Transcript
ADAMS: This is the largest institute we've ever had, and it is in no small measure due to the indefatigable work which Jack has done in preparation, and in letting everybody know about it. I've been told so many times now that I'm very much aware of it, that I am taking Dr. McCord's place, and one after the other of you have come up to me in a rather unhappy way, and looked at me,
looked me over, and said, "You're taking Dr. McCord's place tonight." And it has reminded me of a story that I heard from Brooks Hayes, who's a wonderful storyteller, about the fellow who was born with a rather limited mental equipment, and grew up in a small town, and when he reached maturity, such as he could have, the businessmen in the town thought they'd like to do something for him, because he obviously couldn't hold down a regular job.
And so they got their heads together, and each agreed to put in a little bit, and they went to him, and said they'd like to have him work for them, and they'd pay him $10 a week. This was a good while ago. And he was to -- the only thing they'd ask of him was that he polish the cannon in front of the town hall at least once a week. Well, he took to this job vigorously, and did a magnificent job, and he kept that cannon just
polished within an inch of its life, and was at it every day. And this went on beautifully for two or three years. And then one day, he came to the man who was the paymaster, and said to him that he wanted to quit the job. The man was sort of upset, and he said, "Well, now, John, what seems to be the trouble? Don't you like the work?" "Oh, I love the work." "Well, isn't the pay good enough?" "Oh, the pay is fine." "Well, why do you want to work -- why do you want to quit?" He said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I've been saving up, and I bought a cannon
of my own, and I'm going into business for myself." That's just where I am tonight. The first thing I would like to call your attention, before we turn to other things, is the sheet of paper that was put into your packet, and I hope called your attention, concerning Christian ministry today as perceived by members of the institute in 1972:
this sheet. Now, we have lots of extras up here, which we'll make available to you as soon as the service is over, but we ask that these be placed in your hands. I've gone into a sort of habit of being in a conversation with people, and we'd like to have some chance for you to exchange some experiences with your colleagues here who are members of the institute. My suggestion is that before
the evening is over, you get some notes down on this, and when we adjourn the formal meeting here, you'll find that you have a number -- I believe it's on your badge -- and it corresponds to one of these numbers that's been placed around the hull. And we're suggesting that if you go to that number in general, you'll find eight other people who have the same number. And we're suggesting that possibly, tonight at least, for a little while, you spend
some time together, even if it's only a brief time, going over these sheets, and exchanging a little bit of your experience. If this proves to be profitable, we hope that you may get together occasionally during the institute. In the feedback material that we get at the end of the institute, it has been suggested repeatedly that there ought to be a chance for some peer relationships and some exchange of ideas. And we're going at it in a very modest way this time, to ask simply that
you put some things down. Now, when this evening is over, we would ask that as you are -- after you've adjourned your groups, you put the sheets with any information on them that you may have filled in in some place such as along the front of this apron of the stage. We'll gather them up, and several people will go to work and try to pull them together so we can give you a composite by the end of the institute of some exciting things that different ones of you are doing, as
some people who see some of these may want to talk to you about it. We want to get some exchange going, so we hope you'll put down some interesting and exciting things that are happening, and then on the back, some observations you've made about the ministry, so that there can be more exchange among us. You may find, if this group gets acquainted, that you'll want to talk over some of the other talks that you hear, and express some views. We're just doing this as an experiment, and we'll see what happens. The numbers can be
pulled off the wall if you want, after you've found your group, to be used as a rallying point in the dining room on a table, or in one of the lounges; you can do what you want with it. It's only a device in order that we can get some people together, and we hope that the numbering device will bring together people from very different backgrounds, so that the exchange will be more fruitful. This is only a suggestion; some of you won't want it, but we think that it might be a very fruitful one for the group.
It is said that not very long ago, a seminarian joined a group of others in a voter registration effort in a small town. After he'd been there three or four days, and had gotten somewhat acquainted with the way things were going, he was not too surprised to get a phone call from a woman who identified herself as having been a Christian for 40 years, and being
very much upset over what he was doing. And she said, "Young man, I would like to know why you have come to this town to do this." And he replied, "Well, madam, I am a Christian, too, and I believe that Jesus Christ sent me to this town to do this." The reply was, "Young man, if Jesus Christ knew what you were doing here, He'd be turning over in His grave."
