Loyalty to Pastors by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1882

Loyalty to Pastors.

By Editor

THERE is, in our day, too little of it. Time was when the old Dutch "dominie" and the New England "parson" were supposed to be men of some wisdom, with a right to direct. As the good man entered the church, or the homes of his people, in all the pomp and circumstance of small-clothes, shoe-buckles, cane, and cocked hat, he carried authority. But no wise man cares to see those days return. The respect rendered the pastor was more a blind adulation than an intelligent regard for his work. But we swing to the other extreme. We hire a preacher, and then go, as his employers, to the church to see how he performs. If he speaks to our satisfaction, we, his patrons, graciously approve. If not, like the Parisian crowd, who, when an eclipse failed to follow the program the astronomers had announced, hissed the sun as they would a poor actor, we ridicule the sermon and go home in disgust. Of the minister as an officer set over us to point to a work to be done for Christ and the world, we seem to have no conception. "Pray?" growled a man to his pastor in Massachusetts, "pray in meeting? No, sir, I shall not. We hire you to do that." And thousands of others say the same, more emphatically; for they say it in actions that "speak louder than words."

A large part of the pastor's function is to muster and marshal the energies of the church for beneficent work in its own locality. If anything effective is to be done, there must be an organizing head and guide. But how strong a battle would a general fight, whose troops would take no orders? Too many a modern church acts like a column that should expect its brigadier to engage the enemy with his own sword and revolver, while the privates, from behind, cheer him on. "Obey them that rule over you" "for they watch for your souls as they that must give account"—this (like a similar precept as to a still more tender relation) has dropped out of our modern Bibles. But here and there is a noble exception. A Connecticut deacon, who moved out to a suburb of Chicago, was busy unpacking his furniture when the hour arrived for the evening meeting. But, promptly laying down his hammer, he attended the meeting, and at its close reported to the pastor as a newly arrived brother ready for work. God send us more such men! And may we see less of the spiritual epicures, going the round of half a dozen churches sniffing at the entertainment in the pulpit, to see which church will coddle them most with its attentions, before deciding which to join. There is little danger, in our time, that any pastor will lord it over God's heritage. The drift the other way is too steady and strong. And, in ninety-nine case in a hundred, a pastor's exhortation to any work is doubtless an echo from the very mind of Christ. It is no part of our purpose to preach in these columns. But let us urge you, Christian reader, to school yourself into the habit of hearing in the voice of your minister the voice of God. When next he asks of you any service in the church, do not object or argue or shirk, but go and do it.—Advance.