03.07. The Preacher as a Man of Affairs

LECTURE VII THE PREACHER AS A MAN OF AFFAIRS "Like unto a merchantman" In the course of these lectures we have considered the life and ministry of the preacher in many varied relations,--in his study, in his pulpit, and in the home, and we have sought to realize, in all these varying conditions, the line of purpose and obligation. To-day we are to consider quite another relation, not, perhaps, so quick, and vital, and momentous as the others, and yet one which seriously affects the fruits of the others, either in the way of retarding or advancing them. I am to speak of the Preacher as a man of affairs, as one who meets and consults with other men in the business management of the church. And I am venturing to take the direction and tone of my thought from the teaching of the Master when He said that "the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchantman." That is to say, our Master commands, and appropriates, and sanctifies business instincts and aptitudes in the ministry of the kingdom. Talents and faculties, which are used in the affairs of the world, are to be used in the interests of our "Fathers business." "The children of the world" are not to be wiser than "the children of light." We are not to "scrap" the business gifts, and rely upon some mysterious influence which ’ works without them. We are to be vigilant, punctual, enterprising, decisive, surrendering all our senses to the work, and notably the ’king of all the senses, the sense which makes all other senses effective, the power of common sense. We are to be as merchantmen, men of sobriety, of wide sanity, of keen but cool judgment, alert but not hasty, zealous but circumspect, doing the King’s business in a business-like way.

Now I think you would find it a very common confession that it is just here that many preachers fail. They may be acceptable and even powerful in the pulpit. They may be congenial and most welcome in the home. But they are impossible in business. No one can "get on" with them. They have no sense of management or address. They are inopportune when they think themselves seasonable, they are stupid when they think themselves persistent. Their "goods" may be admirable, but they lack the power to dispose of them. They can hold their own in the pulpit, but they have no strength in the vestry. They can "carry" a congregation, they cannot lead the Diaconate or the Session. They succeed as preachers but they fail as merchantmen. This lack of business ability may sometimes be traced to a deeper need from which it directly springs, and I wish you to consider two or three of these deeper things upon which our real business aptitude depends. First of all then, I should say that the primary requisite, if we are to be successful men of affairs, is that we ourselves be men. Some time ago an article appeared in an American magazine entitled "Is the preacher a molly-coddle?" In the course of the article the writer makes the following statement: "Among strong," steadfast, manly business men, as well as among the athletes of the baseball and foot-: ball field, there is a kind of belief or feeling that all preachers belong in some measure to the molly-coddle class." Now I suppose a molly-coddle is a man who lacks resolution, energy, or hardihood, and that the term is used in derision or contempt, and I am afraid it expresses the conception of the Christian preacher which is very commonly entertained by men of the world. I know, of course, that the man of the world is inclined to regard anything that looks beyond his own material circle as belonging to the effeminate, and his judgment is by no means the final standard of strong and healthy life. And yet we ought to listen to his judgment, and ponder its weight, even though we have finally to discard it as practically worthless. If there be any truth in the conception that the preacher is lacking in the elements of true manliness we ought to see to it that the occasion of the judgment is changed. We must get more iron into our blood, more vision into our ideals, more vigor into our purposes, more sacrifice into our services, more tenacity into our wills. We must get rid of all that is soft, and lax, and flabby, and lethargic, and manifest to men that combination of strength and gentleness which is the fruit of the finest piety and the characteristic of all true manliness. On the side of vision the preacher’s life should touch the romantic: on the side of labor he should touch the heroic: and in all his contact with men they should be made to feel his possession of a fresh and healthy vigor which clearly attests that he has found the fountain of vitality, and that he drinks of "the river of water of life." We certainly can never be successful merchantmen unless we are, first of all, men. A second necessity, if we are to be competent men of affairs, is a competent knowledge of men. Our fellow-officers in the government of the Church are not like so many billiard-balls, devoid of individuality, having precisely the same weight," running in precisely the same manner, and by their inherent constitution determined by precisely the same initiatives to a common motion. When we are dealing with men the further we can get away from the conception of a billiard-ball the better it will be for the progress of our business. We must study men, we must know their differences as well as their unites, in order that we may know what are the different motives which will produce a common movement. You will be surprised how many types of character there are within the circle of a Session or a Diaconate. There are the facile men, swift