Well, this is a revolutionary time. The common man and woman stand a chance, however remote, of coming into their own. They're frightening politicians to death, and upsetting the seats of the mighty in church councils. They want more than a token participation in the affairs which affect their lives. Pastors report for the first time, in many congregations, elections to board membership are contested, with candidates
expected to appear before the people in competition for office, offering forthright statements about their concerns and their dreams. If the national denominations are to hold the interest of members, they will probably have to move to popular elections for their regional and national councils. I forecast that this will happen within 10 years, if not much earlier. The populist action of the United Presbyterian General Assembly is more than a straw in the wind. They left the consultation on church
union, largely because they perceived it as a creature of a hierarchy, which had offered them a ready-made plan and asked for minor improvements, instead of including them in the creative process. This was a tragedy. However misguided the position, however, it is likely to be reversed only as the leadership discovers how to include the ordinary church member in the decision-making at points where it makes a difference. In its last hours, the same General Assembly insisted
on nominations from the floor to revise a slate for all the new national agencies, although it contained so few former board members that one wonders whether there'll be any continuity at all. The spate of books, beginning with Hendrik Kraemer's A Theology of the Laity, published in 1957, has inspired a viewpoint now coalescing with the new populism, and the result has some ministers rubbing their eyes in disbelief. A symbol is the model for ministry passed by the same
General Assembly, which declares that all baptized members are ministers, and may be asked by a pastor in session to administer baptism and the Lord's Supper. If the presbyteries approve, those formerly designate as ministers are to be constitutionally assigned a somewhat lackluster appellation of "continuing members of presbytery." Here, the issue appears to be joined with those in the reformed tradition who hold with the Second Helvetic Confession that the priesthood is common to all Christians;
not so the ministry. A person must have certain gifts, according to the Helvetic Confession, which are recognized by God's people, so that they set him or her aside for this ministry. Whether the outcome -- whatever the outcome of this debate, there is today a growing consensus which sees every Christian engaged in mission, and served in turn by some individuals commissioned by the group to be ministers to ministers. These individuals have the obligations of all Christians
for ministry in the world, but their specific functions as ministers are addressed primarily to the church for the equipment of the saints for the work of ministry, as the apostle said long ago. In the words of Arnold [Kumm?], the functions of ordained ministers are church-directed, while those of all the ministers, including ministers, of course, are world-directed. This view of ministry has roots in the nature of the gospel, in the ministry of Jesus Himself, and in the universal practice of the
church. Further, it is particularly well-designed for an age when the common man and woman are prepared to take a vigorous part in the life of the church and the world. The functions performed by the minister to ministers have been about the same form the beginning. The traditional functions are familiar to all: preaching, liturgical leadership, teaching, pastoral care, and administration. Discipline is added by some, and by others subsumed under care or administration. Evangelism and social
action are sometimes listed, though these are plainly the obligations of the whole church, so the minister to ministers relates to them through the enabling functions already enumerated. H. Richard Niebuhr noted the continuity of these functions in the life of the church, and remarked that each age has tended one function in response to its particular needs. Readers of Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler, are not surprised that one function of ministry which has captured the imagination of contemporary
man is pastoral care. Toffler traces the acceleration of change which is whirling contemporary humans, like creatures in a centrifuge, or one of those simulators used by astronauts, exacting an enormous toll on nerves and glands, disorienting minds and tearing at feelings, until the whole population quivers on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He introduces experimental data to show that this is only a slight exaggeration, and will probably get worse. Then, he calls for a new support
system. And this is exactly what the church is designed to offer. The real business of the gospel, says [Raul Howe?], is the care of people, and a great many ministers seem to agree with him. Objective studies show that persons under stress are more likely to turn to ministers than anyone else. It is not at all unusual today to hear the ministry referred to as "one of the helping professions," and not a few students for the ministry move over casually to social work, or psychiatry, or family
counseling, regarding them as simply a more specialized area. Pastoral care is, of course, a much older -- a very old ministerial activity, and while it has borrowed heavily from the practitioners with other presuppositions in recent years, it is not derivative from them. This is not always clear in the way ministers offer counsel. If our predecessors tended to operate with an alarming ignorance of the insights of psychiatry and psychology, their successors are tempted
to ignore the resources of the gospel, and function in a matter scarcely distinguishable from their secular counterparts. The growing emphasis among therapists on the importance of the person, and the convictions of the counselor, should suggest new ways for the minister to carry forward his work as a part of his gospel mission. The Achilles heel of the counseling movement is probably its impossible demands on the minister, who is faced by an obligation to deal with all problems in a one-to-one relationship.
