Ministry and Ministers
W. Carl Ketcherside
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"A Christian layman is one who discharges his God-given vocation in the secular calling of life. That is his vocation. He is called a 'priest unto God' in the life of 'the world outside.' A realization and actualization of such a priesthood is one of the greatest needs of our time. If this fact was firmly grasped by the whole People of God, it would undoubtedly lead to a Christian Revolution, a new Reformation that would transform the life of the contemporary church."-- Cyril Eastwood in The Priesthood of All Believers, page 256.
Not long ago a brother in Christ came to see me while passing through our city. He was greatly disturbed in mind and heart. A few years ago, while a student in a Christian College, he was present at a missionary rally, and was moved to go forward at a special call for "full-time workers" and pledge his life to the mission field. After having graduated and gone up and down the land visiting congregations in an attempt to arrange support, he and his young wife went to a foreign country and began the difficult task of learning the language and of making friends.
After laboring there for almost six years, his ideas began to change. He found himself distressed by the fact that those who supported him back home wanted him to reproduce in another culture the American-type religious community which they had constructed in a wholly different background and environment. The brethren who visited him from the homeland brought pressures upon him to conform even though they knew nothing about the lives of the natives whom they regarded as mere statistics justifying the expenditure of money required to convert them.
The missionary wrestled with his soul and finally came to the conclusion that he was not a free man in Christ, but the front man of a system, and that the hands which controlled the purse strings would also control his life. It seemed
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When this intent became known he was deluged with letters protesting against his decision. A member of the faculty in his alma mater wrote him a highly emotional letter, reminding him of the night he walked forward to dedicate his life to taking the message to a foreign field. He tearfully implored him not to "give up the ministry." Former classmates wrote him begging him to reconsider and not give up the vocation to which he had been called.
It became necessary for him to mimeograph a lengthy letter of explanation. In it he insisted that he was not deserting the Lord or the body of Christ. He expected to be as much of a child of God as he had always been, and to serve the Master "acceptably and with godly fear." He even pointed out that he thought he might be more effective because there were certain feelings against a missionary whose very presence tended to make native peoples appear inferior. As a teacher in college he would be working directly with younger minds and might influence more thinkers than he could reach by any other means.
This explanation was rejected by some who had been his closest associates. Some intimated that he was motivated by a love of money and others accused him of betraying the church and the school which had trained him. His wife became nervous and upset because all their former friends were regarding them as covenant-breakers and traitors. As I listened to him talk, and sensed the agony of his soul, I came to understand more fully than ever how ignorance and the party spirit have blinded our eyes.
It is altogether possible that you will grow tired of my recurrent emphasis upon the theme of this article, but I am like the man who kept sawing away on his fiddle which had but one string. His exasperated wife exclaimed, "Why don't you get a violin with four strings and run your fingers up and down them like other men do when they play?" He replied, "Those fellows are just hunting for the right place and I have already found it."
Our brethren are sure that they are "a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, and a teacher of children," but they have no adequate concept of ministry as set forth by the Holy Spirit. Until they get straightened out on this matter they will confuse sinners and confound the saints. Most of them think of ministry as preaching, but these are not necessarily the same at all. Preaching is but one facet of ministry, and in our culture it may be a very insignificant part. It may be indulged in as a substitute for real ministry and frequently serves as an escape hatch to keep from really ministering. Many of God's best ministers could not say three sentences in public to save their lives if they were threatened with hanging. I have known some excellent ones who couldn't sign their own names or read "Little Miss Muffet."
Every child of God on this earth is a minister, and the same act which makes him a child of God makes him a minister. Ministers of God are made by God and not by men. One does not "go away to become a minister," and if he was not one before he left he will not likely be one when he returns. We are not ministers because we go away to study, although we may well go away to study because we are ministers. Study does not make us ministers although it will certainly improve our ability to minister.
We do not become ministers of God because other men lay hands upon us but because we place our lives in the hands of Christ. Nor can one be made a minister by handing him a diploma or granting him a degree. A diploma signifies that we have listened intently to what men have said and given the answers
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It is downright silly to talk of one "leaving the ministry" so long as he is in Christ Jesus. We enter the minstry by accepting Jesus and we leave it by rejecting him. One no more leaves the ministry when he quits pulpit proclamation and starts teaching history in Junior High School, than he forsakes the family of his physical father when he stops plowing corn and starts painting houses.
There certainly is nothing wrong with one answering a call in college to step forth and declare his desire to serve God in some other nation. Neither is there anything wrong with one keeping his seat when the pressure is on and resolving to continue serving God in this nation. I knew a brother who had a good job and a big salary, and who went out to a little rural congregation in Arkansas, and blistered the brethren because they did not support a missionary with their cotton money. When he finished one of the brethren arose and said that their hearts had been mightily touched by the plea, and he proposed that they send the speaker to Africa. He did not bother that congregation any more. His motto was, "There he is. Lord, send him!"
But suppose a man volunteers to go to South America or to Asia Minor and then becomes convinced that he is not cut out for the work. What should he do? Must he hang on and wear himself out, breaking his health and causing his wife to have a nervous crackup, because of a sense of loyalty to his "commitment"? Of course not! His commitment to go may have been made to his brethren in a time of emotional stress, but his original commitment (and the one that matters) was made to Jesus at the time of his baptism. That commitment was to serve wherever he could best do so. Baptism is not intended to destroy one's judgment or to warp his mind.
