AGE AND THE MINISTER

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1881

AGE AND THE MINISTER.

When the minister becomes fifty years of age the churches do not want him—if he have a charge, they are thinking and perhaps planning to get rid of him. When he is best qualified for his work, the people refuse him. In other professions age is valued. The physician, for example, the counselor, the merchant, the great men of the age, have all passed this line so fatal to the clergy. The great work done has been done by men beyond this line. Plato said that no man who was less than fifty years of age should be entrusted to teach others.

Why is this age so fatal to the clergy? It is because the people do not value age and experience; because they love to be practiced upon by the young preacher. They feel that a man of age has more knowledge, more experience, and cannot be so easily governed by the people; a young man is cheaper; there is a better chance for their daughters with him; they are afraid that the man of years may grow helpless on their hands and they be obliged to support him; they like flowers more than fruit. It is owing to a weakness in churches, and is a grievous wrong to the church and to the ministry; it is evidence of a low state of Christian experience.

If a minister is disqualified for his office by becoming fifty years of age, let the church be consistent and remove all the professors in her seminaries, all the secretaries of her boards, and all her elders and deacons beyond their dead line.