Too often, there's been a peculiar blindness to the preventive, and even curative values, of liturgy and of group life in the church, and the possibility of using the lay persons for this task. Even in the secular sphere, psychiatrists like Harris of America's oldest healing institution, the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, are discovering ways of using groups and training laymen to support and to heal. Harris has a program which encourages
and trains in the arts of counseling general medical practitioners, ministers, pharmacists, and more recently, hairdressers and bartenders, all, incidentally, to very good effect. We've had some students working in this program, and they report some very interesting effect. The small group movement has also been demonstrating what can be done for individuals and their peers. These possibilities are being explored by ministers today with all sorts of creative results.
Ministers are also learning from the medical profession the value of case conferences, in which they submit to regular meetings of groups of peers anonymous cases to be analyzed and criticized. James Glass, in his most recent book, Putting It Together in the Parish, has a helpful outline of a way to set up the process and to prepare cases. If this is combined with occasional group discussions of new books in the field, the practitioner may greatly
improve his effectiveness. He may also be encouraged by his peers to keep before the individuals and groups for whom he is trying to develop support the other ingredient which Toffler declares essential if the race is to survive the whirlwind of change, notably, a vision of the future which is full of hope. The desperate, catastrophic prospect which confronts all of us is now a well-worn theme, and I will not use your time to dilate issues which you have discussed in sermons,
from the hydrogen bomb to the population bomb, with in between all the exciting and demoralizing possibilities and dangers unleashed by rampant technology and the all-too-perennial human prejudices and polarities. Even the good things in this explosive mix are loaded with ambiguities and vaguely threaten, as, for example, the new freedoms and the rich pluralism. There is the general feeling that something better be done, and the church's charter makes it a suitable vehicle for
action. Church people constantly pray for God's will to be done on earth, and it is high time they did something about it. Tomorrow may be too late, if the chance is not already gone. If the mighty army is to be marshaled in battle order, leadership has to emerge somewhere, or, in Bob Hudnut's imagery, someone has to wake the sleeping giant. It's no wonder, therefore, that one ministerial function which receives increasing attention in our time is the administrative one.
This is where the pastor-director comes into his own. Richard Niebuhr, when he first used this designation, was describing the current state of affairs: the average pastor spends about half his time in administrative activity of one sort or the other. He or she works with others to land, organize, recruit, and train personnel, provide leadership for groups, develop programs and projects, and evaluate the whole process. Niebuhr urged that these were proper and useful activities
for a minister to ministers, since they made it possible for the entire membership to engage in mission, and in the nurturing activities without which mission will not occur. "Change agent" has become a popular designation for this function among those who fear that the pastor-director image will too easily evolve into a single-minded devotion to institutional development. There are others, like Hudnut, who prefer to speak of the politician, but this designation usually has a connotation of
primary service in the world, which is the obligation of all Christians, including, of course, the minister, rather than attention to the specific function of the minister to ministers, which enables the whole membership to minister to the world, and, presumably, this includes politics. In the words of Dennis Savage and Bill [Turbiak?], reporting on their joint ministry, "We are not moving into the community. We want our laypeople to do that. Our job is to equip people and train them in their ministry to others
