Pastorale

THE graves of my predecessors lie thick in the churchyard. That of the Revolutionary rector, Doctor Beach, is enclosed in an iron railing. He stayed when so many of the Anglican clergy fled, and he had the respect of both sides and was allowed to pass the lines of both armies during the war. A very distinguished man. He presided at the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church after the separation from England. Then there is the monument of the first bishop of New Jersey, Doctor John Croes, who was a drummer boy in the Revolution. He came here as rector in 1800, and remained after his election in 1815 until his death in 1832, both as rector and as bishop. He lies buried under the chancel. After him came the famous Doctor Stubbs, whose controversies with the distinguished Doctor Ting of New York in the early part of the last century gave occasion for the blasphemer to devise the lines beginning

A brilliant and flaming preacher. He enlarged the nave of the church in the first years of his ministry to accommodate the crowds who came to hear him. He delighted in polemic. The Stubbs-Boggs controversy was known far and wide. Last of all, there is the amiable and saintly Doctor Joyce, who spent his whole ministry here and now rests under a Celtic cross near the front door. Doctors all. Men of parts and piety. They died in the odor of sanctity. Tablets of bronze and of marble attest the record of their deeds and qualities.

My predecessors had long pastorates. Thirty or forty years was the usual period in their leisurely day. But in my study of their work here there was one thing I noticed that made a profound impression on me. What they did, each and every one of them, in the way of constructive enterprise was done in the first fifteen years of their ministry. After that time they either changed the nature of their labors or else settled down to a steady routine of the regular pastoral duties, holding their services in the church and ministering to their people. They did no further building, made no improvements, showed no growth. In fact in the two instances which I know most about it was evident that after their fifteenth year the vitality of the church distinctly declined. And this though the town was growing rapidly and the need of improvements in the plant and income was crying. It is not too much to say that after the fifteenth year the rectors themselves lost heart. Their enterprise, their power of leadership, waned. One of them sank in health and became morose. He was kept in place during the last years of his life by the powerful influence of a single wealthy family. Another became a nervous wreck, the victim of melancholia, and during the last ten years was not able to officiate in any service.

These facts determined me to resign at the first indication of a falling off of interest on the part of the congregation after I had been here fourteen years. And when this occurred, or at least seemed about to occur, I handed in my resignation to the vestry. The alacrity with which they accepted it convinced me that I had not acted any too soon.

I

The pastor of one of the large churches in New York recently told me that during the past twenty-five years he had transferred out of his parish over twenty-five thousand members; and, since his enrollment keeps about the same each year, he has taken in the same number. In most large cities the preacher preaches to a procession. But in small towns this is not the case. There the congregation does not change much from year to year. In the large city churches enough regulars remain, perhaps, to prevent the pastor from using his old sermons or telling his best stories over too many times, but the constant change gives at least the effect of continued interest. In the small town you must preach to the same people year in and year out. It has been ascertained that only one fifth of a congregation attend the services regularly and frequently, about a fifth come occasionally, — say, once or twice a month, — another fifth attend perhaps several times a year, the next fifth are there on very special occasions, while the last fifth will not come until they are brought in feet first. So that a comparatively small percentage hear their pastor preach very often. Even so, it always amazes me that congregations do not tire of a preacher sooner than they do. Perhaps they do tire of him, but are too polite to say so.

It is no discredit to a congregation that it wearies of its pastor after a few years. On the contrary. The higher the intelligence of church groups the more rapidly they may be expected to estimate and exhaust the message any man has to offer them. And for an audience of mental ability to endure the homiletical efforts of a commonplace man Sunday after Sunday, to see the same old head bob up in the pulpit, to note the same style, the same turns of phrase, the identical delivery, the peculiarities of pronunciation, the methods of argument — why, it must put a strain upon patience. I myself cease to listen in to our famous radio preachers after I have heard them for a season or two.

And everybody knows how rare pulpit geniuses are. There are never more than one or two in a century. Yet it is expected that in every pulpit in the land the preacher will get up once and perhaps twice of a Sunday and deliver interesting, moving discourses year in and year out. No allowance is ever made for his periods of mental and spiritual dryness, for conditions of doubt and debate, for the perilous times of transition in conviction, or for the inconsistencies of religious growth in the preacher’s own experience. He may have had a restless night, he may be torn with anxiety in his own soul, he may be depressed by the economic problems most clergymen face, but, like an actor on the stage, he must ‘deliver the goods,’ hold the attention of his people, persuade, convince, exhort. American audiences demand good speaking. It will not do to hand out a few green apples of obscure thought or some dried platitudes such as an English curate can offer to a congregation of peasants. That any of us last fifteen years is creditable. That most ministers are anxious to move and that most congregations are glad to have a change in the pastorate much sooner is certain.