in vision and in judgment, seeing their goal and leaping to decision. There are the slow-witted men, following the others like a carrier’s wagon in the track of an automobile, arriving at clear vision through dim stages, first "seeing men as trees walking," and troubled by doubts and indecision’s. You will have these men to deal with, and it is needful you should know when they have only reached the "tree-walking" stage, lest you should unwisely hurry them along the half-darkened way. Then there are the genial men, the men whose dispositions are confluent and agreeable, a fervent fluid ready for any mould. There are also the fixed, the rigid, with dispositions that are only rarely ductile, and who are hurt and resentful if they are unseasonably squeezed into some newly-fashioned mould. Most surely you will meet such men, and it is a science and art of the finest human perception and ministry to soften their rigidity, almost without their knowing it, and to conduct their loosened spirit-into the altered fashion of a new day. And there are the old men, valuable because of their years, retrospective, often finding their "golden age" in the days that are past, in "the days that have been," their souls inclining to conservatism and venerable convention. And things of others." That in itself is an exceedingly valuable exercise, just to recognize that there are other fields whose contour and features differ from our own. Then with disciplined discernment’s we must discipline our imagination. Common discernment may give us the external configuration of another man’s field, but only a fine imagination will give us his interpretation of it. I am using the word "imagination" in the sense of enlightened sympathy, the power to get beneath another man’s skin, and look out through his windows, and obtain his view of the world. I mean the power by which one man can identify himself with another, can become almost incorporate with another, and realize his general sense and appreciation of the things with which we deal. This is by no means easy: if any man thinks it easy, he has certainly not yet mastered the strong and gracious art. Casting my mind over biography and autobiography I do not know any man who possessed the gift in richer measure than Frederick Robertson of Brighton. He knew men in a most surprising manner, and, even though their judgments and convictions differed almost immeasurably from his own, he made laborious effort to understand their positions and to appreciate their sense and value. There is, consequently, a fine catholicity about his mind, and there is a noble comradeship about his manner, and he moves with an intelligent and sympathetic discernment of those whose conclusions he cannot share. But all this, I say, is not an easy attainment, it is a fruit of persistent culture: and if you and I are to be wise and strong leaders of men who are of very varying mental fashion and emotional moods, we must subject ourselves to the same quiet and serious discipline, and sympathetically and imaginatively appreciate their individuality, and realize their own peculiar points of view.

Now a discipline of this kind, the exercise of discernment and sympathetic imagination, will give us the invaluable possession of tact. I have sometimes heard it said that if a man is devoid of tact by nature he will never gain it as an acquisition: that it is always innate and never an accomplishment. I don’t believe it. I do not attach so fatal and final a sovereignty to the drift of heredity. I believe that when God gives His good grace all good graces are implicated in the gift, and that by requisite care and culture they can be evolved with all the order and certainty of the production of flowers and fruits. I believe that clumsy people can become tactful, and that folk who are brusque and abrupt can become gracious and courteous, and that the indifferent and inconsiderate can become thoughtful and sympathetic. There is no excuse for our tactlessness, and if even we are temperamentally tactless it is our urgent duty to change it by the ministries of discipline and grace. But what trouble and disaster the want of tact is working among the ministry of the churches! I am appalled at times to hear accounts of ministerial tactlessness which are almost incredible in their exhibition of infantile ignorance of men. I have known many churches where spiritual life has been chilled, and spiritual enterprise has been ruined by the minister’s tactless handling of men who were to carry his desires and purposes to fruition. Such ministers treat their fellow-officers as so many marionettes, and lo the marionettes prove to be alive, with very marked and vivacious personalities, and there is consequent discord and strife. And therefore do I urge you to study and know your men: know them through the ministry of a hallowed and sympathetic imagination, and always bear them in strong and considerate regard. And you will come to possess tact, that fineness of feeling which can diagnose without touching, that mystical divining-rod which apprehends the hidden waters in the shyest and most secluded life. But even this is not enough. If our equipment for the knowledge of men is to be even passably complete we must exercise a genial sense of humor, by whose kindly light we shall be saved from pious stupidities, and from that grotesqueness of judgment which sees tragedy in comedy, griffins in asses, and mountains in mole-hills. Gentlemen, we need to know men, and when our men know that we know them, and respect and revere them, you may depend upon it we have got the key into the lock which will’ open their most secret gate.