on their jobs and in the community." These men do consider themselves "change agents," however, and have tried to learn and teach all the skills that encourage and enable persons to change and effect change. A group of us were discussing them, and how they seem to do this, today, and we concluded that they combine a knowledge of the change process with a willingness to trust ordinary people and a capacity to project a vision of the future based on
the kind of faith that Pannenberg and Moltmann are talking about, which devotes itself vigorously to proximate goals, which are known to be tainted by cultural limitations, while at the same time placing its ultimate hope on the faithfulness of God. This leaves room, of course, for planning processes that are carefully designed to include everyone who has a stake in the results. It recognized that change always has unpredictable side effects, which may be pure serendipity,
but may also be disastrous, like the laughter inspired in some of us as children by Christian missionaries who reported on the barbarous thing the Chinese did with needles. Self-righteousness in a change agent is an absurdity, but commitment is a necessity, and grace is the only possible context in which commitment can survive in a world like ours. The importance of theological insight as one approaches administrative concerns, then,
can scarcely be overstated. But it should not obscure the value of understanding processes, processes that are related to these concerns in any field of endeavor, including the church. Insights from sociologists and specialists in management are needed by ministers, and the task of placing this material in theological context has just begun. Ministry and Management by Peter Rudge, Ken Mitchell's book on the multiple staff, and Robert Worley's recent essay,
"Change in the Church: A Source of Hope," are beginnings. Bob Hubnut's sleeping giant is a blueprint of sorts for action in the local congregation. The work of the minister in this connection is sometimes referred to as his prophetic function. This is all right if it is not taken to imply that change should come about through prophetic utterance. It rarely does. It was not the rare prophets of the New Testament period, with their ecstatic or apocalyptic expressions, who turned the world upside down, but those who,
like Peter and Paul, went plodding around the world, organizing churches for mission. This, then, is a crucial part of the minister's task. We turn now from currently popular images to a major traditional function of the minister to ministers: that of teacher. The usual emphasis has been upon theologizing, but in modern times, there's been a complementary, or sometimes alternate stress, on communication, and to this end, educational method.
The work of the theologian is certainly as old as the church, and has been stressed in our time by persons as various as [Horace Simonowski?], the worker-pastor, and Bonhoeffer, the martyr, who wrote of his astonishment during a sojourn in an American seminary that students for the ministry were largely indifferent to theology. The fact is that the human perception of reality keeps changing, so that the incarnation, with all its implications, is not to be experienced
-- if it's not to be experienced as docetic, and so no incarnation at all, must be presented anew in the language and thought of an age. [Jerry?] Mills, of the Ministry Board, one day remarked to me in a private conversation that the board had noted a tendency of older men in the ministry to shy away from theology. This was so general a phenomenon that they were inclined, he said, to view it as a dependable index of maturity.
I may have misunderstood him. If not, I believe he had identified a root of disaster as a sign of health. Since then, I've thought a good deal about the phenomenon he described, and I suspect that it can be documented. Is it possible that a substantial number of pastors have been so busy that they have not allowed themselves time to think? Sermons have been dashed off, the hard wrestling with contemporary challenges to face
simply has not happened. Each day, they have been confronted by new data not consistent with a Christian worldview, hideousness which grins at belief, belief in ultimate love and victory over death. These shattering intrusions have not been brought to the light, nor grappled with in round after round of hard thinking. Instead, they've been pushed down out of sight: out of sight, but not out of mind.
