

(Specify different abilities in various kinds of learning if
this is important.)

(17) Industriousness in academic wor\*

Lazy. Just gets by. Average worker.

Good worker. Very hard worker.

(Specify differing industry in various fields if important.)

(18) Interest In academic wor\.

Uninterested. Slight interest. Average,

Good interest. Absorbed.

(Specify differing interests in various fields if important.)

(19) Attitudes toward academic wor\.

A chore to be done grudgingly. Does only what is required.
Pleasing general attitude. Eager for new knowledge.
Noted for superior work.
(Specify differing attitudes in various fields if important.)

(20) Attitudes toward faculty teaching.

Accepts unthinkingly. Seeks support for ideas already held.
Sharply critical. Likes to take opposite view.
Will entertain new ideas but only slowly.
Weighs discriminatingly and accepts when convinced.
(Specify differing attitudes toward various professors if im-
portant.)

(21) Habits of thinking.

Will not face problems. Follows others* thinking.
Thinks when forced to. Independent thinker.
Independent and creative thinker.

(22) Attitude toward responsibility.

Accepts grudgingly. Forgets it.
Average. Accepts heartily.
Always discharges it.

(23) Independence.

Has to have everything done for him.

Overdependent on some person (specify).

So independent he cannot receive help gracefully.

Excessive desire to appear different.

Fully able to take care of himself.

A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 83

(24) Freshness of thought.

Dry as dust in his expression of thought.
Distracts attention by his rhetoric.
Says the trite thing.
Clear and fresh expression of thought.
Striking originality.

III. SOCIAL QUALITIES

(25) Ability to meet people of varying types.

Very poor. Poor. Average.
Above average. Very unusual.

(26) Disposition toward social contacts.

Recluse. Unable to be alone. Mingles naturally.
Known for ability to make wholesome social contacts.

(27) Adaptability in varying social situations.

Very poor. Poor. Average.
Above average. Very unusual.

(28) Ability to wor\ with persons of diverse views.

Quickly in conflict.

Conceals own views for sake of harmony.

Not satisfied unless others hold his views.

Outspoken but considerate o others' views.

Can lead people of divergent views to common action.

(29) Attitude in personal association.

Very reserved. Stiffly dignified.

Easily offended. Absent-minded.

Wins confidence readily. Draws out the best in people.

(30) Presence.

Nervous. Fidgets with something. Shy. Forward.
Averted eyes. Self-possessed.

(31) Courtesy in conversation.

Rude. Tries to do all the talking. Difficult to draw out.

Good listener. Pleasant to talk with.

Leaves impression of being unusually good conversationalist.

(32) Observance oj social conventions.

Frequently does " the wrong thing."

84 THE MINISTER'S JOB

Does not profit by opportunity to learn social usage.
Seems unconcerned. Reasonably tactful.
Always does " the right thing."

(33) Sense of humor.

None whatever. Practical joker. Overdeveloped sense of

humor.
Wholesome sense of humor. Tells a good story at the apt

time.

(34) Attitude toward persons of other sex.

Has occasioned unfavorable comment. Loves a smutty
story.

Too free. Diffident. Stiff and too conventional.

Natural and wholesome. Has occasioned favorable com-
ment.

(35) Punctuality in appointments.

Forgets appointments. Frequently late.
Ahead of time. Punctual.

(36) Punctuality in academic responsibilities.

Frequently behind time with assignments.
Good at making excuses.
Usually on time with work.
Always on time with work.

(37) Attitude toward public opinion.

Controlled by it. Likes to scandalize it.
Defies it. Indifferent, Normally influenced by it.
Seeks to shape it for his own ends.
Seeks to shape it for unselfish ends.

(38) Reputation.

Under suspicion. Weak under temptation. Keeps word

when given.
Very dependable. Notably conscientious.

(39) Insight into social conditions (as war, race conflict, etc.).

No interest. Evades the real issues.

Merely academic interest.

Known for partisan interest.

Active interest commanding general respect.

(Specify particulars if important.)

A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 85

(40) Sincerity.

Makes frequent impression of insincerity.
Sincerity occasionally open to question.
Wholly sincere.

(41) Considerateness.

Seems never to consider circumstances of others.
Considers others when wants something from them.
Fairly considerate.
Frequently doing thoughtful acts.

Seems always to sense circumstances of others and act ac-
cordingly.