I have one further word to say respecting our relations with those with whom we have to co-operate in managing the business of the Church. See to it that you exalt the great and noble dignity of their office. Hedge it about with reverence and prayerful regard. Let every man feel that no greater honor will ever come his way than his appointment to service in the Church of the Lord. Save the office from degenerating into a merely social distinction. Lift it up into a solemn and holy privilege in the Lord. Never let any man assume an office without the opportunity of gazing at his "high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Lift his eyes up to the hills! Speak to him about it. Write to him about it. And when he has entered upon the office, and has even spent some years in the service, seek his intimacy from time to time that you may refresh his sense of the sacred honor and responsibility of his vocation. You will find he will welcome it, he will be grateful for it, he will rise to it. And never allow any countenance to be given to the divorce of the secular and spiritual affairs of the church, as though he who is working in the administration of the temporalities is engaged in a less sacred mission than he who labors in the business of worship and communion. Exalt them both alike; set a common seal of sanctity upon them: and let the "door-keeper in the house of our God" feel that his office is as sacred as the office of him who lights the candles at the altar, or of him who bears the intercession into the holy place. And remember this: the atmosphere and spirit in which all business is done determines the real quality and value of the business. And remember further: in a company of church officers it is the minister who is supremely the creator of atmosphere, and that if he is small, and churlish, and impatient, and irritable, and self-willed, he makes conditions in which all sorts of petty things breed and flourish: but if he is large, and liberal, and patient, and self-controlled, he: creates a genial air and temper in which all big things breathe easily, and generous purposes find congenial hospitality and support. And now I want to offer you a few general principles of business management which I think you will do well to heed in your ministry. And the first is this: Never move with small majorities. Never take an important step in church life if a large minority is opposed to your proposals. I inherited this principle from Dr. Dale, and I have steadily honored it all through the years of my ministry. When Dr. Dale’s diaconate had discussed some new proposals, and it was then found that a minority of the deacons were opposed to their adoption, the proposals were tabled, and no action was taken. You may exclaim about the waste of time, the frequent and irritating delays! Yes, but remember that when Dr. Dale’s Diaconate did move it moved to some purpose, with unbroken solidity and with no hampering hesitancy in its ranks. There was no half-movement,--the feet advancing, but the eyes held in lingering retrospect. It was movement enlightened, expectant, and irresistible. A small, lukewarm, unconvinced minority can chill the heart of even a fine crusade. For you know how it is with men. When men have been simply "voted down," and carried forward against their judgments, there often begins a process of self-justification which greedily seeks evidence to confirm their position. "He, being willing to justify himself!" That subtle quest governs our conduct even more than we realize. We love to maintain our own conclusions even when some opposing action has been taken, and we have more than a secret delight when something happens which spoils the action, or in any way interferes with expected re-suits. We do not realize that perhaps one cause of the sluggish or disappointing movement is just our own moody and suspicious reluctance. We think we are only spectators, watching others act, when in reality we are very busy actors, who being "willing" and eager "to justify" ourselves, are hampering those who began a movement which was opposed to our judgments. And so do I counsel you not to move with small majorities. Far better wait than try to run some new engine with lukewarm water. Wait for more enthusiasm: wait and pray for the unanimity of strong devotion. It is pre-eminently true in matters of church business that there must be light before there can be heat, there must be conviction before there can be resolute consecration, there must be an enlightened judgment before there can be a really vigorous and fruitful will. I have known churches ruined by the neglect of this principle. Great action has been taken without serious union, and premature movement has left behind an unconvinced and irritated remnant, who would not march as allies, and whose position scarcely gave them the helpful spirit of friends. Perhaps in all these matters we cannot do better than take for our ideal the condition portrayed in a hidden and little known passage in the Book of Chronicles, where a strong and victorious army is described as going "forth to battle, expert in war, fifty thousand, which would keep rank: they were not of double heart." I always think that a minister, moving with a solidly united and sympathetic Diaconate or Session, can do almost anything! The second principle of business management which I will offer you is this: avoid the notoriety and the impotence of always wanting something new. There are some men who have new schemes for their officers almost every time they meet. Scheme after scheme is designed and produced, each new one effacing the significance of the last, until in the multitude of designs nothing is accomplished. The officers are continually spending their time, not in the inspiration of vision and task, but in the soporific exercise of dreaming dreams. I sometimes think it would be a useful thing, at any rate it would be a surprising and perhaps a humbling thing, if a strong, vigilant committee could be occasionally appointed to make a thorough examination of the church minute-book for the purpose of exhuming all resolutions that were still-born, and all that had independent life but were never given a fair chance of growing up, and all that by some ill-chance were forgotten and had died from sheer starvation and neglect. The report of such a committee would provide matter for a most important and significant meeting! It might be held once every five years, or even more frequently where the death-rate is abnormally high, where schemes and purposes die almost as soon as they are born. It might be called a meeting for the disinterring and examination of resolutions which have never been carried out, proposals that never fructified, promising schemes which have drooped and no one knew the hour of their burial! It would be a very somber and melancholy meeting. It would be like spending an hour in a graveyard.. But I am sure the experience would not be without profit, and we might discover the folly of continually originating schemes merely to bury them, and of multiplying a family of plans and devices which immediately sink into their graves.