They lay festering in the subconscious. Then, one day, the weight is too much. The scales suddenly tip. The whole structure of belief is gone, and seems beyond recovery. The minister goes on with the right words and acts, but his heart is not in his work. It's all pointless. Either he persuades himself that he may continue making life a little more bearable for the creatures around him, or he decides that he ought to look for another
profession. Another alternative is to take seriously the function of theologian, and wrestle with the principalities and powers in the air of the time. If metaphysics seems impossible to him, then one can explore process theology. If his or her universe can have no surprises, it's possible to enlist the de-mythologizers. If special metaphors of space have ceased to be meaningful,
one can turn to the theologians specializing in temporal images, like the theologians of hope. If the classic ethicists leave one utterly unmotivated, then why not the situation moralists? Now, it's perfectly clear to anyone with the least sophistication in philosophy that these current developments are based upon assumptions about the nature of the cosmos which may be dated, and some may, in fact, be even now passing from the scene. But then, so is the person in question,
who, none the less, cannot get out of his or her skin, or of its social and cultural context. The minister's task, then, is to experience the full impact of the incarnation, and all that it means in this time and place, then share the experience with neighbors. How it is to be shared is the other side of the teacher's problem. A great deal more is known about this today than in preceding ages, though the knowledge
is imperfectly distributed, and a number of ministers seem to have been left out of the initiation. Too many are blithely unaware that merely telling people is a most imperfect form of communication. Christian education as a discipline got itself a bad name in the '30s and early '40s through a naive anthropology and soteriology, and a tendency to claim more than could be delivered. Now, in its best forms, it has theological awareness, a thoughtful hermeneutic, and useful
insights from theorists and practitioners about readiness for learning, the processes involved, and ways of using and evaluating them. John Dewey's insights have not been thrown away, but they have been converted, and baptized, and modified by findings from current psychology, sociology, communications research, small group laboratories, and supervised teaching. This field has become so complex that many ministers are calling on church members expert in education
to join them in small task forces which begin by bringing together, on the one hand, the members' communication information and skills, and on the other, the pastor's theological resources. From such arrangements, all sorts of exciting educational ventures are emerging in the local church, with adult classes taking on new relevance and enthusiasm, groups involving whole families in learning together, projects in which participants join in action-reflection
patterns, revolutionary classroom arrangements for children, and release of undreamed creativity among teachers. The educational function is very much a part of the present minister's task. The liturgical function has long belonged to the minister. The reasons for assigning cultic leadership to this person differ from tradition to tradition, but the assignment has been universal. In the reformed tradition, the minister is acting
as the chosen representative to do what it is the responsibility of the whole group to do. We have seen that there is some difference of opinion as to whether any member would do, or whether he or she must be recognized by the group as having certain gifts, or preparation, or both. In any event, the minister to ministers is usually expected to carry out this function, and this expectation has an important symbolic relation to his or her function as a servant of the servants of God. For the minister
is before the group week after week, leading them in actions which symbolize their relation to God in Christ and to each other in Jesus Christ. In this area, as in all the others, the Christian minister is today faced with kaleidoscopic change. Writes James F. White of Perkins School of Theology, even five years ago, no one could have predicted the amount of questioning and challenge that long-established forms of worship would receive in the years that lay ahead, nor could anyone have imagined
the efforts that would be expended in adapting Christian worship to rapidly changing conditions of human life. His book, New Forms of Worship, published in 1971, is probably the best current treatment of the field. He points out that Monday newspapers have given up sermon outlines, and now devote themselves to whole articles on worship services. What he said has been replaced by accounts of what
they did. Contemporary interest extends to action, and while the bizarre is too often used to attract it, and while there is a wearying sameness that pervades the ideas and rhythms of many so-called contemporary services, there is a growing acceptance, and even an insistence, on new forms and different media of communication and celebration, even in churches where we wouldn't have expected it two years ago. Nor is it an accident that language,
and dress, and seating arrangements, all dear to many among us, are changing very rapidly. Congregations are being led by their pastors in theological examinations of ritual, and the results have only begun to occur, but they're on the way. The burden this places upon ministers is substantial, but exciting and full of promise. Preaching is also a function of ministry which holds a perennial importance. George Buttrick reminded us years ago that Jesus
came preaching, and His followers have been at it ever since. With rare exceptions, the first question asked by congregational committees seeking pastors is whether the candidates are good preachers, and about 50 million Americans hear a sermon each week. Many Christians remember particular sermons as gates of heaven, bringing moments of revelation and communion with God. Unhappily, one can find only a limited number of such persons under 35, and what is more disturbing is
the attitude of a number of younger ministers. One who has a silver tongue and a place of large influence recently wrote me that he no longer felt the importance of preaching at all, and his sentiment has been echoed by other ministers of high quality. Writes Edmund A. Steimle, whom many would consider the dean of homileticians today, "the place of the pulpit in the renewal of the church is no doubt limited. We can find far more dramatic evidence of renewal in biblical theology,
the ecumenical movement, the small group movement, lay activity, liturgical revival, involvements in the civil rights struggle, in the effort against war, and experimental missions in the inner city. But renewal in the pulpit can happen and is happening, at least among a younger generation of preachers in America, and he has a little book called Renewal in the Pulpit presenting some of these preachers. Thor Hall, who teaches at Duke University School of Theology, is not so
sure. In a 1971 volume called The Future Shape of Preaching, he notes the demise of the magazine called The Pulpit, and writes that The Pulpit, as we know it, is in the process of dying, but something new and significant is about to emerge. The rethinking of the preaching event has only begun. The context of preaching is changing, and preaching will change with it. Hall tries to explore its future shape in the light of new
developments in theology and communication research. He doubts its impact on the unbelieving world through mass media, but expects preaching to be a major function of the minister to believers, who is trying to equip the believer for a mission in a world which is more impressed by deeds than words. I'm not so sure about what impresses the world, as I weigh the impact of millions of words pouring into homes every day, at so much a
minute. Somebody listens, and some preachers are making impressions and gathering support. One keeps wondering what God could do through preaching if the average pastor gave a few more hours a week to preparation. One reason why I teach administration is that I believe that an effective way of enabling the membership to engage in mission is through administration, but a second reason I teach it is that if it is done efficiently, the minister will have adequate time to work on his sermons.