(42) Cooperation.

Not cooperative.

" Cannot cooperate because must be loyal to convictions."
Cooperates moderately. Happy in cooperative work.
Cooperates excellently without sacrifice of conviction.

(43) Capacity for friendship.

Has no close friends. Has very few close friends.
Has many real friends. Has a genius for friendship.

(44) Leadership.

Antagonizes people. Gains little support.
Plans successfully for others.
Organizes and directs others acceptably.
Commands confidence and leads group notably.

IV. RELIGIOUS LIFE

(45) Attitude toward self.

Very selfish. Cocky. False humility (Uriah Heep) .
Usually forgets self. True simple humility (St. Francis).

(46) Genuineness of religious life.

Depends on others for religious experience.
Depends on religious forms which mean little to him.
Overtalkative about his own religious experience.
Groping for experience of God.

Gives unintentional impression he knows God in his own
experience.

86 THE MINISTER'S JOB

(47) Discernment of spiritual values.

Chiefly concerned with one doctrine.

A legalistic view of religion.

Chiefly interested in the letter of religion.

Chiefly concerned with central realities of gospel.

Utterly devoted to central realities of gospel.

(48) Range of religious thought.

Has one theological hobby.

Meager range of religious ideas.

Range of religious ideas just like those of people with whom

he associates.

Wide range of interest in all matters relating to religion.
Intelligent discernment in all matters relating to religion.

(49) Attitude toward new and old in religious thought.

Contemptuous of "new " religious ideas.
Contemptuous of " old " religious ideas.
Especially interested in " new " religious ideas.
Especially interested in " old " religious ideas.
Interested in truth no matter when first discerned.

(50) Attitude toward religious leaders.

Overcritical. Awed by names and personages.
Anxious to be noticed by " leading " persons.
Blind follower. Discriminating respect.
Knows how to follow wholesomely.

(51) Sensitivity to ethical problems.

Frequently senses no ethical problem in situation.
Evades ethical problem. Overscrupulous.
Senses ethical problems readily.
Keenly concerned over ethical problems.
(Specify particular areas if important.)

(52) Outstanding religious experience.

Has had no outstanding influential religious experience.
Discovery of new insights and ideals.
Reconstruction of intellectual ideas of religion.
Drive to labor for some social cause.
Prolonged struggle over some decision.
Sudden access of new confidence and courage.

A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 87

Definite resolve to live better life.

Notable conviction of sin, repentance and pardon.

(53) Attitude toward Bible.

Antagonistic. Reverences almost as fetish. Indifferent.

Chiefly concerned with critical questions.

Chiefly concerned with one type of content.

Intelligent reverence.

(Specify other attitudes if important.)

(54) Personal devotions.

Finds no meaning in private prayer.
Prays only with help of forms.
Prayer is routine with little real meaning.
Prayer and meditation hold important place In his life.
Prayer and fellowship with God hold central place in his
experience.

(55) Attitude toward public religious services led by others.

Very critical. Absents himself frequently.

Routine attendant. Participates in good spirit.

Makes each an occasion of re-creation and new impetus.

(56) Attitude toward the ministry.

Regards ministry as opportunity to make money.

Regards ministry as opportunity for easy life.

Regards ministry as opportunity to " run " church organiza-
tion.

Regards ministry as opportunity to become famous preacher.

Ready to serve without self-aggrandizement.

Tremendously and intelligently in earnest regardless of cost
to self.

(57) Interest in church's wor\.

Uninterested. Slight interest.

Average interest.

More than usually interested. Absorbed.

(58) Industriousness in church's wov\.

Lazy. Just gets by. Average worker.
Good worker. Very hard worker.

(59) His supreme love.

Has he one? What is it?

88 THE MINISTER'S JOB

(60) His supreme purpose.

Has he one? What is it?

(61) Stability of purpose.

Loses heart over failure. Head is turned by success.
Shrinks from hardship and difficulty.
Holds to purpose under most circumstances.
Has held to main purpose a long while.
Endures any hardship or difficulty cheerfully for sake of
goal.

(62) Influence of his religious life.

Harmful to others.

Meddles in name of his faith.

Uses stock phrases and sounds conventional.

No influence one way or another.

Stimulates helpful religious thought and practice.

Instills enthusiasm for religious life.

(63) Attitude toward his own call to the ministry.

