Earmarks of a Mature Minister

SELDOM had I found more perfect looking bananas when doing the weekly shopping, and now as we gathered for Sabbath breakfast the three fifths of us who are banana lovers anticipated this favorite item with a great deal of eagerness. But our enjoyment was to be short lived. When the peelings were turned back one bite was enough! Inside, those bananas were hard and green---too unripe to be palatable. What a disappointment!

Unfortunately, people and bananas are vulnerable to similar shortcomings, the only difference being that biological immaturity in bananas is not nearly as disastrous as psychological immaturity in people, particularly when the people are workers in God's cause. The lack of being full grown emotionally, and thereby stunted in character, can easily transform one who appears finely groomed in ecclesiastical black into a shattering failure in performance and service.

The Grasshopper!

Over the years we have observed that there are certain telltale earmarks of a mature minister that make him genuine through and through. These characteristics make him both valuable and delightful to the work of God.

One of the first things a mature minister is not is a grasshopper! The grass does not look greener on the other side of the fence and he is not forever hopping across to better pastures. We once knew of a worker who had moved to nine different districts in eleven years! While that may be an extreme example of grasshopping, too-frequent moving can be a great deter rent to progress in the churches.

The mature worker knows that the work is not easy anywhere on the face of the earth. That ideal district where there aren't any problem people, financial worries, or other pastoral harassments does not exist, and he knows this full well. He doesn't waste precious time discontentedly daydreaming about such a Utopia. He doesn't complain that the brethren have given him the most difficult field in the conference. He knows that every post of duty has its own unique perplexities and his chief concern is not to seek a new post but with the help of Heaven seek to strengthen his present one. If it takes geographic relocation to extricate the worker from his difficulties, almost certainly the difficulty lies with the worker and not with the location!

Playing Full Time Is for Children

It is a requisite that a worker who wishes to qualify as mature be willing to spend and be spent. Playing full time is for children. The gospel ministry was never in tended to be a recreation. Ministers in other communions may operate as corporate executives keeping a few short office hours with a secretary to screen and ward off all but the most persistent callers. They may avoid both telephone and people by spending a great deal of time on the golf course or at the lake. They may disdain menial tasks and leave distasteful and bothersome chores to an understudy, but the Adventist ministry must never degenerate to such a state, and the mature worker is determined to see that it does not. He is willing to work long hours and endure great personal inconvenience in order to adequately shepherd all the people.

"Don't call me on Sunday---that's the day I spend with my wife," a suave city pastor announced to his congregation. "And please don't try to get me on Thursday evenings; that's when we go shopping. I visit St. Luke's Hospital on Tuesday, Community on Wednesday, and Memorial on Thursday, so if someone is hospitalized and needs a visit, please call me on the appropriate days." Unless a man has a mature dedication for the work, he may do as this pastor did and place self above others.

"Visiting the members and hearing their ills depresses me," a young worker complained. "I just can't stand to have the people close in on me with their demands." What he really was saying was that he was yet too selfishly immature to have learned concern and compassion for other people.

Another earmark always discernible in the mature minister is unwavering loyalty. This loyalty exhibits itself in many areas. In his own home his fidelity to his own wife and children is unquestionable. In his own pastorate he is loyal to the confidence of his people and to the governing bodies and officers of his church. He possesses a strict loyalty to the organization and authority of the church all the way up and down the line from his own conference to the world field. His loyalty to right principle is fierce.

Loyalty Needed

Among his brethren he shows himself a loyal fellow worker. He never speaks disparagingly of his predecessors in any given place because he is aware that all he will ever accomplish in his present assignment will be built on the foundation laid by those before him, regardless of the flaws in the foundation. The full-grown man will accept this starting point without criticizing the past. He knows that he does not elevate himself by downgrading other workers, but rather emphasizes his own weaknesses when he harps on the short comings of other men.

The more mature the worker the more flexible the man. Regardless of the task that is given him he is willing to do the Lord's work whether it is lowly or exalted in the eyes of men. He is well organized but he is not so strapped by schedule that he cannot calmly adjust to emergencies and make sudden revision of his plans when it is expedient. He is flexible enough to cope with many types of problems, to bend a little here and stretch tall over there. He can defer to the wisdom of his lay and ministerial brethren when necessary, accepting wide counsel on the decisions he must make. Full-grown flexibility makes a man willing to say, "Perhaps I was wrong; this plan did not succeed. Let's roll up our sleeves and try another method."