We have a teaching pastors -- four groups of teaching pastors here who supervise our students on weekends. These men meet regularly each month, and among other things, they've been helping each other to improve their preaching. They sometimes work on exegesis together. They listen to each other's sermons regularly. and the tape recordings of lay reactions to sermons. This is a very revealing experience. Over five years, the improvement in
quality has been phenomenal. At least 10 out of 15 of their Easter sermons this year would have graced a cathedral, and as I listened, I remembered their efforts five years ago, and wished every minister would arrange for a similar insight from his members, and critical support from his peers in the ministry. Preaching in our time has been largely freed from the imperialist temptation to regard itself as the major discipline of the minister.
But it has an important place among the functions of ministry, and I suspect it's on the edge of something new and wonderful. This survey of the functions of ministry leaves one rather appalled at all that is expected of one person. There are two possible attitudes. One says that these functions belong together, and whatever else they are in isolation, they are not ministry. This view is clearly developed by Seward Hiltner in his perspectival model of ministry,
first published in a preface to Theology back in 1958. This model sees three major ways of looking at a minister's task, from the standpoint of communicating, the standpoint of caring, the standpoint of organizing. In every function, all three perspectives are present, but one is brought to the fore by the nature of the task. In Princeton Seminary's new Doctor of Ministry program, we have built on this model, adding to communicating,
caring, and organizing, a fourth perspective: theologizing. The advantage of this model is that it says clearly what is obvious to thoughtful ministers, but has not been noticed by everyone: namely, that the ministry is a whole, and that each function interpenetrates the others, so that one may perform any function more effectively because one also performs the others. There is, in fact, a marvelous interlocking, so that ministering, or
change agentry, opens insights for preaching and teaching, offers occasions for celebration, and unveils needs for counseling, while the caring ministry prepares members to accept change, uncovers implications of biblical ideas for preaching, and suggests needs to be met in worship. The list could be endless, but the point is clear. Ministry can be, and should be, a seamless garment. While this is true, there are those who believe that the day has come for
specialization within the ministry to ministers. They hold that the interlock may be provided by a tight-knit staff relation. So far, the results are not reassuring. There are three books on multiple staff relationship, respectively, by Sweet, Mitchell, and Judy, and the latter two report extensive surveys. Satisfying and effective relationships are found in few instances, though the number of multiple staffs and team ministries continues to grow in response
to the increasing size of congregations, and the complexity of special ministries. A new venture, the ecumenical cluster, composed of several autonomous congregations, has emerged on the urban scene and in some rural settings. These are not expedients of desperation, but instruments of mission. Often, these clusters have very substantial strength in numbers, talents, and finances, and their ministers form themselves into a single, ecumenical
staff with various gifts and assignments. Now, the Consultation on Church Union seized upon this experimental structure and suggested mandating it in a particularly unlikely form for all 25 million of its potential membership. Urban Holmes suggests a different pattern with part-time volunteer ministers of limited theological education, but contagious spirituality, as preachers and liturgists for small congregations of 30 to 40 persons.