Will probably decide not to go into ministry.

Is now questioning his place in ministry.

Has questioned it in seminary but becoming certain.

Seems impelled by forces beyond himself.

Overwhelming conviction which he accepts eagerly.

V. FINANCIAL RELATIONS

(64) Spending.

Miserly. Spends beyond resources.
Spends within resources,

(65) Attitude toward financial obligations.

Known to be lax frequently in regard to obligations.
Reported to be lax in financial obligations.
Pays obligations promptly.
Never in debt.

(66) Attitude toward money he may receive.

Grasping. Indifferent. Wholesome.

(67) Giving.

Usually excuses himself from contributing.
Gives guardedly. Gives grudgingly.

A SELF-ANALYSIS FOR MINISTERS 89

Gives so as to imperil own financial resources.
Gives proportionately. Gives generously.
(68) General estimate in financial relations.

Very unsatisfactory. Questionable.
Satisfactory. Highly commendable.

If you have answered all these questions
carefully and conscientiously you will
know a great deal about yourself, and self-
knowledge is the beginning and the end
of wisdom. By this time you should
know with a great degree of certainty
whether or not the life of a minister is the
right life for you. One more question
remains to be considered the relation
of the church to its minister. So to the
last chapter. _

THE MINISTER'S JOB

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CHAPTER TEN

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER

r OW DO churches and ministers find each other? Is
there an etiquette of ecclestiastical courtship, a tech-
nique by which the prospective minister gets linked up with
his job? How does he make a change and relocate himself
in a new field? And how does he know when to move?
How can a church find the right minister and get rid of the
wrong one ? Is the same man equally a misfit in all places ?
Doesn't a minister run great peril in having to entrust his
life to a cold-blooded ecclesiastical machine like a church?
Or how can a church deal with its pastors humanely and
justly and yet not be the victim of incompetence or senility?

Questions such as these indicate the importance of this
chapter and its relevancy to any balanced consideration of
the minister's life and work.

To begin with, much depends on the denominational type
of organization. In episcopally governed churches the young
minister goes where his bishop sends him, and moves when
and where higher ecclesiastical authority (more or less in-
fluenced by a certain amount of judicious or injudicious po-
litical wirepulling) may direct. But in bodies with less
dominant central authority the problem is not so simple.
In churches like the Baptist, Congregational, Disciples and
others with a democratic form of government both church
and minister are supposed to be entirely free to call or to be
called with no outward control, although there are, more

9*

92 THE MINISTER'S JOB

often than some people think, searching and sincere prayers
for divine guidance.

The traditional system in these churches is a procedure
called " candidating." A pastorless church hears a succession
of candidates for its pulpit, until the right man appears. Ob-
servation teaches however that often what determines the re-
sult is not so much the candidate's " lightness " as his super-
ficial attractiveness, or sometimes the sheer weariness of a
congregation exhausted by reviewing an endless line of major
and minor prophets.

The evils of such a system are manifest. It is unfair to the
candidate, who is often ill at ease when he tries to perform
a sacred office under the critical gaze of a congregation ap-
praising rather than sympathetic. Candidating also places
a premium on the superficial and leaves undiscovered the
deeper qualities of a prospective pastor. No man can be at
his best while he is standing before a congregation and say-
ing, in eff ect, " Here is how I look," and " Here is how I can
pray," and " This is my number one go-getter sermon " ! The
man of sophistication and even of brass has the advantage
in such a situation over a candidate with a modest soul and
a publicity-shunning personality. How is it possible to judge
on such evidence how well a man will wear, what reserves
he has, what tact, insight, scholarship, moral courage, what
self-effacing loyalty and devotion? And yet these qualities
are certainly as essential in a good minister as a good voice,
an attractive pulpit presence and one or two good sermons.

Obviously something needs to be done about this situation
and one of the first steps is to change the church's method and
the attitudes that lie behind it. Those attitudes are largely
a hangover from the frontier days when the parson was called

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 93

the preacher, and preaching, together with weddings, fu-
nerals and baptisms, was the major function of the ministry.
Today the work of a minister is much more complicated and
requires skills and resources not easily revealed by a trial
sermon. Just glance over the earlier chapters of this book
and ask yourself how much of what is there set forth can be
discovered by a congregation listening to a string of candi-
dates.

