A 03 - Not Easy Work
NOT EASY WORK
3. A third motive that should not attract anyone into the ministry is the desire for a soft place and easy work. This is not a very worthy motive for entering any field of service, but it does appeal to and draws many young men into various callings. The lure of “the white collar 7 has an attraction for many who are crowding into clerkships where they can dress like gentlemen and have unsoiled hands, but where they may also doom them selves to ill-paid work all their lives. The ministry looks like a soft snap and an easy and almost idle life, as it may seem to an onlooker to be coddled in comfort, flat tered by admiring parishioners, and fanned with perfumed air by adorers of the gentler and more sentimental sex. “Pat,” said one Irish hodcarrier to another, “if you had your choice, what would you be? “ “ Well, Mike, said Pat, “I believe for a nice, clean, easy job, I would choose to be a bishop.” A good many think the way of Pat, and some young men may be cherishing this delusion. For a delusion it certainly is that will surely work its own disillusionment and revenge.
While the ministry has its pleasant features and comfortable aspects, yet it is verily a strenuous life. It knows nothing of short hours and scarcely has a rest day, as it is subject to calls and service the week through and at almost any hour of the day or night.
It puts a severe strain and tax on all a man’s powers, physical, mental, and emotional; and it is burdened with responsibilities and anxieties that are exhausting to the nervous sys tem and trying to the soul. Whoever is hunting a soft place and easy work had better give the ministry a wide berth.
Closely akin to this view is the notion that the ministry is easy in that it does not call for ability equal to that demanded by business and other professions. Tradition ascribes to parents the disposition to direct their ablest sons into the law and medicine and business and send their least competent son into the ministry. It is doubtful whether this was ever consciously done, and the average ability of ministers compared with that of other professions does not lend confirmation or color to such a practice. But any such view is without the shadow of foundation and would quickly disprove itself if it were tried. The ministry is as exacting in its demands for ability as any other calling and is as successful in attracting able men as other fields. The task of the modern minister is growing increasingly difficult and instead of lowering is raising its standard of service. To use a current phrase, the ministry is “a man’s job,” and only strong men should enter it.
It is already evident that the ministry is not all roses and rainbows and has its thorns and dark days like other callings. There are others of these apparently deterrent features of the ministry, such as the uncertain tenure of the pastorate, the meager support that is often given to it, the exacting and unreason able people that it must try to please and satisfy, the petty faultfinding and unjust and unkind criticism that it is subject to, the many irritations and annoyances that it must bear, and so on. Paul desired the brethren to pray for him that he might be delivered from “unreasonable... men, 77 and this tribe has not yet all passed out of the world and church, and the modern minister is still plagued with his share of them. There are unpleasant and trying aspects of the ministry and it is right that they should be presented along with its attractions and even painted in their darkest colors.
If any young man can be turned back by such discouragements it would appear that he is not made of the right stuff for this calling and had better not go on. Gideon sifted out his men until he had only three hundred brave and stalwart soldiers, but with them he won a signal victory. The ministry wants sifted men of tried souls and true who are not afraid of an enemy and a hard fight.
Every field of labor has its hardships and discouragements, and if a young man is trying to escape these things and wants to be carried on flowery beds of ease, he will not find work to suit him anywhere in this world. The ministry is a strenuous life calling for men of ability and virility and of whole hearted consecration, and the avaricious man, the ambitious man, and the lazy or incompetent man had better keep out of it. Its call is for “a good soldier of Christ Jesus. “