If one becomes involved in an effort for which he is not qualified, or in which he experiences no genuine joy or satisfaction, he ought to get out of it, and get into a work for which he is better adapted. In doing so he is not "abandoning the ministry." God needs sociology teachers, bakers, policemen, automobile mechanics and laundromat operators. His world would be in a real mess very soon if the only thing anybody could do was to mount a pulpit and hold forth on a sermon outline. The man whose drive is created by his "gift of gab," would get nowhere if someone did not have the gift to drive a cab.
Our problem stems from the fact that we pay lipservice to the ministry of all the saints but never put it into practice. It is a little bit dishonest to pretend that we do not have a clergy-laity system. There is not one bit of difference in the functioning of the average "minister" in the Church of Christ and that of the Baptist pastor down the street. The clever dodge that "the elders are the pastors" is another illustration of the semantic chicanery in which our brethren often engage. It consists of giving a scriptural designation to an unscriptural practice, or of denying the applicability of a term to an unscriptural practice in the hope that such practice may be hallowed or sanctified, or that an ignorant world may not know the difference.
Once in awhile some artless soul lets the cat out of the sack. I recall a debate in Indianapolis where two gladiators were hacking away at each other nightly before a packed arena over the cataclysmic and world-shaking problem of whether it was right to send money to a town in Texas to help pay the tariff on a television program designed for propaganda purposes. In the daytime sessions opportunity was provided for various ones in the audience to address the brethren. One affluent elder from the Lone Star State began his remarks by saying, "I may be out of place in speaking today, because I am not a minister, and must appear before you merely as a layman."
It was this kind of casuistry which got next to a good brother whom I know. He came out of a Christian College with a noble ambition and high ideals for ser-
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It soon became apparent to the preacher that he was a stooge, and that the members had no intention of changing their unlovely attitudes. They were married to their beautiful building and basked in the prestige which it gave them in the community. They gloried in their real estate instead of in the reality of Christ. Their "services" were rendered to their ego instead of to God. They made no impact on life. They wanted to remain aloof from the world and its problems, and resented reference to the racial question, population explosion, birth control, and the other things which trouble many sober minds in our day. Upon three occasions the preacher was called into session by the elders, and "the leading elder" warned him that the members were complaining that he was bordering on the social gospel in his insistence that Jesus wanted men who would share with others in every aspect of the human predicament.
Finally it became obvious that he could not stay, and he decided that he would not seek for another "pastoral" position. He entered the employ of an insurance company and almost from the very first began to make a success as a salesman. Doors for personal witness to the faith opened on every hand. On weekends he was free to assist small and struggling bands of believers, and he did so, always refusing to take a cent from them for his labors. With more time to spend with his own children his family life improved and tensions fell away.
The strange thing about this case is that some of the very ones who were responsible for his decision to serve God in another capacity criticized him for "leaving the ministry." Yet he was actually touching more lives in a meaningful fashion than while seeking to placate those who manifested hostility at every atempt to get them to overcome unreasonable preJudice. And he was helping congregations of saints who were really in need. Perhaps Satan has never hoodwinked us more effectively than in causing us to equate "ministry" with regularly trying to pamper groups whose chief concern is to maintain the status quo.
Sometimes men have had to completely re-orient their thought patterns in order to maintain their personal integrity. I think this is what happened to a fine young Christian in one of our northern states. He came out of college with a dream of the kingdom of heaven and with a real prayer life. From the first night of their marriage, he and his lovely young wife had kneeled together and talked to God so unashamedly and free from inhibition, that Jesus had become the most vital and realistic factor in their lives. When they began work with a suburban congregation they did so with a fervent expectation of sharing their dream.
It was not to be so. The congregation was legalistic and anxious to convey an image of success in the community. They talked of "expansion" but limited it only to the thought of a new building with all of the latest gadgetry. Their concern was for indirect lighting rather than for letting their light shine directly in the community. In vain the preacher strove to get them to erect a modest structure and use their means to touch real life needs. But they became more engrossed with planning the parking lot, landscaping the plot and designing the edifice of brick and stone. As the only congregation of the restoration movement in the area they felt called upon to uphold the traditions.
With sad heart the preacher announced that he was resigning while his love for all of them remained unabated. He secured a job which now pays him much
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Anyone may start a song, anyone may read a scriptural portion, any one may make a comment. There is always a season of prayer in which the names of the needy are borne up to the throne of mercy. Those who are present kneel for the prayers and petition God with fervency. When a contribution is taken up, mention is made in advance of the purpose for which the collection is made. That very afternoon it is taken and given to the needy.
Most of the time the members eat together, with each family bringing food which is spread out upon the table at noon. In the afternoon they visit hospitals or go to the homes of shut-ins or widows. There are no Sunday evening meetings but most of the family groups have a prayer session in their own homes to close the Lord's Day. Here is active ministry but the brother is referred to, almost with sadness, as "a former minister."
Please understand that we are not herein criticizing those saints who have held "try-outs" and hired someone to "minister" to them for so much per week or month. Recently we have seen some elaborate contracts which spell out like legal documents all that is expected of the "minister" even to the point of telling how many meetings he may hold elsewhere, and of what length, and specifying the length of his "vacation from the pulpit" and in what month such vacation must be taken. Our brethren are developing a rare degree of sophistication when they can plan the work of the Spirit in their community that far in advance.
But our point doss not deal with the right or wrong of such contractual matters. What we are saying very simply is that one who follows his conscience and chooses to minister for Jesus in another way does not thereby forsake the ministry. Actually, he may minister more effectively, and where human need is the greatest. In many places there are two strikes against one who must identify as a professional minister and people may turn him off automatically. One does not need to give up his service station or store in order to minister, and one does not necessarily cease to minister when he relinquishes the pulpit to work as a plumber, painter or policeman. He that ministers should wait on his ministering regardless of where he may be!