In fact the longer a man remains in a town the smaller his group of hearers will generally become. This is inevitable. At first people come to hear him out of curiosity. But there is such a thing as taste in the hearing of sermons. Some like the highly colored, vividly illustrated, emotional, oratorical kind of preaching. Others prefer the dignified, coldly reasoned, and calmly expressed type of discourse, perhaps even written rather than delivered without notes. Some like long sermons. Others cannot endure more than fifteen minutes. And to each preacher will drift the hearers that approve his style, while away will go those who prefer a different manner.

In the course of fifteen years the average preacher has given Main Street and Middletown all that he has to give. From then on he is apt to become a bore. He had better take a new place and make room for a new man in the old one. The Methodist idea of changing preachers every three years has a good many advantages both for the parson and for the people. The only reason that ministers do not change cures more frequently is the difficulty of getting a new place.

II

But preaching is only a small part of the work of the ministry. The rector, parson, pastor, priest, or whatever he may be called, is also an administrator. He is president of a corporation, head of a business with a plant and an organization, director of a society, leader of a group. He must not only instruct and inspire his congregation, but he is expected to guide their corporate expression in relation to the community. He is the spiritual head of every committee, the responsible person in every enterprise. His preaching is by no means mere entertainment, or even edification. The object of it is action, to move his hearers to do something, both as individuals and as a group. The larger part of his energy is employed in providing a suitable plant for the work, in raising money both to carry on the church and to meet the requirements of the governing boards and missionary enterprises, in organizing the socio-religious life of his people. And there is a far cry between the aims of the pastor and the response of a modern and sophisticated congregation.

‘Say,’said a clergyman recently, ‘where do the exegetes get that idea about the minister being a shepherd to his people and the people being sheep? Why, my people are no more sheep in metaphor than they are in reality. In fact most of them are little better than wolves.’

Formerly a congregation was a field to be cultivated, a flock to be led, a force to be directed, an army to be generaled. The old title of pastor or shepherd had a significance in the Middle Ages. But while you may occasionally now find those individuals who look to you for guidance and whom you can really help out of difficulties, the great bulk of those to whom you preach in these days will not follow you simply because they ‘know your voice.’ They will make up their own minds about what they shall think and about what they shall do. You can howl until you are black in the face, thump the pulpit, cajole, persuade, argue, and sob, but their opinions are to them just as good as yours, and generally a shade or two better. They may not actually be wolves, but they certainly are not sheep. And if they do happen to be sheep, you can be quite sure that their resultant action will be merely herdlike. The title ‘pastor’ has become out of date.

And so has the term ‘rector’ or any other title that implies authority. At least in Protestant congregations. The ancient terms of ‘priest’ and ‘presbyter’ still have some application, since these imply merely a function or qualification. But actually the best term is that of ‘minister.’ ‘Minister’ means ‘ servant.’ And as long as a man truly serves, he rules.

Now there are many opportunities for service in religion. Professionally the minister is placed in the centre of them. He deals with service in the matter of worship, the form and ceremony of liturgy. It is part of his job to determine the character of the music, who shall lead in singing, and what shall be sung. His time is at the disposal of any who may seek his counsel and advice in moral and spiritual problems, of individuals who are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity. Actually, if not theoretically, he is the presiding officer of his vestry or board, the group of laymen who handle the material and financial interests of the parish. And it is because of these gracious opportunities that the work appeals to young men and the ranks of the ministry are filled. In all these particular forms of activity the candidate for the ministry receives at least some measure of training at the theological seminary in which he is educated. And in a sphere in which he can exercise his gifts and use his training he is sure to be happy, since happiness is the bloom on successful energy.

But as a matter of fact I can say with truth after thirty years of the ministry that I do not find many men who are happy in their work. The great majority of them are extremely anxious to make a change, to try another field. And this is more particularly true of men who have reached middle life. Very young men are more enthusiastic. They have not yet given hostages to fortune, and everybody likes youth. I do not think that it is too much to say that the lives of most ministers are gray, sad, depressed, discouraged. Most of us after the first fifteen years are like my predecessors. We tread water and go downhill.

