Pitfalls of the Ministry

Most professions have what we call professional haz­ards, special liabilities at­tached to them. We are told that taxi drivers often suffer from stomach ulcers and busi­ness executives from coronary thrombosis. The ministry is no exception. In fact, it may have more professional hazards and pitfalls than other professions. Perhaps these pitfalls are more subtle. The omni­present forces of evil concentrate their sin­ister efforts in a special way to undermine the work of God's ambassadors of right­eousness.

What are some of the professional haz­ards that we as ministers must recognize and carefully watch?

Professionalism

Professionalism is a pitfall. When the young minister accepts God's call to serv­ice he is full of enthusiasm and holy en­ergy. However, as time passes he faces the danger of losing this first love by dispatch­ing his work in a mechanical way. Gradu­ally he preaches, visits, and performs his other numerous duties not because the love of Christ constrains him but simply be­cause his parishioners or the conference committee expect him to do certain tasks. Heart-to-heart service slowly degenerates into cold technique. The person in need becomes a professional case, like a num­bered bank account. The minister goes through the form of service, yes; but he may do so without the spirit of personal interest.

It has been said that the real minister should be as kind as a saint. He should show interest and possess the personal touch. Professionalism may look dignified in the pulpit; it may even be efficient, but it draws few to Christ and does not solve or shed light upon the problems of the members.

We do not need mere theoreticians in the ministry. Such ecclesiastics think of their church as a preaching station or a business concern. Though they may have some success in explaining certain passages of Scripture, they cannot make use of the Word of God to meet crying human needs.

The apostle Paul stands out as one of Christianity's most successful ministers. He was not tainted or contaminated by theo­retical professionalism. He had a heart bur­den for the churches. Among the grueling hardships he endured were brutal police action, rioting crowds, sleepless and sup-perless nights, cold waters, beatings, pris­ons, perils of nature and of man. These physical hardships were dreadful, but the spiritual hardships were worse because of his intense love for the churches. Paul's own words speak of his plight as "pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life" (2 Cor. 1:8). Like Paul, the true minister knows soul anguish and suffers empathically with his sheep. His heart beats with authentic compassion and is not constrained by bleak professionalism.

Let us avoid the pitfalls of professional­ism by loving the church and our mission. The letter of professionalism killeth, but the spirit of heartfelt kindness maketh alive.

Pessimism

Pessimism is a pitfall. It is the mildew and blight of life, destroying initiative and the expectation of victory. Do you know ministers who always seem to be wearing dark glasses? They see everything in som­ber hues. Their outlook is bleak indeed.

The minister should be as hopeful as God's promises. Again think of Paul. From his Roman prison he wrote the most joy­ous of his Epistles, the one to the Philip-pians. Doubtless he knew many moments of gloom, but in his association with his fel­low workers and church members he kept free from the petrifying influence of Bun-yan's Giant Despair.

All ministers should experience person­ally what has been called apostolic optimism. By this we do not mean the incur­able optimism of Dickens' great maker of speeches, Mr. Micawber, who simply waited for something to turn up that would make his fortune. Neither are we thinking of the rather fatuous optimism of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who believed that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." Optimism based upon a refusal to face the facts of our ministry is not optimism but self-deception. It is play­ing blindman's buff with our calling. The minister is not to live in a fool's paradise, but he must possess the enduring qualities of buoyancy, hopefulness, and abiding con­fidence in God and the church. These alone will make it possible for him to come to grips with the realities of a dynamic life situation.

Criticism is often a part of pessimism. No minister should speak to members criti­cally or disapprovingly of the church or its leadership. Are we not ambassadors? No ambassador can speak disparagingly of his own country and continue in that of­fice.

The minister may at times become weary in body and faint at heart. Discourage­ment wants to take over. Not one of us is completely immune from this hazard. Stu­dents of human nature have found that basically discouragement results from hurt self-love. Let us remember that laymen have troubles and burdens enough of their own without having to put up with a pes­simistic, critical, and discouraged pastor. The minister has to put up with laymen who sometimes are less than ideal, but the laymen must also put up with the minister. Let us see to it that the latter is not worse than the former.

After a somewhat unpleasant experience with a disgruntled and pessimistic minis­ter, a good woman spoke about the Pilgrim Fathers: "I thank God for those mighty men, but I praise Him more for the pil­grim mothers. Those heroic women not only endured all that their husbands had to suffer but the good sisters likewise put up with the Pilgrim Fathers!"

Let us avoid the bitter undertow of pessimism by entering the gate of Christian optimism.

Provincialism

Provincialism, a child of ignorance, is a deadly fault of the minister. Too often preachers have a narrow and bigoted out­look on life. They see so many trees in their back yard that they do not see the forest of humanity languishing for redemp­tion. Their microscopic minds magnify minutiae, but will not focus upon the larger and more basic problems of the church.

The mind of Christ was not a provincial mind. Jesus said, "The field is the world." His concern reached as far as the most distant human beings. We today must use Christ as our guide. His all-embracing Spirit must capture our imagination. Out of the seventeenth century come these beautiful and stirring words of the preacher-poet John Donne: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." A truly great preacher will, as did John Wesley, look upon the world as his parish. He will experience an involvement in the stormy lot of total mankind.

The Adventist Church recognizes that the Christian minister should be expan­sive in outlook. He must possess that dy­namic, spreading influence which is the genius of the Advent Movement. A re­grettable charge made in some circles against Adventist ministers is that they have a provincial frame of mind and an exclusiveness that isolates them from coop­eration with other Christian communities. Let us leave no doubt as to the falsity of this charge by inviting friendship with all people.

