"Passenger Pigeons" was the title of an article I read recently in one of our prominent Adventist college papers. It was not lacking in forthrightness. As to the validity of its claims, you be the judge! It opened with the question, "What has happened to the educated preacher?" Then step by step the ministry of today was critically examined. The writer's motives perhaps were revealed when the question was asked as to why the staff of their paper had to edit so severely copy submitted by theology majors. Blunt questions were asked such as "Where do some pastors pick up their licenses to butcher analogies, mangle grammar, and short-circuit logic? Do some preachers read Time once a month, cultivate their handshakes, and consider themselves educated? . . . Is the well-versed, polished, but consecrated minister going the way of the American buffalo, the kiwi, the dodo bird, the whooping crane, the spotted night snake, and the passenger pigeon?" Then the writer assumes the initiative of answering his own questions. I quote a few. "He has stopped reading. He has substituted the 'glad hand' for the 'good news.' He has mutated to a man whose sole talent is all too often a rather consistently circled ability to arouse us emotionally."
"The minister should be able to think, and to think with a full file of cerebral references, cross-references, facts, illustrations, texts, and textures. He should be able to preach a sermon without telling one single solitary joke."
The final paragraph could be labeled as a printed altar call. "Give the minister back his job. Raise the standards. Sift out all the public relations men, colporteurs, administrators, and pseudo-psychologists. When a man graduates with a degree in theology, let him be a theologian!"
I seriously doubt that the Master used such language and logic to urge His disciples on to higher plateaus of mental and spiritual culture. Nevertheless, it may do us good to examine the thinking of some of the younger generation relative to the ministers and future ministers of today. I could hope that the youthful writer of this accusatory essay is in a position where God can extend to him the invitation to join the ranks of the gospel ministry. Either it would help change the pattern or change his thinking.
J. R. S.
