That Ministry Be Not Blamed-3

On the need for leadership.

By G. E. VANDEMAN, Associate Secretary of the Ministerial Association

In the preceding issue we discussed the need for leadership—an absolute must in the minister's equipment. Few seem to possess this needful dynamic. However, it does lie dormant in many a young heart, so cast out into the deep, and exercise the gift to the full in every relation of your school life. As you note its de­velopment you will have reason to be encour­aged.

This term leadership does not infer unthink­ing, unsympathetic domination of other men or their actions. A real leader is also a co-oper­ative follower when the occasion demands. He has evaluated his own strength and humbly knows his weakness. He understands that suc­cess in any endeavor can be realized through intelligent co-operation.

The strongest leader is one who is able to in­tegrate and use strong personalities around him. We need to work very close to other men in our program. Our system is an organization built on the committee or group plan. Thus it becomes necessary for the worker to study to become a master in human relations. However, with all these elastic qualities, a leader is still one who knows the way, keeps ahead, and causes others to follow. If such leadership chal­lenges you, arise and keep tenaciously to your task of training. With training, your talents will yield manifold more than without it.

6. SPIRITUAL QUALIFICATIONS.—Some may wonder why I bring this most vital qualifica­tion into the discussion last. For this there is a definite reason. Note again my first statement in the November MINISTRY: Every Seventh-day Adventist young man is called and expected to be a witness for God—but not everyone is called to the gospel ministry. Because of a mis­understanding here, some who have a clear vision of the Saviour have confused the issue of a call to service with a call to the ministry of the Word. Many a young man has confused a rich Christian experience with a call to the gospel ministry.

I make these statements guardedly, for I do not want to be misunderstood in so sacred a matter as a young man's vision for service. I merely want to protect the earnest young man who needs to be thus guided lest he enter a course of study outside the reach of his talent and aptitude. He should understand that added to a recognition of fitness and ability there must be a dominating, living consecration to God. And it is equally true that in any phase of the organized work, as well as in many secular tasks open to our people, such an experience is also essential.

With this qualification understood let me now emphasize that a vital requirement is an experimental knowledge of God, for when such an experience is added to one's leadership, talent, and training, there is no limit to his usefulness. I believe it can be safely stated that men who have little fitness to meet the tremen­dous challenge of the ministry, but who know God, are often able under Him to do a com­mendable work—much larger than the medi­ocre work done by those of talent and with natural gifts, but devoid of a burning passion for the lost.

But what a mighty work for God you can do with a proper balance between ability, training, and consecration. A pointed lesson lies in the experience of Apollos in Acts z8 :24-26. He is said to have been an eloquent man. This indi­cated the gifts of oratory and culture which are largely the result of ability. It says he was "mighty in the scriptures" and "instructed in the way of the Lord." This infers a rigid men­tal discipline and training. He was in earnest, for it says he was "fervent in the spirit" and that he "spake and taught diligently." What man would not feel grateful for such a record, yet it was this very man whose ministry was without "signs following." He had the baptism of John, but not the baptism of the Spirit. He knew the message, but did not know God. Two humble tentmakers felt it their duty to show him the way to complete consecration, and a revival followed.

The needed power will come into your life when you too call a halt in your training pro­gram and refocus your plans and ministerial ambitions at the point of "Behold the Lamb of God," and "he that winneth souls is wise." You simply cannot fail here, no matter how high a score you rate on the preceding qualifications. Without this vision, it would be better that your talents be used in secular service.

Young men in preparation for the ministry should ever keep in mind that personal power with God and man, so essential in our task of reconciling man to God, is not bestowed on the day that a ministerial license is granted. It does not commence with conference employment. Your grip on the hearts of men, as you stand before large groups or in the crisis hour of a personal visit, will not depend solely upon the prayer and preparation for that particular occasion. It will depend upon the cumulative power within your heart as you learned to pray and plead with God during your college days.

One writer recently touched a vital need when he said, "It seems a difficult lesson to learn that God has no grandchildren." This thought-provoking analogy becomes increasingly a challenge when we stop to note that the ministry now stepping into places of respon­sibility are the second and third generations of this movement. Is there, then, not a danger that we will rest on the spirit and experience of the past?

Is it not altogether and entirely possible to have a sound Adventist background, an ade­quate training in our own schools, obvious talent, and expectation of serving the Lord, and yet never have personally experienced the re­generating power that makes one a child of God in his own right, and fits him for growth in Christian service?

Those who need most carefully to be on guard are the ones who grew up with the message. And it has been demonstrated that the majority of the ministerial candidates do come from long-standing Adventist homes. In a class of forty-seven advanced ministerial students and Bible instructor girls I asked how many had learned about the message through some evan­gelistic approach during adult life. Seven re­sponded. I then asked how many were reared in the message, and forty responded.

Many of us who were raised with the mes­sage have learned that an intellectual assent to and faithful belief in the doctrines is not suffi­cient. For no matter how devoted our fathers have been, "we are by nature the children of wrath, and are in need of the mercy and grace of God to transfer us into the heavenly family." When this takes place in your heart you will have tapped the unfailing source of power which transforms a passive instrument into a mighty force for the kingdom.

I do not believe that there is a set standard in this matter of how and when man is truly converted, because we all are different. "When God made you, He broke the pattern." Some conversions are sudden; some are gradual; others lie in the degrees between. However, it has seemed to me that for one to step into the sacred responsibility of a mouthpiece for God, there should be a definite committal, and he should have the assurance of a growing faith and power in his life.

It is evident that the apostles had a great deal of something we do not have. And I am certain that it was not opportunity, training, equipment, or even talent. The early church grew under their leadership from 120 members in an upper room to over half a million Chris­tians in a few decades.

The challenge of the task alone will forbid a man accepting the responsibility unless he senses this needful phase of the call. To you will be given the delicate and difficult task of adjusting distraught human lives. Per­plexities of every description will be laid at your feet for solution. Bleeding hearts will come to you for comfort. Men and women will need to be plucked as brands from the burning. Some will need your human touch to bring them into contact with divine power. All this and a multitude of other demands make the human agent, however skillfully trained, abso­lutely helpless—unless he knows the master physician of men's souls.

Humanity is very keen and quick to detect whether or not you have solved your own prob­lems, and they see whether you move about efficiently, trusting in a strength far greater than your own. Do not be discouraged if the challenge of the ideal has not been fully reached in your life. Remember that the bud is the prophecy of the flower. If you sense in the se­clusion of your own soul that the call of God has been placed upon you to carry the sacred mantle of responsibility, and if discerning friends recognize this in you, my earnest prayer is that this charge will cause you to break through the frozen ground of your re­serves, and cast yourself with utter abandon upon the Saviour, learning from experience the secret of personal power with God and man. May God bless you as you act upon that por­tion of God's will which you now know.


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By G. E. VANDEMAN, Associate Secretary of the Ministerial Association

January 1948

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