04-Ringing Doorbells
IV. Ringing Doorbells
TODAY WHEN WE KING A DOOBBELL IT is QUITE LIKELY that it isn’t a bell at all that sounds, but a gong or a set of chimes. The old-fashioned doorbell may be gone, but the wisdom and the necessity of the minister standing before the door of his people’s homes seeking to come in for the purpose of an intimate and personalized ministry has not changed at all.
It is well at the outset of one’s ministry to establish a conviction as to the importance of calling upon one’s people. There are many things in the ministry the actual effectiveness of which it is difficult to check. And calling is surely one of them. I have often questioned the wisdom of spending as much time in calling upon people as I have given to it. There are times when it all seems rather petty. And it takes so much time.
There are so many other things to be done, and we go about ringing doorbells! Often it seems as if it is just one of those things a minister has always done, and, for all the results which are evident, nothing would be changed if we had enough courage to quit the whole thing and give our time to something else. Yet every minister could probably testify to the unmistakable fact that when he neglects this part of Ms work everything about his ministry suffers. There seems to be a very definite relation between a successful ministry and this act of ringing doorbells.
It would help every minister to remember that he is peculiarly a pastor of families, not just individuals. Some denominations list their members as families. Some record of individual members is kept, of course, but a church is listed as having so many families. It keeps the idea of the family uppermost. “We sometimes forget that the strength of Christianity is not in the church, but in the home. The home does not exist for the sake of the church, but the church for the sake of the home. The purpose of the church school should be to help the home in the training of children in Christian living, not to take over the task of parents. If this be at all true, the place of the minister’s service is in the home fully as much as in the pulpit.
Every congregation wishes its minister to be a pastor. In the New Testament the word “pastor” is synonymous with shepherd. Jesus, speaking of himself as the G-ood Shepherd, said, “I
... know my sheep A stranger will they not follow.” A modern flock wants no stranger shepherd. Even as to our preaching it will be most effective upon people whom we know and who know us. It is quite true that the man who is invisible during the week is likely to be incomprehensible on Sunday.
Many of our contacts with people will be social in their nature, and for the purpose of the deepening of friendship. Every visit need not be strictly religious. We are human, or ought to be, and it is quite certain that many of our people want to know us as men as well as ministers.
How about prayer on such calls? I recall one experience that has always helped me, both in my thought of a minister’s personal relationship with his people, and this matter of prayer. One summer a family from my congregation, with some friends of theirs, rented a cottage next to our summer place for a period of two weeks. We fished and loafed and played together. I had been their minister for some three years at the time and thought that they knew me fairly well, and was surprised to have them feelingly express their gratitude for this opportunity of knowing their minister better. Then the last evening we had a beach party, roasting marshmallows, playing games, and singing the old familiar songs. Before we broke up someone suggested that we ought to end with a prayer, for it was our last gathering together as a group. I had not thought of that at all; but at once, for everyone, it seemed a most appropriate thing to do. So a prayer was offered, and the memory of that evening has always remained with me as an example of an appropriate time to pray when the minister himself had not been sensitive to it. We should, of course, be careful not to force prayer into our social contacts, but it may often be far more appropriate in the mind and heart of our people than it is in our own.
Certainly there should be nothing in our social call that should make prayer out of place.
“We will do little calling unless we are systematic about it. Some time must be reserved irrevocably for calling and definite plans made to carry it out, or other things will crowd our calling from our schedule. It will often seem a task to which we must drive ourselves. That ought not to disturb us unduly. Some authors say that they have to drive themselves to the task of writing. The mechanics of it are perfect drudgery to them.
We may not be able to detect it in the results of their work at all, and it is a surprise to us to hear them say that they find their task a burden.
I can testify that, with all my deep conviction about the absolute necessity of calling on my people, I still, after many years, have to drive myself to it. There is not an afternoon set aside for calls but that I can think of a dozen reasons why it is not necessary to make them at that particular time. When I have made my first call I find it easy to continue and I truly enjoy it, but it never fails to be a hard thing to get started. This is one of the many things we need to plan to do even when we do not feel like it.
Calls may be reasonably brief. They would naturally be longer in a country parish or a town than in a city, and circumstances will control here as in so many things about our work. Every purpose of a call is defeated, however, if it is so brief as to seem casual or hurried. I know of a minister who complained that another minister calling upon him was in such a hurry, and had spoken of the many things he had to do and the many calls he had to make, and in a few minutes was gone.
If a minister, who for himself knows a pastor’s task, could be sensitive at a hurried call and gain the impression that he is just a name on a list to be checked off as hurriedly as possible, what must be the effect upon the average church member? Ten calls are not necessarily ten times as effective as one. And no call should be made just for the sake of making one more call.
We ought to be interested in the home and manifest that interest. Anniversaries, when known, the building of a new home, or even a change of address, provide opportunities for calls that show interest in that home as a home.
Calls at offices and places of business of our men are usually greatly appreciated. It is often the only way we can see the men of our congregation. Wisdom must be exercised, of course, and here a call may well be brief if the businessman is busy; but frequently they are anxious to give the minister time and to show him about their place of business. That manifestly is a help toward knowing our man, and toward humanizing his conception of his minister. There can be little question of the value of this kind of calling. Some businessmen may be surprised at having their minister walk into their place of business. They may wonder what he wants now. But any feeling of surprise is supplanted by a glow of appreciation when they find that he is just making a call as man to man. The most favorable result upon the businessman, however, is not comparable to the effect upon the minister himself of knowing something of his men at their daily task.