‘Never in the world,’ I often hear men say, ‘would I give any encouragement to any young man to go into the ministry.’ And the proportion of the sons of clergymen who go into their father’s profession is far smaller than it used to be.

Let no one be deceived by the sunny optimism of very well paid ministers of fashionable city churches, or by the specious oratory of heads of theological seminaries, or yet by the flattering unction of important ecclesiastics. Such men indeed do most of the talking, and they do not hesitate to discredit the complaints of less important ministers by the suggestion that the men who complain are failures. The actual truth is that the well paid, the teachers and the dignitaries, do not really know the facts. They always find a crowd when they make their visitations — a crowd drawn by the glamour of their name, the special occasion, or the bounteous luncheon provided. The barren misery of the ordinary occasions, the stark suffering of the week-in-week-out labor of the rank and file of the ministry, they either do not know or do not choose to recognize. A man who draws a salary of twenty thousand dollars a year and presides over a stylish and laudatory group is not the right person to estimate the condition of a man who gets, say, eighteen hundred dollars a year in some gaunt village.

III

By far the most serious cause of the misery of the ministry is the system of lay control that exists in Protestant churches. Most Protestant churches are governed by lay boards. These are called by various titles, but they are all alike in essential features. They represent the congregation and exercise the direction of affairs in all the material concerns of the parish, and to some degree in the spiritual affairs. Legally, they own the property. Theoretically, they are supposed to raise the money for all enterprises. Buildings, equipment, repairs, employees, are all under their control. They are elected by the congregation, usually at an annual meeting, but, since these meetings are seldom attended by more than a handful of people, they are in reality self-perpetuating boards of directors. As a rule the treasurer of the group is reëlected year after year, his accounts are seldom and carelessly audited, and he exercises a necessary and dominant authority over the whole organization.

But while this sort of organization is the theoretical system by which Protestant churches are run, the actual responsibility rests upon the pastor. The prosperity of the church depends entirely upon his popularity. His preaching and his personality, his charm of manner, his ability to organize the group, his tact and skill in enlisting helpers, his enthusiasm and power of spiritual inspiration, his eloquence and assiduity, his social assets, his appearance, and even sometimes his money, or his wife’s money, and his aristocratic connections — these are the real factors of success for the church. If he is popular, he can push things along, get things done, dominate the counsels of his board and stifle all opposition. In this connection youth is an invaluable asset. And those in the profession know well that the dead line comes somewhere between thirty-five and forty. People are always hopeful about youth, and excuse its errors.

The position, therefore, of the minister is purely political. As long as he can dominate, through either cleverness, goodness, or a combination of both qualities, he can control the situation and guide the organization in the direction of his enthusiasms. The minute he weakens, loses authority, fails to become indispensable, his whole position becomes untenable.

‘I do not dare to take a vacation for any length of time,’ said a clergyman to me recently, ‘because I know they will get some young man here to supply, and I shall have nothing to come back to.’

The minister is a target for criticism. His position is so very conspicuous. Upon everything connected with him, from his sermons to his wife’s hats, the whole congregation, feeling that they are the ones who pay for it all, look with a critical eye. And his anxiety thus is apt to be concerned chiefly with the necessity of giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed. But of course no man expects to please everybody in a congregation, and there are always those whom it is a duty to offend. The crux of the matter comes in relation to the lay board that controls the finances and business of the parish. I am convinced by observation and experience that the system of lay control is the chief barrier to advance in the Protestant churches. The abler men on such boards seldom have the time to consider with the necessary attention the details of church management, while the men of less quality lack the knowledge and vision. There are always those small men who love to exercise authority over the clergy and to display themselves in petty spheres; others who have inherited prejudices against clerical management in church affairs, and some who are even animated by malice. The inferiority complex comes to the surface here with extraordinary vigor.

As leader of the whole congregation, the minister will have definite ideals and generally more or less technical knowledge both in relation to the services of the church and in relation to the buildings and their equipment. But he finds himself checked at every turn by men who are amateurs where he is a professional. He is either compelled to ‘sell’ his ideas to them or to get some individual of very large means to donate the money to carry out his projects over their heads. It is only by the backing of the mass of the people who support the church or through the ability to secure money without troubling the lay board or vestry that any minister can get things done.