Here are some of the things a church needs to know about
a prospective minister:

(1) His personality. Is he fair-minded, well poised,
generous and kind ? Has he a well ordered soul and
a balanced outlook on life ? Is he skillful in avoiding
quarrels and yet courageous and firm in standing by
basic Christian convictions ? Can he be fair to those
who disagree with him ? Does he " go off half-
cocked " or can he control his emotions and speak or
act only with sound judgment and mature thought?
Is he a wise counselor ?

(2) His habits. Is he lazy or industrious ? Is he neat
and immaculate in dress and personal appearance,
orderly of mind and in his affairs ? Will he command
the respect of the doctors, lawyers and businessmen of
the community ? How will women of culture, leaders
in community life, regard him ? What about his wife,
his children and his home life ?

(3) His background and training. What early home
boyhood influences still manifest themselves? Where
did he take his college work ? Of what theological
seminary is he a graduate? What degrees has he?

94 THE MINISTER'S JOB

Are they really an index to his scholarly habits and
ability ?

(4) His professional career. What positions has he
held ? With what success ? Why did he leave his last
one or why does he want to leave it ? Has he been
popular while in the community ? With whom and
by reason of what qualities? Is he a builder who
leaves a church stronger than he found it ? How does
he stand with men, with women, with youth, with
children, with the outside community?

(5) His ability as a minister. Can he preach informing,
uplifting sermons, imaginative, clear, inspiring? Is
his preaching broad in its scope or is it all in one narrow
groove ? Has he any unpleasant mannerisms ? Does
he love people and make them his friends regardless
of their wealth or social position ? Can he organize
and inspire his associates in the work of the church ?
Does he see the church in its relation to community
and world problems ? Is he loyal to his denomination
but also to the church universal ? Has he both a social
and a personal message ? Will his counsel and judg-
ment be sought and increasingly respected the longer
he lives in town ? Above all, is he a man of God, with
deep and genuine religious convictions, capable of
making the church a sanctuary and its worship an ex-
perience of spiritual reality ?

How is a church going to find out all these things ? Ob-
viously not just by reviewing a string of candidates* May I
suggest, therefore, a better way which, in various forms, is
coming into use among our stronger and wiser churches.

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 95

First of all, the church appoints a pastoral committee fairly
representative of the congregation, making sure that it in-
cludes conservatives and progressives, the rich and the poor,
the humble and the highbrow, men and women, adults and
especially youth. This committee may then appoint a smaller
executive committee to do the scouting. The executive com-
mittee goes out to seek a minister, knowing in advance what
salary they can pay and what fixed requirements must be ob-
served. It is to be hoped that age will not be one of these
fixed requirements. It is both foolish and unfair for a com-
mittee to say that no man over a certain age will be consid-
ered. Chronological age has only a very faulty correlation
with the qualities of real concern to the committee. Some
men are more hopelessly set and unprogressive at thirty than
others are at sixty. Remember the Boston boy who said, " My
age chronologically is nine, sartorially only seven, psycho-
logically nineteen, but esthetically, sociologically and episte-
mologically I am approaching one hundred! "

A pastoral committee Is wise to be on its guard against
candidates who nominate themselves or have evidently or-
ganized a campaign of endorsement among their friends.
Some committees pass by such nominations and go out them-
selves to build up a list of ministers whom they know to be
doing effective work. The names of such candidates will be
given by members of the church, who know of them through
friends and relatives; or by the state superintendent, who
should always be consulted; or by various general denomina-
tional officials, who have opportunity to know available men
and to see them In action. When the committee has accumu-
lated a carefully selected list of promising men it can visit
their churches anonymously, observe them under normal

g6 THE MINISTER'S JOB

workaday conditions, and make a choice based on a consider-
ation of all the qualifications they have in mind. Of course
no man will fulfill all conditions one hundred per cent, but
the batting average will be higher than under the candidat-
ing system.

But, someone may object, this system benefits only the suc-
cessful. What about the man who fails in his parish how
is he ever to move ? What about the man whose high Chris-
tian convictions on social matters or moral issues have made
him. -persona non grata to a hidebound conservative govern-
ing group in a timid, cowed or unawakened church or com-
munity ?