Perhaps our minority theological views subject us more than other popular churches to the dangers of this provincial­ism. An insular outlook may issue from a sort of inferiority complex caused by be­longing to a small and what may seem hopeless minority. Some fear the surprised glances of other people when they speak about their religious or health beliefs. In this way sometimes invisible walls of separation between us and the rest of the world are erected.

Instead of being the salt and light of the earth, some ministers bury themselves in the salt cellar, or they hide themselves un­der a bushel. They are intimidated by the large numbers of those not of their faith. Christ's parables clearly show us that nar­row-mindedness based on the quantitative way of counting is wrong in the spiritual sphere, for did He not give us to under­stand that the yeast outrates the meal, the salt is stronger in flavor than the soup, and even a small source of light eliminates darkness?

Science has multiplied the minister's pos­sible contacts with others by inventions that have almost eliminated distance. Hap­penings of the morning on one side of the globe, in the afternoon inevitably influ­ence and shape the thinking on the other side. Only by keeping abreast with events, trends, and thinking can the minister avoid the pitfall of provincialism. On the very practical side, significant movements around the circle of the globe will provide the alert preacher with numerous illustra­tions and living sermon material.

An odd story concerning a "canned" cuckoo is told in northern Germany. A forester found a tiny can in which a cuckoo was imprisoned. Apparently the can was the nest of a pair of smaller birds, and the cuckoo mother had deposited her egg in this nest. After the eggs had hatched, the cuckoo was reared with the other baby birds. When flying time came, the cuckoo was too large to leave by the small open­ing in the can. The foster parents con­tinued to feed the cuckoo which became very fat and gradually filled the entire can.

Like the cuckoo, some ministers live sur­rounded by a thick protective shell of pro­vincialism. Their world is very small. They never fly because they are not able to break the bonds that restrict them. They may be interested in building up their own local church, but they show relatively little interest in raising funds for a mis­sion program of worldwide dimension. Ad-ventist preachers are not called to be min­isters for a small, local work, but to be witnesses for a great movement with a world-inclusive program and a task lim­ited only by the ends of the earth.

An interesting Icelandic proverb says, "The altogether home-grown person is a dull person." The same could be said of the provincial pastor. The English poet Rudyard Kipling asked this meaningful rhetorical question, "What should they know of England, who only England know?" What minister really understands the needs and problems of his local min­istry without seeing these tasks in the set­ting of a world movement?

God certainly does not desire His cho­sen representatives on earth to live in iso­lation. Ministerial work cannot be success­ful when hampered by pin-point parochial notions.

The ministry of today needs to migrate from the narrow valley of human igno­rance and shortsightedness to go and stand, as did Elijah, "upon the mount before the Lord" (1 Kings 19:11). This mountain-top experience will remove from the min­isterial eyes the blinkers of provincialism and grant God's servants the hindsight, in­sight, and foresight of an enlarged heav­enly vision.

Fossilization

Fossilization is a lurking chasm into which the minister may fall. Fossils are of great interest to the geologist or the pale­ontologist, but they have no value for he­roic Christian living. It is a law of life that either we grow or decay. In the min­istry there is no such thing as the status quo. Continued growth is an imperative, even if it involves a few growing pains. Paul invites us to grow up into Christ "in all things" (Eph. 4:15). No minister has been so long in God's work that he does not need to grow spiritually and intellec­tually. One of the sorriest spectacles to be­hold is the minister who stops growing and dies when still young, though, of course, he is buried much later.

As plants and trees have growing edges, so the minister has a surface where his growth takes place. The vitality of his growing edge is proportionate to his aware­ness of reality.

Nothing keeps a pastor growing more than personal and public evangelism. A preacher can wither up and die from lack of soul-winning efforts. You can die inch by inch and fade away like a withered leaf because of the want of vigorous evange­listic and missionary work.

Mental growth is a must for the Adventist minister. His mind is his chief instru­ment of work. Is not progress in knowledge as important and essential to the preacher

sneer at what they call "book knowledge"; but Paul loved his books. No doubt one of his last requests here in this life was made to Timothy: "When thou comest, bring with thee . . . the books, but espe­cially the parchments" (2 Tim. 4:13). Paul never counted himself as having attained, but continued to press toward greater growth. He was not a fossil but a lumi­nous example of ministerial growth.

There never was such a time as this, with its tremendous opportunities for growth. We are living in a completely new age. Advances in all fields of human en­deavor are constantly taking place before our eyes. A great deal has been said in recent months about frontiersmanship and the New Frontier. Scientists have claimed that they are the only adventurers of mod­ern times, the real explorers, the real in­tellectuals of the day. Though the scien­tists may be the leaders of mankind's great­est inquiry into the mysteries of matter and space, should not the ministry repre­sent the heart of spiritual inquiry into the mysteries of soul, life, and eternity? Great spiritual frontiers lie ahead. What a chal­lenge and what great potentialities!

We have considered some of the pitfalls along the road of the ministry. The most serious pitfalls for the minister really lie within his soul. This is the battlefield where he meets the archenemy. We may use modern language and talk about isms and psychological and subjective obstacles, but what we really mean is that each min­ister must struggle against the outworkings of original sin within his own soul.

How can the faithful shepherd-evange­list avoid these pitfalls and surmount these barriers to a fruitful ministry? The inspir­ing and reassuring answer comes to us in the spiritual autobiography of the apostle Paul. In his second letter to the Corin­thians (12:9) he points out the source of power that makes the minister a channel of blessing, useful, and successful:

"My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."