If we are competent merchantmen in the business of the Church we shall limit our schemes, and we shall operate them to the last ounce of our strength. We shall not waste and squander our power in twenty scouting excursions, but we shall use it in sinking one or two good mines, and working them with noble and persistent exploration. That is what we want in the ministry, men who will concentrate upon one or two promising mines, and week after week produce the invaluable ore. If the pulpit is your mine, don’t play with it, work it night and day. If the Sunday-School is your mine, sink your shaft deeper’ and deeper, open out new seams and veins of treasure, and let the mine abundantly justify itself by its products. Whatever may be your mine, put your strength into it. I am a strong believer in a very few schemes, but tried to the utmost; I believe in a very few mines, but worked for all they are worth. The life of our day tempts us to diffuseness. We are tempted to have too many irons in the fire, and we don’t beat any one of them to final "shape and use." Gentlemen, have a: few well-designed and well-proportioned schemes. Don’t lose yourself in dreams. Lay your hands upon a few things, and hold on to them like grim death, and make them pay daily tribute to the Lord your God. Master something. Finish something, or be still working away at it when the Lord promotes you to higher service. That was the Master’s way. "I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." He "set His face" steadfastly to it, nothing drew Him aside, and He finished it. "Having loved His own which were in the world He loved them unto the end." His purposeful affection continued its ministry with tenacious and deathless persistency, and it never let go! And this, too, was the way of the Apostle Paul. "This one thing I dot" His life and work were controlled by a glorious concentration, and he held on to his track like a hound that has found the trail. Follow his inspired example. Don’t be forever itching after novelties. Don’t be continually shifting your ground. "Hold fast that which thou hast:" hold on to it, and "let patience have her perfect work."

I will offer you a third principle for your guidance in the business affairs of the Church. Never mistake the multiplication of organization for the enlargement and enrichment of service. Do not be deceived into thinking that you are doing work when you are only preparing to do it. It is very possible to elaborate our machinery and not increase our products. We may have much mechanism but little or no life. That is one of the immense perils of our day, and the ministers of the Church of Christ are peculiarly exposed to it. We organize, and organize, and organize! I suppose there was never a time when organization was so rife as it is to-day. You can hear the "noise" of the bones coming together. You can hear the "shaking" of their approach. Never was there such skill shown in the work of incorporation. Bone is fitted to bone, and the strength of sinews is added, and the grace of flesh and skin. But here is the vital question: is it only clever manufacture or is it inspired creation? Is it only a lovely corpse, or does it live — live I mean, with the life of God? Much of it, I know, thrills with holy and effective life, and in its gracious movement it is possessed by breath divine. And yet how very much of our organization is only an articulated corpse! It does not carry a burden: it is rather a burden that has to be borne. It is an organization but not an organism! It has no central soul, no life, no breath. It stops short of the vital, the inspirational, the divine. It has got everything but God!

I believe that what the old world needs just now is not so much the multiplication of organization as the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We have piles of organization, but they lie prone upon the earth, incorporated death. We have got organization enough to revolutionize the race. It is not more schemes we want, more associations, more meetings: we want the breath and fire of the Holy Ghost. .A small organization, with breath in it, can do the work of an army. I am not decrying the institutional. The institutional is necessary: it is imperative: but I fear that in these days we ministers may be so keen on organizing that we rest contented when the body is articulated, even though it lies stretched and breathless on the ground. We may be so intent upon committees that we have no time for the upper room. We may be so "public" that we forget "the secret place." We may be absorbed in devising machinery and careless about the power which is to make it go. That is our peril. I know it. I feel it. We may be busy organizing and yet have no organic life. And if we only enlarge our "plant," and multiply our machinery, we are apt to think we are extending the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. "Be not deceived." Keep your eyes on essentials. "Pray without ceasing,’’ vigilantly watch for "the fruits of the Spirit," and smother any satisfaction which does not honor your great Redeemer’s name.