These groups, 50 to 100 of them, would be related, in his model, to a church staffed by fill-time ministers, each highly educated and skilled in one specialty, such as preaching, or counseling, or administration, or education. Another form undergoing extensive testing is the task force for special ministry, which is trying to bring the varied gifts of a number of persons to bear on a particular project or a mission. Whatever form the structures of the future
take, and we hope they will be varied, it is probable that a good percentage of all but the oldest among us here tonight will have to learn how to function as a part of a group ministry. The same thing is happening to other professionals in our culture. Most workers are used to performing cooperatively, and while it will take years, in some experiences, in mutual supervision and small group process, most ministers should be able to overcome the extreme individualism characteristic of our calling.
A question which will probably be decided in the next ten years is whether the functions of the minister to ministers are best carried forward in every situation by groups, or whether there are persons called to this task who function best under situations which involve individual freedom and the opportunity which is always asked for by the artist. Another question insistently before us is how much of the ministry to ministers is to be carried on
in the future by persons who receive their financial support from another activity. In Denver, several weeks ago, I met several men who are doing this, and enjoying it very much. The numbers of these worker-ministers is growing annually, and the development has great promise for the church, though, as some who have tried it and given it up can relate, and I know several of these, it can be too demanding. A model for ministry which has received much public notice,
and is advocated most vigorously by James Glass in his book Profession Minister, is now backed up by a second volume, Putting It Together in the Parish. Glass stresses the parallels between ministry, and law, and medicine, and education, and urges that these are unique in requiring theoretical knowledge and practical skill blended in such a way that the practice may be adjusted to new situations in the light of the theory. This view, which of course antedates the writer, has been useful
in clarifying the nature of theological education, which is seen as professional rather than as solely academic, since the graduates must be able to combine theology and practice, and must know how to perform in the light of their theology. The necessities of practice include living always with forced options, and not all ministers have come to terms with this. This means an end to the intellectual luxury in all situations of a perpetually open mind: decisions have to be made.
Further, they are made within the generally accepted machinery of the profession: a congregation or special ministry in the case of a minister, a court for the lawyer, a hospital for the physician, a school for the educator. These are confining, and the practice is so complex that one is depended largely on inherited machinery, which has a momentum of its own. If one decides to replace it, one must pay the price in a major diversion of one's energy to building
new machinery. If you're a politician, for example, and you don't like the way things are, you may have to ring an awful lot of doorbells before you get to do anything else. And this is true for ministers too. It is important that ministers recognize that these restraints are inevitable in practice of any sort, and not a peculiar characteristic of ministry. I had a group of interns coming back last year, met in the early fall, and one of them said, "Gee, I thought that there were all kinds of restrains on
practice in the ministry, but you should see what they are in social work." He'd had the experience. Seward Hiltner points out further that the activities of the professional take place within a tradition, and they require loyalty to high standards of performance. In large part, an individual's recognition of his professional obligations takes the place for him of the close supervision which is usually maintained over other workers. This means that a lack of personal discipline is disastrous for a professional. He will
therefore benefit from supervised activity so that he can learn to supervise himself. Kenneth Mitchell, at Menninger, for example, spends a great deal of time supervising all sorts of people who come to him an hour a month for help: the abbot of a monastery, a bishop, a great many ministers, a number of other people. Often, peer supervision is the best possibility for us. We have taken this into consideration in the design of our doctor of ministry program, but any group of ministers can do this for each other. It is important
not to exaggerate, however, the competence to be expected of a professional. There is a certain unavoidable, amateur quality in all practice. The practitioner's always coming upon problems which can be solved only in dependence on ideas and value structures equally accessible to all men. An untutored man of faith may help someone face death more adequately than a minister. A person with an eighth grade education may be more helpful to a group which wishes to learn to pray
than a minister. But this does not excuse a failure to attain a sound professional capacity where it's possible. The danger in the idea of the minister as a professional lies in a different sphere: namely, in the temptation to professionalism, which thinks in terms of status and the bartering of services for rewards. The ministry becomes a job like any other job, and all the urgency goes out of it. Some ministers talk about joining unions instead of marveling that they're paid for doing what they