In reality the leadership of the church rests with the power that controls the purse. If the minister can control it indirectly, he can have his way. But since he is the logical, professional, and trained director, he ought himself to control the finances directly. Where this is done, as in the Roman Catholic Church and certain foreign churches, the results are inevitably beneficial. Where it is not the case, as among most of our Protestant churches, there are always difficulties. As they are constituted, the Protestant churches strongly resemble a company of soldiers in which the captain is directed by the rank and file, a ship in which mutinous sailors have control, a business in which the workers direct the officers, a government in which a system of soviets obtains. Whatever may be said for the system, it certainly is not comfortable for the chief official.

IV

This lack of reasonable authority and power would not be so objectionable to most of us if it were not the direct cause of the poverty to which the clergy are subjected. In a community in which social status is determined by the amount of one’s income and in an age when great wealth is so common that it no longer brings distinction, the small salaries paid to ministers are a cause and an evidence of the decline of the public esteem in which they are held. By education and experience the minister is usually equal to association with the best of his people. But it is difficult for him to feel quite at ease with men who pay their chauffeurs a larger salary than he receives as rector. They live in a different world.

I do not think that many of us ministers desire wealth. We preach enough against its insidious and weakening effects. We can do with plain things. We can get along without three months at Palm Beach in the winter, the spring in Europe, and a summer at Southampton. It would probably bore most of us to sit behind liveried footmen and chauffeurs in elaborate limousines. We would rather drive our own moderately priced cars. We actually do prefer plain living and high thinking. But with the tremendous advance in the cost of living and with little or no increase in the salaries paid to ministers over forty years ago, the economic condition of clerical families has become a problem. It is a constant problem. It robs the minister and his family of such reasonable happiness as those who look for spiritual riches rather than for material gains may justly expect. And when we know, as we often do, that the monthly check is handed out to us by a man whose capacity and business acumen are less than our own, and that we are living in a shabby house while he lives in a good one, that we are wearing seedy clothes while he has nicely pressed and carefully tailored suits, that we have to deny our children what his have for the asking, then the situation becomes rather wearing. And the condition is not made any more tolerable by our being aware of the fact that the church is actually paying for the support of various distant functionaries and faroff missionaries a good deal more than it pays its own pastor. If this meant any real sacrifice on the part of the members of any church, it would be more endurable. But the amount people give is relatively so small in comparison to their incomes that the idea of sacrifice does not come up for consideration.

There are, no doubt, harrowing limitations in every profession and in all business. Shakespeare speaks of ‘art made tongue-tied by authority.’ But in the ministry there is an entirely needless barrier and crippling system that works inevitably for the poverty of the parson. It is the fact that the business — the temporalities, the financial control — is in the hands of the laity instead of in the hands of the clergy themselves. For the financial condition of a church is the certain index of its spiritual condition. Where a church is spiritually alive there is never any difficulty about money. Money will come in. And it is always the ministers and not the laymen who create the spiritual vitality of a church, who attract new members, and who move the congregation to contribute to the support of the work. It is a fundamental error to imagine that money is not an important part of church life or that it is something that in some way is so unholy that it has no relation to the works of the spirit. The offertory is the most immediate opportunity people have in a church to make any sacrifice as a result of their being moved spiritually. And the amount they give is the test of the effect religion has upon them. It is thus vitally important for a minister to know what is given and who has given it. That Protestantism fails to see this is its greatest tactical error.

And it is this error that accounts for the lack of consideration clerical salaries receive among Protestants. If the ministers handled the money themselves, they would see to it that they received decent salaries. And their security and contentment are of the first importance. Most of the evils to which the ministry is subject flow directly from this cause.

It is bad enough for the minister to have little or no voice in the direction of church buildings and equipment, to find his experience and technical knowledge of such things swept aside by members of a lay board or vestry who have no special qualifications in such matters. But it is worse for him to have to submit to the limitation put upon him by the lay committee that regulates how the sink in his kitchen shall be repaired, whether he shall have a gas stove or not, what kind of electric fixtures he shall be permitted to use in his residence, and the thousand other necessary details of domestic economy that other men regulate for themselves. The very men who niggle (there is no other suitable word) about such things in connection with churches would furiously resent just this sort of meddling in their own homes. They would laugh at the idea that any clergyman could come down to their office and tell them how to manage their business in even the slightest particular. But when they get on some church board or vestry, immediately they feel competent, and indeed divinely appointed, to do to the clergy what they never would permit the clergy to do unto them. It is an intolerable system. I have never yet met a minister who did not groan under it.