There is a fourth principle which you will do well to heed when, with your fellow-laborers, you are estimating the business of the Church. Never become a victim to the standard of numbers. In this holy business statistics cannot measure enterprise. A church-roll by no means defines the limits of a church’s influence and ministry. "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation." It may be moving here and there like the faintest breathing like the almost imperceptible stirring of the air at the dawn. It may be here and there in the creation of vision and dream, in the loosening of hidden fear, in the healing of unknown sorrow, in deliverance from secret sin. I know the comfort and inspiration that come to a minister in the open confession of God’s children, when that confession is simple, and serious, and true. But I am not going to limit my conception of the fruits of my ministry to products like these. There are many people who find their Lord who never find me. There are many children of despondency and depression who steal into my services, and who steal out again with the feeling that "the winter is past," and that "the time of the singing of birds is come." But no news of their springtime gets into my journal, or finds a place in the diaries of the Church. Many a weary business-man, who for a whole week has been the victim of the dusty plains, trails into the church, and he gets a vision of the glory of the hills of God, and his soul is restored, but no tidings of his soul’s journeyings is given to me. Gentlemen, we should be astonished with a great surprise if we knew all the secret happenings which take place every time we minister of the Lord Jesus in sincerity and in truth! Something always happens--deep and gracious and beautiful, and the great Husbandman, who never overlooks or loses any fruit, will gather it unto everlasting life. So I counsel you not to be burdened by the menace of statistics, and do not permit your strength to be sapped by worries which you ought to quietly lay upon the love of God. "Trust in the Lord, and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." And the last counsel which I will give you as merchantmen in the business of the Kingdom is this: ---you never help the business by advertising yourself. Self-advertisement is deadly in the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Puffy, showy paragraphs concerning ourselves and our work: egotistical recitals of our powers and attainments: all forms of self-obtrusion and self-aggression: all these are absolutely fatal to the really deepest work committed to our hands. Our fellow-laborers know when our work is marred by self-conceit. The devil is delighted when he can lure us into self-display. Our own highest powers shrink and wither when we expose them to the glare of self-seeking publicity. They cannot bear a light like that, and they speedily lose their strength and beauty. I urge you to avoid it. Never tell people what a clever fellow you are. Never write a private paragraph to the newspaper giving its readers the same information. It was said of the Master Whom we serve, "He shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets." "It was the way the Master went. Shall not the servant tread it still?" Of one thing we can be perfectly sure: when we display ourselves we hide our Lord; when we blow our own trumpet men will not hear "the still small voice of God." And now I have done. I have spoken to you in these lectures from the journals of my own life, the findings of my own experience. I thought you might like to know how one man has found the road into the service of which you are consecrating your life. I have told you where I have found perils, and where I have found arbours of rest and refreshing springs. Your road may be very different from mine, and yet I think the dominant features will be the same. You will have your Slough of Despond, your hill "Difficulty," your alluring Bye-path Meadow, your Valley of Humiliation, your Enchanted Ground where the spirit gets very drowsy, and your clear hill-tops with bewitching visions of Beulah Land, where the birds sing and the sun shines night and day. But you will surely find that, however swiftly changing may be the character of your road, your provision in Christ is most abundant. My brethren, you are going forth into a big world to confront big things. There is "the pestilence that walketh in darkness," and there is "the destruction that wasteth at noonday." There is success and there is failure, and there is sin, and sot-row, and death. And of all pathetic plights surely the most pathetic is that of a minister moving about this grim field of varied necessity, professing to be a physician, but carrying in his wallet no balms, no cordials, no caustics to meet the clamant needs of men. But of all privileged callings surely the most privileged is that of a Greatheart pacing the highways of life, Carrying with him all that is needed by fainting, bruised, and broken pilgrims, perfectly confident in Him "Whom he has believed." Brethren, your calling is very holy. Your work is very difficult. Your Savior is very mighty. And the joy of the Lord will be your strength.