The truly mature worker does not feel compelled to defend his position. If he is a large man in ability, people will be able to recognize that this is the case without his calling attention to his rank. There was once a conference administrator who was seemingly quite impressed with his own importance. At workers' meetings he seemed unable to refrain from boasting of his position, and by little remarks frequently hinted that due respect be shown him. Once in a meeting that had been announced to be a devotional this particular leader expounded his own accomplishments to the extent that a very young in tern shook his head sadly and remarked in disappointment, "What Elder _____ needs is a good dose of humility."

This leader had contracted a swelling of the head that can lead to serious heart trouble. The symptoms are treacherous in that they may be present without the victim's being aware of them until the swelling becomes so acute that statistics begin to go down, and then a frantic fever is sure to rise followed by severe pressure!

Thankfully, this disease is not seen too often in our ranks. The mature worker knows that it is deadly not only to effective leadership at any level but to his own soul's experience as well, and so he daily at the throne of grace pleads for immunity to this plague of vain pride.

The list of earmarks could become as lengthy as the qualities of sanctification itself, but by now you are thinking, This is a column for women but this article is about the men has it been misplaced? Not at all.

The Disposition of the Wife

The earmarks of maturity we have dis cussed are concerned with basic attitudes, the motivating thoughts of the worker. What has this to do with the wife? Every thing! We can scarcely comprehend the influence the wife has over her husband's attitude and disposition. The disposition of the wife indelibly and inevitably carbons onto the mental outlook of the husband.

"Satan is ever at work to dishearten and lead astray ministers whom God has chosen to preach the truth. The most effectual way in which he can work is through home influences, through unconsecrated companions. If he can control their minds, he can through them the more readily gain access to the husband, who is laboring in word and doctrine to save souls. . . . Satan has had much to do with controlling the labors of the ministers through the influence of selfish, ease-loving companions." The Adventist Home, pp. 355, 356. (Italics supplied.)

It would be folly to attempt to explain this marital phenomenon. God made the first couple. Just exactly how it is that a woman wields such astounding power over the mind of the man who loves her is one of the mysteries of creation. We only know that it is a truth a most overwhelming one! This very knowledge should cause every wife to tremblingly break her own will in pieces before God and see whether immaturity on her part is destroying the man by whom she stands.

"The wife of a minister of the gospel can be either a most successful helper and a great blessing to her husband or a hindrance to him in his work. It depends very much on the wife whether a minister will rise from day to day in his sphere of usefulness, or whether he will sink to the ordinary level." Ibid., p. 355. (Italics supplied.)

How many times this inspired statement has been proved true! How many times a committee must draw the sad conclusion that Brother would be a fine worker but the trouble is with his wife. If a wife is fretful, unhappy, critical, cynical, quarrelsome with the people, sooner or later her husband settles into a similar sour mold and right there many a man with other wise great potential stagnates in the scum of thwarted success.

A wife may swing to the other pole and be overly ambitious, too aggressive, jealous, even suspicious. As the husband is nagged on by her divisiveness he gradually sinks into utter frustration, and with this descent his ability to bear responsibility diminishes. Unwittingly the wife has defeated her own selfish purposes.

"The Conference Hired Him . . ."

Then there is the wife who remains detached and aloof from the ministry. "The conference hired him, not me!" a young wife told me emphatically. Such a wife usually develops her own interests, leaving the ministry to be merely by happenstance her husband's employment. This type may become absorbed in fashion, her own career, higher education, social activity, et cetera, but she avoids taking an active part in the church in any way whatever. Try as he may to maintain his own consecration, the husband of such a wife is seriously handicapped by her lack of interest in his calling. Her indifference reduces his effectiveness to only a fraction of what it might have been. The people reason that if his own wife is not concerned with what he is doing, then why should they be?

Perfect maturity in the work of God, indeed in the Christian life at all, involves complete perfection of character. None of us have it in ourselves this we readily acknowledge but the apostle Paul says we may "all become full-grown in the Lord yes, to the point of being filled full with Christ" (Eph. 4:13, Living Letters, The Paraphrased Epistles)*

Goodspeed translates this same text as reaching "mature manhood." In succeeding verses Paul delineates what we must do to attain this maturity. "You must adopt a new attitude of mind, and put on the new self which has been created in likeness to God" (Eph. 4:23, Goodspeed).†

Sister friends in the ministry, we need to ponder what "maturity of mind in Jesus" means. All of us need to pray for an understanding of our own nature and the profound influence that is ours over our own husband. We need the Spirit of God to help us be on guard continually and momentarily against the unholy sway Satan would have us wield over the one whose ordination vows we share. In our struggle to gain maturity it is often necessary for us to "adopt a new attitude," and this we must ever be willing to do. It may not always be easy, this maturing process, but it is the Lord's way of making you and your husband completely happy and useful in His service.