Faithfulness!—The measure of the shepherd's responsibility is commensurate with the perils and pitfalls facing his flock. A faithful shepherd will brave the chilling blast, the scorching sun, or the ravenous beast, when there is danger. Now, if ever, faithfulness is required, for foes are increasing without and within; but the lost must be found and the flock enlarged.
Dignity!—Both the world and the church have a right to expect dignity of conduct on the part of our ministers consistent with our high calling. Foolish jesting, silly antics, and familiar banter cheapen the minister in the eyes of all. We can be friendly without being familiar, forceful without being foolish, and wholesomely pleasant without forgetting our solemn accountability as representatives of the God of heaven.
Preparation! —When we observe the painstaking care and prodigious toil expended by statesmen, secular writers, actors, and promoters of a thousand earthly, ephemeral things in order most effectively to set forth their ideas, it should cause us to consider seriously whether we are giving adequate preparation to our oral and written messages dealing with things eternal, and designed to affect the very salvation of men. No labor is too great for such a high and holy task.
Exposition!—Without minimizing either the propriety or the place of textual and topical sermons, we plead for a revival of emphasis upon the expository sermon, in which a substantial portion of Scripture, ranging from a group of verses to a chapter or more, is analyzed, expounded, and compared so as to bring out its direct and obviously intended lesson. There is altogether too much allegorizing or spiritualizing built about some happily worded Scriptural phrase that forms a neat text for some burden present in the mind of the speaker. This has led all too frequently to an unjustifiable draft upon the imagination. It often involves violation of the principles of sound exegesis, and a forgetting of both context and intent of the requisitioned Scriptural phrase. Such a practice fails to fulfill the solemn obligation and privilege of preaching.
Overdone!—Without in the slightest degree minimizing the effectiveness and propriety of the altar call, we are constrained to observe that it has so frequently been overdone that its solemn character and holy purpose have become cheapened. We must jealously guard against the public call ever becoming a form, or a line of least resistance; for such a decision made in the presence of witnesses should be the result of constraining conviction, and not a response to the dictates of custom, nor induced by fear of being conspicuous through failure to respond. The power and the peril of mass psychology and of mass movements, that pass with the spell of the occasion, should be guarded against. We desire that which will abide. Let us consider the strength and power of the guided, personal decision made in solitude, and the advantage of the "after meeting" in which the interested and the troubled are invited to remain after the dismissal.