Prospective members will engage some of our time in calling upon them. The minister, however, should have the help of some of his members in contacting prospective members. Calls upon them other than by the pastor are usually necessary.
Calling committees are quite willing to make some calls upon new people, especially upon those who have manifested some interest in the church.
Some ministers have been unusually effective in organizing groups for personal work and making personal calls, but this remains especially a task for the pastor. I know of no case under my observation where, though a minister has succeeded in getting effective work done by some calling committee, he himself is not the key person after all in these contacts. Church members should help, and their work is invaluable, but the minister’s part cannot be delegated to anyone else.
There are some people who must be called on not because of any particular need, other than that a call acts as a prod in their careless church relationship. The church has its share of delinquent members. David Harum, speaking about his church membership, remarked, “The one I stay away from, when I don’t go, ’s the Prespyteriun.”
Every minister has those whose membership is like that. What these people need is occasional personal contact. It ought not to be necessary, but it is. They seem to be built that way. Sustained interest does not seem to be a part of their make-up. If we can improve their attendance and relation to the church by calling upon them occasionally, why not do it? It is a part of our task. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson remarked that if one person should drop away from the church each month without being noticed, that would make twelve in a year, and it would startle us if twelve people should drop away at the same time, yet one by one is just as tragic. Very often a little personal attention by the minister would prevent it.
There are some who become disaffected. They are easily hurt. The fault may be theirs and not ours, but it is surprising how many times a call made without any reference to their hurt feelings at all smooths all difficulty away. The importance of pastoral attention is evident from the reaction of some of those for whose laxness we are in no way responsible. Despite everything we do, they at last seem to drop away and we see nothing of them. They make no response to the church whatsoever. Perhaps then we reluctantly give them up, for we cannot forever spend our time upon those who seemingly want nothing so much as to be left alone. Then someday they make as their excuse that the minister has not called upon them. It is their self -satisfying excuse for their own failure, but their inevitable placing of the blame upon us reveals an instinctive sense of the value of the pastoral relation. They always put their finger upon that.
Dr. F. W. Boreham writes of those whose doorbells we may not have been meant to ring. None of us can adequately serve everyone. Someone else may be able to minister to them, but not we.
Jesus himself could not satisfy everyone, nor can we. We need not break our heart over our failure with some member if, in the spirit of the Master, we have truly given our heart to our task. As about so many things in a pastor’s work, our visitation calling requires patience and steadfastness. There is little about our task that is like adding one and one to make two. Calling is a matter of establishing relationships, of personalizing our ministry, of breaking down the distance between pulpit and pew, of creating a medium of understanding and interest that makes for reality in both the presenting of our truth and the receiving of it. It is difficult, therefore, to put one’s finger upon results. One can never say this much calling will produce this much return. There can be nothing mathematical about it all, except that if this is not one of the basic investments of some of our time and effort our work will add up to very little. Timetables and evaluating scales have little place in a pastor’s work. The one thing we can be sure of about visitation calling is that it is folly to neglect it.
Every minister is sometimes aware that his calling affects the success of his efforts in unaccountable ways. He may, for instance, have a list of prospective members upon whom he calls without much response. None of them seems ready to become a member. But some other people whom he did not personally contact through calling voluntarily express their desire to join the church. It is easy then for the minister to say to himself, “What is the use of calling? Why not spend that time for other things?” But just let him try it that way! Let him give over calling entirely and these others to whom he gives little attention will not respond either. There are psychological and spiritual reasons for it into which one may probe if one will; but, in any event, let us remember that our calling often works after this manner. The thing we expect to happen may not come to pass; but, if we do not call at all, nothing happens. No one can say how much calling is enough.
Some men set a goal, of so many calls a month. This undoubtedly is valuable as something of a spur, as all of us need some challenge to our lazy selves. Keeping a record against a set goal serves to check us up. A mental estimate of the number of calls made, like guessing at the attendance at a service, is always too nattering to ourselves. It is well to have actual numbers to stare us down. But even the actual numbers are not necessarily a correct gage of effective calling. One hundred calls a month may mean much, or it may mean very little. Again mathematics plays no vital or conclusive part. If a certain number of calls is our goal, one may easily find it something of a satisfaction if there is no one at home, and a card may be left, and we are able to mark that down as one more call so that we can hurry on to the next. And it is not unknown for a minister thus to say under his breath, in the words of Elmer Blurp, “I hope nobody’s home, I hope, I hope, I hope.” A list of calls made is just a list after all. It is not a record of what is accomplished. The one thing imperative is that we give ourselves conscientiously and devotedly to this phase of our ministry. We cannot read the gospel story of him who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,” without being impressed with his personal relationships. He touched all sorts of people. He was always giving himself to others.
We read that he called the Twelve “that they should be with him. ’ ’ Their personal relationship with him was a part of their training and of their final commitment of themselves to him. The Twelve were often surprised at his wayside ministries. He was never too busy to meet people and to do something for them. Nothing was an interruption for him, and some of the greatest things he did were done on the way to doing something else. No service and no demand were ever to him a routine or a burden. Jesus loved people. As his minister we must know people and love them too.
Some of the ways to do it may often seem prosaic. And one of the ways is the ringing of doorbells. But if we do it faithfully and well, there will be an answering response in the hearts of men. And that is what calling is for.