What would we ministers do if we were locked out of our churches? Probably some of us would feel as though we had been driven out of our homes. Maybe our churches have become not only places for worship but, for some of us, places where we go to escape the harsh realities of life in this closing time of earth's history.
What might happen if the members of the church got together sometime when the minister was not present and used their God-given talents as they could use them? The elders would plan for the services of the church, each shouldering his share of the burden. They would map out a program that would assure each church member of a visit by an elder of the church and of being given spiritual help.
The deacons would work out the church budget, and would shoulder among them the responsibility of raising the money to meet it. Care of the physical plant of the church and the church school would be undertaken by these dedicated men. The pastor would not have to be concerned with cleaning, painting, mowing the lawn, buying proper supplies, or any of the other details of the deacons' rightful work.
The other officers of the church would all agree to do exactly and fully the duties of the offices to which they were elected, and would work harmoniously together.
In addition, the home missionary department would carefully develop plans for personal evangelism, to be carried forward by the church members in an aggressive, systematic, and persistent way.
When all this was planned, what if the church board were to wait upon the pastor and say, "We do not need a pastor very much. We can see that the details of our local church are taken care of. We have people capable of doing almost everything that you have been doing. (Most churches have!) When we need you we will call on you—for weddings, funerals, and baptisms. Otherwise you should find something else to do."
"Utter fantasy!" someone says. Probably it is. Just a dream—but not impossible.
What about the minister, then? What is he going to do? Is it possible that some of us would be displeased, frightened, bewildered? Possibly so. But not unless we had lost sight of the prime objective of our calling—the winning and warning of souls for Christ.
Wisconsin has more than five hundred towns in it that are big enough to be listed on the State map. In size they run from small villages to an urban area of one million. We have eighty-one churches in this State. Only sixty are in town; the rest are in the country. This means that in this rich and beautiful State, 440 cities and towns have no Seventh-day Adventist church! These communities run up to eighteen thousand population. Many have four to eight thousand population.
Should this situation exist? I think not. "In every city in America there should be some memorial for God."—Evangelism, p. 60. How can we establish these memorials? Some means must be devised that has not yet been used.
Perhaps one expedient would be for the visionary supposition outlined above actually to take place. We have twenty-six fine workers in our conference, in the field. They do evangelistic work and with some success. Yet—and this is not an isolated case among conferences—we have a hard time baptizing enough people in a year to show any gain.
According to our inspired instruction, "evangelistic work, opening the Scriptures to others, warning men and women of what is coming upon the world, is to occupy more and still more of the time of God's servants."—Ibid., p. 17.
Does soul-winning work occupy more and still more of our ministers' time? In some cases I think it has been occupying less and less of their time.
At the beginning of the year I wrote a letter to every worker in the conference. In it I referred to the record he had made during the year. I presented before him the average attainments of the other workers in the field. Thus I did not reveal to any worker what any other individual worker had accomplished, nor did I reveal his record to the other workers. I do not believe that we should publicly compare one worker with another. There may be reasons why one accomplishes less than another, and those reasons may be beyond his control.
One worker reported later in the year that when he read the letter he was shocked to realize how few baptisms he had had the previous year. He determined that another year would not find him with a similar record. The result was that his baptismal record is now second in the conference at the end of three quarters, and the general program in his district has not suffered. He had been busy and had worked hard the previous year, but he had not concentrated on winning souls—the work that is "to occupy more and still more of the time of God's servants."
One of the statements by the servant of the Lord weighs heavily upon me: "I saw jets of light shining from cities and villages, and from the high places and the low places of the earth. God's word was obeyed, and as a result there were memorials for Him in every city and village."Ibid., p. 43. (Italics mine.)
If this statement is to come true, when are the 440 unentered towns and cities in this conference to have memorials in them? If our Lord's return must wait on this fulfillment, how long will His return be delayed?
What would happen if every field worker in the conference were turned loose to devote his entire time to "opening the Scriptures to others"? I believe that such a program would find us making gains in growth before very long.
To say that our work would not grow without our paid ministry pastoring the churches is demonstrably unsound. Organizations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses—which gained thirty-two thousand members in one area while we baptized eight hundred—do not have a paid ministry, yet they thrive.
Since we have eighty-one churches in this conference, our working force is sparsely distributed. We have only one minister who does not have more than one church under his care. Some of our men have six churches in their districts.
Because we have so few ministers I have had a number of complaints from well-meaning laymen that their churches do not have a minister with them often enough. Our people love to be pastored. Some of them need it. To others it becomes a crutch that weakens their spiritual vigor.
Is it possible that the servant of the Lord was mistaken when she wrote: "If the proper instructions were given, if the proper methods were followed, every church member would do his work as a member of the body. He would do Christian missionary work. But the churches are dying, and they want a minister to preach to them."Ibid., p. 381. (Italics mine.)
Are we doing our people a favor to contribute to the spiritual anemia which now grips many, or should they be given some kind of spiritual iron that would enable them to stand on their own feet and work for God?
Ellen G. White further says: "They should be taught to bring a faithful tithe to God, that He may strengthen and bless them. They should be brought into working order, that the breath of God may come to them. They should be taught that unless they can stand alone, without a minister, they need to be converted anew, and baptized anew. They need to be born again." —Ibid. (Italics mine.)
"Instead of keeping the ministers at work for the churches that already know the truth, let the members of the churches say to these laborers: 'Go work for souls that are perishing in darkness. We ourselves will carry forward the services of the church. We will keep up the meetings, and, by abiding in Christ, will maintain spiritual life. We will work for souls that are about us, and we will send our prayers and our gifts to sustain the laborers in more needy and destitute fields.' "—Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 30. (Italics mine.)
Once we urged our members to move away from our churches into unoccupied territory so that they might spread the gospel from a new outpost. Today we find our people more and more inclined to gather in large centers. This is a trend that should be reversed.
What shall we do then, as workers? I believe that one of the most important things we can do as ministers is to lay the burdens of the local churches on our laymen. I believe that if we demonstrate our confidence in them and convince them by our actions that we are too busy with soul winning to serve tables, they will take their responsibilities seriously and surprise us by their competence.
Someday this work in which we are engaged will be finished. But God expects us to do our part in finishing it. It will do no good for us to hide our head in the sands of delusion and ignore plain figures. We need to assess the possibilities, the task, the resources, and then prayerfully do something about it.
Maybe the ministers should be locked out of the churches!