The answer is that, if the minister is really a martyr and
not merely the victim of his own lack of grace and tact, his
friends will rally round him and find another field for him.
He may suffer financially but he will gain in every other way.
For, above all else, a minister must maintain his moral and
spiritual independence and self-respect. He ought not to
enter the ministry without recognizing that it may demand
martyrdom. At the same time no real martyr seeks to be one.
The wise minister builds up, in cash or in life insurance on
which he can borrow, a reserve sufficient to enable him to re-
sign at once, if the issue should be so acute as to make that
necessary, and still to subsist while seeking a new location.
But such situations are relatively rare. Most churches will
give a minister in conflict a reasonable time for readjustment.

For the man who has failed not because he is a martyr but
because he cannot measure up to the requirements of the job,
the situation is far more difficult. For him there are two
alternatives which may be picturesquely described as the

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 97

square-peg-in-a-round-hole solution and the drop-your-
bucket-where-you-are solution.

The man who seems a failure in any given church may be
simply a square peg in a round hole. He just is not adapted
to that church or equipped to solve its problems, but he is a
good sound man and should be transferred to a place where
he will fit. Every denomination should have officials or
placement committees to whom both churches and ministers
can appeal for aid in such a problem.

On the other hand, the parson may wish to move just be-
cause of emotional restlessness. He has gone stale on the job,
and will probably go stale on any other job he secures. His
problem is mainly within himself. I once heard a psychiatrist
say that Ralph Waldo Emerson decided to get away from
himself by going to Naples. But when he arrived in Naples,
there was Ralph Waldo Emerson!

The only solution for this condition is " drop your bucket
where you are." Such a minister should preach every day as
if a committee from some pastor-seeking church were in the
congregation, but should plan his work and carry it on as if
he expected to stay where he is for the next ten years. The
man who feels he is stale on his job will be better off psycho-
logically if he wins out where he is instead of running away.
He needs a vacation, a summer school in a good seminary, a
stimulating pastors' conference, a half dozen books thor-
oughly read and mastered to open up to him new vistas on
preaching, church work and the lives of his people. Wher-
ever there are human beings to work with, there a true min-
ister will find an interesting job. If he really loves them and
serves them with devoted understanding and sacrificial zeal

98 THE MINISTER'S JOB

he will be loved, honored and wanted. If he is loved, honored
and .wanted where he is, he will not lack opportunities to go
elsewhere.

Nevertheless, there does come a time even in the happiest
pastoral relations when a man should move. How can one
know when that time comes ? Failure of the church to meet
its financial program or a falling off of attendance at services
may serve as a barometer. If these conditions cannot be over-
come the minister may well ask if he himself may not be the
factor at fault and try to remove himself from the picture in
order that the church may have the stimulus of new leader-
ship and fresh ideas.

The time to move may also come with and because of suc-
cess. A man's achievement in one field opens doors to larger
opportunity. Should he accept a call to a larger church, a
bigger job at an increased salary ? The answer depends on
the circumstances. How long has he been where he is ? Has
he really finished a chapter so that he can slip out as the leaves
are turned ? Or does the work he has been doing need his
presence yet a while longer that it may " set," like concrete
that has been poured but must have time to harden before the
forms can safely be removed ? No minister wants the work
he has done to collapse the moment he leaves.

Then there are forward-looking criteria to be considered.
What does the new opening offer in the way of adventure
and new experience ? Will it draw out and develop talents
and interests largely unused as yet ? Will it broaden the min-
ister's outlook on life ? Does it promise him a developing fu-
ture or will he be expected to follow a treadmill of routine ?
Will he be glad he accepted it five years or ten years from
now ? What are the alternatives if he waits ? Is he sure that

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 99

the new people really want him and that it is a unanimous
or at least a united call ? My own personal principle has been
to try to do my work where people wanted me and loved
me, and nowhere else. It is a good recipe for a happy min-
istry. Better a smaller church and a less conspicuous position
accompanied by love and loyalty than a more conspicuous
and remunerative post at the price of contention, jealousy or
indifference.

One part in the ordination program in some denominations
is what is called the " charge to the people." An older and
experienced minister, when a young man is ordained, gives
some words of advice and counsel to the congregation on
how to treat their minister. I attend many ordinations but
have rarely been asked to take this part. So I propose to
seize the opportunity to give it now and will close this chapter
with a charge to the church concerning its care of a minister.

First of all I would remind the church that not only may
a young minister's first church make or break him but almost
any church may do so throughout his professional career.
Ministers are far more influenced by the churches they have
served than people ordinarily understand. Every pastor has
tunes in him that are never played until the right church
touches the keyboard.