Let me quote from a letter that I have just received from a clergyman I had advised him to resign. I knew his miseries and the harrowing conditions under which he worked. This is what he says: —

DEAR PARRISH:—
You are right; but a man has to live, even at the sacrifice of a certain amount of liberty. I have children to educate. If I were alone, I would starve rather than go on. As it is, I feel that the Church owes me something, as I gave my life to her service. Her system is worse than dirty politics, but I can’t change it, so I can only try for a better location. — is probably all you say of it, and my sympathy is all with the late Rector, but where will you not find these ‘little mousy men who are religious’? I have them here. They are terrible. I have suffered agonies at their hands. But I have learned how to handle them. — and I have many a laugh at the little men, and women too. One of my strongest qualities is tact. I can get on with all kinds of people and at the same time thumb my nose at them. Etc., etc.
Yours,

The writer of this letter was a charming young cleric some twenty years ago. He was frank, sincere, brave, enthusiastic, full of hope. See what twenty years of the Protestant system has done to him in a career in small towns. He ‘has to live.’ He gets on with people, but ‘thumbs his nose at them.’ One of his strongest qualities ‘is tact.’ Is tact a strong quality when it is the recourse of fear? Does a man really have to live? Are there no longer some things worth dying for ? Can you imagine Saint Paul thumbing his nose at them?

But after such revelations I really ought to state that my own situation here has been exceptionally free from the common condition. My congregation, both rich and poor, were singularly intelligent, broad-minded, and tolerant. My vestry were for the most part men of large affairs who did not stoop to haggle over small details. I had a salary well above the average, and I had as free a hand as the limitations of the antiquated vestry system permitted in the administration of the church affairs. For the last eight years I acted as treasurer, and during that time the church prospered amazingly. The income was doubled, many improvements were made, and much property was acquired. All debts were paid promptly, and an enormous endowment was secured. There were no parochial disturbances or rows.

It would have been the normal thing to stick to the job, to join the procession of my predecessors and to merit a final resting place in the churchyard, a bronze tablet on the wall. But my heart is toward the great number of my fellow workers, the thousands of ministers throughout the country who have given their lives to the work of religion only to find themselves grinding at a mill, oiling a machine, limited and crippled by impossible and antiquated systems that hinder the free scope of the Gospel message. It is my conviction that we are on the verge of a new alignment, a great readjustment both in theological formulation and in ecclesiastical order.

V

After thirty years of the ministry I feel that I have a right to state some conclusions and perhaps to advance some remedies.

In general I am convinced that there is among both the laity and the ministry much more effort made to build up an institution than there is to find God. There is too much Churchianity and too little Christianity. Too much machinery and not enough Spirit. Success is measured not by the development of piety toward God and charity toward men, but by the vulgar standards of the world — plenty of noise, notices in the newspapers, a booming organization in which one can rise to social prominence and to ecclesiastical preferment. It is my earnest persuasion that the need of our time is not so much the development of powerful ecclesiastical organizations as the realization of spiritual values. This is a matter of emphasis. But it is also a matter of reconstruction. To do this work ministers must be made free. They should be released from the necessity of building up these elaborate organizations of generally futile activities, of becoming merely a social centre, of straining every effort to raise money for the programmes of their governing officials, of laboring under the crippling limitation of a control by lay popes, small-minded men in petty offices. Their condition should be apostolic — very poor, if you like, but independent, with a sense of divine vocation, as officers of the Church Militant, courtiers of the Kingdom of God, messengers of the Great King. At the present time very much of the ecclesiastical mechanism with which it is attempted to get results of a spiritual nature is outworn. To attempt to use it is like driving a dead horse. It does more than cramp one’s style; it is an imprisonment, cruel and stupid. Such a system should be shattered. It is in fact now falling to pieces and new systems are taking its place.

So I have resigned a ‘living’ which is not a life. I want more time for the larger effort. And already the letters are pouring in by the hundreds from ministers who want my job as being better than their own. Already I behold, like the priest of Nemi in Frazer’s Golden Bough, the form of my successor climbing the temple wall, a sword clinched in his teeth, ready to take my place. It is a good place as things go. Poor man! He imagines that in getting away from his old environment and securing a new field he will find prosperity, contentment, and happiness. Well, he will not. These things come not from the outside conditions. They are within. I too know this well.

‘Have you found peace, brother?’ asked the emotional religionist of an ancient saint of God.

‘No, brother,’ was the answer; ‘I’ve found war.’

And war it is, and ever shall be, even to the end.