*A talk given at Potomac University, now Andrews University.
THE minister is expected to be many things to many men. Among these many things, he is expected to be a person of good taste and an exponent of the humane and the beautiful. He must be this in spite of handicaps, not the least of which may have been an education that was vocational rather than liberal. And since leaving college he probably has had to contend with a crowded daily program.
The word macerate is sometimes used in connection with the minister's work and life. To macerate means, among other things, "to chop into small pieces," and it is used quite fittingly in describing the busy program of the minister. In the Christian Century some months ago Joseph Sitt-ler wrote on "The Maceration of the Minister." In this article he said that many ministers have a sense of vocational guilt, and that they have become prisoners of an accredited mediocrity. He says to visit the man some years after he has left school "in what he still calls inexactly his 'study,' and one is more than likely to find him accompanied by the same volumes he took with him from his student room. And filed on top of these are mementos of what he is presently concerned with: a roll of blueprints, . . . samples of asphalt tile and a plumber's estimate."
In Time magazine of October 12, 1959, Dr. Samuel H. Miller, dean of the Harvard Divinity School, speaks of the same problem. This Baptist minister says: "One of the tragedies of our time is that the minister is both overworked and unemployed; overworked in a multitude of tasks that do not have the slightest connection with religion, and unemployed in the serious concerns and exacting labors of maintaining a disciplined spiritual life among mature men and women. It is a scandal of modern Protestantism that young men called to the high venture of the Christian way . . . are graduated into churches where the magnitude of their vocation is macerated ... by the pressure of the petty practices of so-called parish progress."
"Today's minister," warned Dr. Miller, "must be sure his mind is sharpened to its utmost, lest he blunder about the world with a rough and stupid carelessness, hoping that he might hit upon the will of God merely because of his good intentions."
O. Henry once wrote a story called "The Third Ingredient." In this he proposed the idea that though meat and potatoes make an adequate stew, it is the addition of onions, the third ingredient, that makes the stew a success. So in the making of a minister, devotion and training make a useful worker, but the addition of culture makes an outstanding one.
Dr. Ashley Montagu has given a picture of the qualities of a cultured person. He says:
Certainly human beings are born with a capacity for culture, but unless they receive training in it they do not become cultured. . . . The humanely oriented mind, sensitive to beauty and the problems of being human, refined in thought, in speech, and in manner, finely and dispassionately able to examine, analyze, and evaluate whatever impinges upon it, this is the mind of the cultured man. Without the ability to think soundly a man cannot be called truly cultured. Nor could he be so called without those characteristically humane and aesthetic sensibilities which, together with the capacity to think soundly, render him a cultured man.
The cultured man is free of prejudices. He does not indulge in prejudgment. He does not believe in the process of supporting emotional judgments with handy reasons. . . . He does not believe that truth is determined by a show of hands.
The cultured man is an encourager of the unique in personality, the idiosyncratic and the eccentric appeal to him. . . . [He is] tolerant of fools even though he is unwilling to suffer them gladly. He knows that
"He who would love his fellow men Must not expect too much of them."
He knows that compassionate understanding and sympathy is the approach of the humane, while blame and censoriousness is the approach of the insufficiently humane. He is a person who, having had loving order made in himself, makes loving order in the world. Such is the cultured man.— The Cultured Man.
Webster defines culture as the enlightenment and refinement of taste, acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training. Henry van Dyke simplifies the definition by saying that culture is the habit of being pleased with the best, and knowing why. If one has been born and reared in an atmosphere of culture, he will respond instinctively to the best. Comparatively few persons, however, have had the opportunity of growing up surrounded by the best in art and literature and music. Good taste in these areas is not a natural but an acquired taste.
To those who understand and love the best, the trivial and cheap, the sentimental and banal, are offensive. Since the largest part of a minister's work consists of presenting God's Word both to his own congregation and to nonmembers of the church, it is vital that he do this in a way that will not prejudice his hearers against his message. It is a tragedy that many, after a casual contact with some phase of our work, downgrade us in their minds as culturally illiterate because of the music we use, the art we display in our posters or buildings, and the triteness of the talks or sermons they hear. They do not look beyond our occasional cultural gaucheries to the profound truths we profess.
Some years ago the dean of a university school of music went to one of our sanitariums for medical care. He was very much impressed with the Christian atmosphere, with the good medical service, and with the spirit and sincerity of the nurses and other workers he met. Then he heard the nurses singing in worship a popular gospel song. Later he talked with a friend, an Adventist, and said, "How can your people, who are so fine in so many ways, use such offensive music! The rhythm is waltz time, the words are secular, love-song words; it is the farthest cry from what church or religious music should be. Yet your otherwise fine people use it." In spite of his interest in our church, he felt that our cultural standards were too low for him to be interested in our message.
There are many others who feel the same way. It is difficult for them to realize that a truly high standard of religion can be associated with a low standard of culture. As workers in the church we have a responsibility for raising; the cultural level of our sermons, our music, our art, and our architecture.
Perhaps our education has been deficient in this regard. We may have taken a specialized course in which the humanities and fine arts were neglected. Or we may have had to spend so much time in work that we missed the cultural opportunities that others had. Or perhaps our college did not offer adequate liberal arts programs or emphasize the cultural courses we should have had. If so, an extra effort is needed on our part to make up for these deficiencies now.
How does one come to recognize the first-rate? There is only one way—by becoming familiar with it. We learn the qualities of great music by hearing it, and the qualities of great art by seeing it. It is the same in other fields as well. To develop the faculty of discrimination one must be willing to be bored with the best until it becomes a delight, and then the inferior will become boring. Money will not purchase this gift for you. It must be bought with hours of effort, and eagerness to learn, and humility before the judgment of experts who hold the key to this difficult yet attainable world of true appreciation.
Our reading habits have a direct bearing on our level of culture. In regard to the minister's reading, Dr. D. Elton True-blood, the eminent Quaker minister and educator has this to say:
A minister's library is a pitiless revelation of his mind and of his usefulness. Spend two hours alone with his books and you know a great deal about a man. Which books are well worn? What types predominate? Are the books marked with his own comments in the margins, showing that he has read them thoughtfully and creatively? Some ministers lean largely to books of sermons, and these are nearly always second or third-rate men! . . . Even more damaging than the book of sermons is the book of anecdotes. If all of them could be burned, we might experience a great advance in the prophetic ministry. Stories undoubtedly have a place in the effective presentation of ideas, the practice of Christ being sufficient to make this clear, but there is a world of difference between stories we meet in common life or general reading and those which are deliberately sought out as an adornment. . . . The hearer can almost see the preacher on Saturday night, needing desperately an illustration, looking in the section on Work or Loyalty or Peace. Men who cannot find good preaching material without such devices might be better occupied in some other vocation.—Richard J. Spann, The Ministry, pp. 174-176.
These are strong words, but worthy, I think, of our serious consideration.
Some great religious writers of the past have been concerned with the feeble presentation of God's Word by ineffectual ministers. John Milton wrote in Lycidas: "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," painting in a few vivid words the picture of a shepherd leading his flock in dry, barren country, unconcerned with their hunger. And John Donne wrote, even more bitingly, "The infirmity of the preacher diminisheth the Word." He was deploring the smothering of the vivid, burning truths of God's Word under the listless, lifeless presentation of careless ministers. (To be continued)