The church's problem regarding its minister is how to
develop him so as to bring out all his best qualities and utilize
all his latent abilities. Of course it goes without saying that
it will pay him a living salary, and pay it on time. An unpaid
or inadequately paid minister is hardly in a position to render
normal service. An old Cyprian proverb says, " A dog barks
where he eats."

Next in importance is freedom. The minister must have

zoo THE MINISTER'S JOB

" liberty in prophesying " if he is to develop into a prophet.
You, as one of the congregation, don't have to agree with all
he says, but listen to it. You will hear few other men who
try so hard to speak fairly, unselfishly and in accordance with
the truth. You can be at least as generous as was Voltaire
in the words attributed to him: "I disagree heartily with
everything you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." Truth is much larger than any one
man's version of it but it never grows by repression or fear.
Go to your minister when you disagree with him and talk
things over calmly and reasonably. Educate him if you can

give him facts he has overlooked and help restore for-
gotten emphases but always in a spirit of reciprocity and
openmindedness. Maybe you both can learn something, and
truth will be the spark when flint is added unto steel.

Third, the church should be organized around both the
minister's strength and his weakness. All men fill some parts
of the minister's job better than others. The church should
utilize to the utmost its pastor's strong points, and where he
is weak organize to compensate for that weakness. For ex-
ample, it may be discovered that the pastor has a flair for
preaching but is a poor businessman and lets the leaks in the
roof go unrepaired and the leaks in the church's financial
policy go undiscovered. What then? The church should
capitalize on his preaching ability by forming a strong pub-
licity committee to back it, and then proceed to organize the
business affairs so that leaks both aquatic and financial will
be repaired without his ever knowing about them.

The next responsibility of the church toward its minister
is to expand his horizons. He should have a fund for books

and time to read them. He should travel. No church is

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTER 101

justified in begrudging its minister a good vacation. He will
be working for it every minute by gaining new ideas and
fresh outlooks on life. Personally I deeply regret that I never
had a chance to visit Palestine until I was fifty years of age.
I realize now how much richer my understanding of the Bible
and consequently my preaching would have been could I
have gone to the Holy Land at thirty. The church that can
catch a hopeful young parson and send him to Egypt, Greece
and Palestine early in his career should do it by all means.
Incidentally, he will see New York, England, France, Switz-
erland, and Italy en route.

Is there anything more a church can do for its minister ?
Yes, one very important thing which can be stated very
briefly: It can make his wife happy. Just a little concern for
the upkeep of the parsonage, a new coat of paint, some up-to-
date plumbing and an additional room for the new baby may
make all the difference in the world. I don't mean that either
the minister or his wife should have what Dean Gilkey calls
" the prima donna attitude." They should have work
enough so that they will not behave like spoiled children.
But a church that loves the pastor and his wife, and shows it,
will contribute a very important part in the task of training
ministers for a world which so desperately needs strong, cou-
rageous, Christlike spiritual leaders.

As you have read these reflections and counsels of one who
has spent many happy and, he hopes, fruitful years in the
service of his fellow men under the aegis of the church, have
you felt an affirmative response? Have you heard the sum-

102 THE MINISTER'S JOB

mons to such service more clearly, with both heart and mind ?
The life of the minister is no bed of roses. His task is exact-
ing and demands complete dedication. Mere enthusiasm,
mere desire to serve, is not sufficient. Neither the head alone
nor the heart alone can guide the minister; emotion and
reason must consent to each other, must be wedded into an
integrated whole whose center is God. Perhaps as you have
read you have felt doubtful. The requirements seemed too
great, the sacrifices too hard. If your doubts will not down,
it may be that you should seek another kind of life. But it
is to be remembered that every sincere man has moments
of uncertainty, when he feels that he is not equal to his task,
that his efforts benefit neither himself nor anyone else, and
that the servant of God and God's church, because his aims
are so high, may seem to fall further short of them than does
the man who pursues objectives more tangible and mundane,
My final advice is this: Make your decision in the light of
reason, but of the highest reason. I hope it will be an affirm-
ative decision. If it is, you will be singularly fortunate
among men, for the work that lies before you offers rewards
greater and more enduring than all the world's treasures.
And so God speed you !

this

book

was

presented

to

the people

of Kansas City

as a gift

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