like to do, and even feel compelled to do, whether they're paid or not. A friend who lost his voice trained for another profession when ministry seemed closed to him, but when his voice came back, he lived on his secular salary, but devoted every spare moment to ministry. He had professional competence of a high order, but no taint of professionalism. He had to minister; it was a fire in his bones. This brings us to an ultimate function of ministry. Urban T. Holmes, in a fascinated volume, The
Future Shape of Ministry, published by Seabury in '71, declares that the church most needs the sacramental person, and he maintains that from the beginning, this responsibility for conveying a sense of the transcendent in the everyday world has been a function of ministry, obscured in age after age by other emphases, but crucial in a time like ours. "Today," writes Ernst Bloch, "no man, even the most pious, believes in God in the
same way in which the most lukewarm and skeptical believed in him two hundred years ago." There's a painful truth here, however exaggerated, and the hunger for faith is all around us. Thousands of Americans gather every day at altars stacked with Oriental deity dolls, dress up in weird costumes for witchcraft, and reach for visions with drugs. They're looking for some sense of holiness, some feeling of the reality that transcends the present culture and judges
it, some promise of meaning; they are seeking God. A friend gave me this edition of the Bible. The whole thing is printed on a chip of plastic in a space one inch and a quarter by one inch and a quarter. The whole Bible. It can be read on a little machine that my friend said I could have for $135. But it has one liability. When you reduce this vast
literature to a miniature, a fly speck can obscure a whole book, and when you reduce a human life down to a size that will fit into one tiny age and place, a very small blind spot can obscure a whole dimension of life. Peter Berger at Denver this winter suggested that the church has too long acquiesced in the miniaturization of the world, and needs again to see it in its true dimensions as Jesus did.
Where He walked, the little hills, and dusty roads, and men on thrones, and strutting soldiers, were see in the perspective of a vast expanse, unbounded by mortality and sin, and reaching out into a future which is in the hands of God. Carlisle said his town needed one man who knew God by more than hearsay, and the prescription would do for most places today. Faith is not so much taught as caught. The need is for artists in the subtle
stuff of life. James Dittes of Yale, in a thoughtful book, Minister on the Spot, wrestles with the "how" of this, recognizing that one can only serve the ultimate in the conditional. Every artist knows this, of course. He struggles with the stubborn stuff, uses every gift and skill, and then prays for grace. The minister can do no more and no less. Henri
Nouwen, a continental theologian of the Catholic tradition, has written an extraordinary book called Creative Ministry, in which he concerns himself with the relationship between professional competence and spirituality in ministry. He speaks of the inappropriateness of many of the ancient forms of devotion in the modern setting, and he struggles with this. And then he proposes that the contemporary holiness must be found right in the work
of mission. His conclusion is worth repeating. If teaching, preaching, individual pastoral care, organizing, celebrating, are acts of service that go beyond the level of professional expertise, it is precisely because in these acts, the minister is asked to lay down his life for his friends. There are many people who have reached a high level of competence in terms of the understanding of human behavior, but few who are
willing to lay down their own lives for others and make their own weakness a source of creativity. For many individuals, professional training means power, but the minister, who takes off his clothes to wash the feet of his friends, is powerless, and his training and formation are meant to enable him to face his own weakness without fear, and make it available to others. It is exactly this creative weakness, which Paul spoke of, which gives the ministry its momentum.
Teaching becomes ministry when the teacher moves beyond the transference of knowledge, and is willing to offer his own life experience to his student, so that paralyzing anxiety can be removed. New, liberating insight can come out, and re-learning take place. Preaching becomes ministry when the preacher moves beyond telling the story, and makes his own deepest self available to his hearers, so that they will be able to receive the Word of
God. Individual care becomes ministry when he who wants to be of help moves beyond the careful balance of give and take with a willingness to risk his own life and remain faithful to his fellow man, even when his own name and fame is in danger. Organizing becomes ministry when the organizer moves beyond his desire for concrete results, and looks at his world with the unwavering hope for total renewal. Celebrating becomes ministry when the celebrant
moves beyond the limits of protective rituals to an obedient acceptance of life as a gift. Although none of these tasks can ever be fulfilled without careful preparation and proved competence, none can ever be called ministry when this competence is not grounded in the radical commitment to lay down one's own life in the service of others. Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one's own search for God, with all the moments of pain
and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search, but do not know how. Thank you.