C 03 - Attitudes Toward Some Specific Problems

ATTITUDES TOWAKD So hours, days a week, why lie do It? A is the lias a problem* That is 3 the multiplicity of his it difficult to ail of In a week. In he no to of of the pastoral and In ap proximately two of the the is the only minister on the staff. 36 The In upon the pastor is partly attributable to the com plexity of the modem church. The of knowledge and skills demanded of its pastor by the church has reached proportions undreamed of by Ms predecessors.

William Whyte’s analysis of motivational forces underlying the business executive who works fifty to sixty hours a week, more than the company demands, may also provide some insight into the pastor. He concluded that service is not the executive’s basic motivation, though he may talk of it. Nor is it company pressure. Whyte says: w He speaks of himself and the demon within him. He works because his ego demands it,** 10 To quote one company president: “ People are like springs; the energy you have within you has to come out one way or another. I would reaEy get in bad shape if I didn’t work.* 20 This suggests that the minister too may be like a spring: he is a man with tremendous energies that must be expressed. This is not to discount the motivation he receives from a belief that he has been commissioned of God to perform a task It is to say that other factors may also be at work.

Occasionally one hears of the minister who is absorbed in church work to the detriment of his family and who rationalizes on the basis that “ this is the Lord’s work.” Wynn observes that the pastor’s ** sense of values needs constant, prayerful review lest he subjugate family welfare to ad 86 THE ROLE OF THE MINISTERS WIFE mi&istrivia [the trivia of administration] under the misassumption that these comprise the entire Kingdom of God!’ 1 On this same point Wayne Gates makes this observation;

Real question may be raised as to the sincerity of a... [minister] who uses his Christian calling as an excuse to neglect the basic physical and emotional needs’ of his children. If a man “his own children’s needs for affectionate tenderness, spiritual instruction, and economic security, he will have no basis for a genuinely pastoral care of the flock of God. 22

Probably more understanding of their families on the of ministers, plus an effort to do a little “ pastoral ministering “ to their own families, would aid in dealing with this whole problem of family time. For those ministers who view their own families as also being a part of God’s Kingdom, profound new insights await them in the apostle Paul’s phrase, “the church in thy house”

(Philemon 2).