03.12. XII. The Problem Of Pastoral Visitation

XII THE PROBLEM OF PASTORAL VISITATION IN THIS chapter I speak from an experience of more than fifty years in preaching, and of just fifty in pastoral relations.

It has been my fortune not to know an interim in that relation of greater length of time than was required for passage from one city to another; and for thirty-nine years this relation has been sustained to one pulpit, with no reason for its speedy termination. I speak, therefore, out of a long-continued and unbroken experience.

It is doubtful if the young man, convinced that God is calling him to preach, gives much consideration to the subject of pastoral relations. His problem is that of a personal surrender and willingness to undertake the prophetic office. The thing that looms in his thought is preaching, not pastoral work; and not until he finishes his preparation and actually enters upon the relationship itself, will the importance of pastoral visitation begin to rise for him. However, when once settled, and about the daily and hourly duties of the divine commission, he will speedily discover that to be a preacher, especially to be a pastor, involves far more than the preparation and delivery of discourses. In other words, the angles of his office will multiply and the relative importance of the pastoral relation to the preaching service will grow upon him.

Two or three things may be said of pastoral visitation. THE PLAIN DUTY IS A PRIVILEGE

We call pastoral visitation a plain duty, and with good occasion. Apart from it no pastoral relation is complete, or long continued relation possible. The pastor should, therefore, accept the following as both essential and sensible.

He should adopt and cultivate the custom of pastoral visitation.—Most ministers who occupy pastoral office, employ their forenoons for study and for the consideration of such church problems as may thrust themselves into the study hours; and they give a considerable portion, at least, of their afternoons to pastoral calling. There are several considerations that such a custom conserves.

First of all, when the pastor has put in a forenoon in hard study, and changed to visitation for the afternoon, he introduces that variety which is the spice of life, and which comes nearer recreation than anything short of complete rest. In the next place, the average housewife has the heavier duties discharged by the early afternoon, her house in order, and can receive the pastoral call with comfort of mind and body. In the third place, after the middle of the afternoon, the pastor is likely to meet not only the grown-up children who may be at home, but the school boys and girls just returning from their studies. To make friends of children is a chief objective in pastoral work. These and other favorable incidents of this season for pastoral visitation not only approve the arrangement but doubtless account for the custom itself.

We have spoken of adopting and cultivating a custom of pastoral visitation, because to some men it is not a natural pleasure, and cultivation, by the daily practice, is essential. We believe that a man who is divinely called and Spirit-filled will come speedily to love pastoral work, and instead of looking upon it as irksome, will regard it as a personal privilege. The pastor should carry on this work to the limit of his time and strength.—Theodore Cuyler, of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York, was in many respects a model pastor. In his volume on How to Be a Pastor he gives many excellent suggestions. For instance, “The excuse that the congregation is too large for any man’s visit is absurd. All things are possible to the faithful man who understands the value of time”; on the same page, he admits that “Charles H. Spurgeon is the exception to this rule, for this generation; with a membership of 4,000 souls, with the charge of a theological school, a religious magazine and a dozen missions of charity (and tormenting twinges of the gout besides), he cannot be expected to visit eight or nine hundred families.”

It was a relief to this author to have the exception made, for he has an almost equal church membership, a theological school eight times as large, a larger magazine, about the same missions of charity; but, thanks be to God, he is free from “twinges of the gout”: And, yet, though his feet are perfect and his health the best, he has not found it possible, in recent years, to make anything like an annual visit to the members of his flock.

However, we do consent to the extreme desirability of such visitation up to the limit of one’s ability, and we remember the appropriateness and even believe in the application of the text, “For the Good Shepherd knoweth His sheep; He calleth them all by name.”

Even the overworked pastor should not fail at essential points.—When his people are sick he should see them; when death invades a home he should be there; when public disgrace falls upon any member of a house or family he should be present to counsel,—his presence and counsel should be immediate and sympathetic; when financial disaster, poverty, and want overtake them, they should be clearly conscious of his sympathy and effort at assistance.

Just as Jesus Christ came “not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” so the pastor’s first duty should be, not to the healthy, but to the sick; not to the happy, but to the troubled; not to the abundantly blessed, but to the bereft; not to the householder of plenty, but to those of poverty.

Jesus Christ had a veritable affinity for sinners, sick people, and the Satanic-possessed; They represented to Him an opportunity, and He failed them not. In that, the Master is the minister’s example.

PASTORAL PAINS WILL BE REPAID His house-going will produce church-goers.—First of all there is a certain amount of social civility that leads even the obtuse to feel that they ought to return a visit, and brings the socially sensitive to a clear conviction of duty in the matter.

Again, when a pastor has, by pastoral visitations, established with one of his church homes, a personal acquaintanceship with the members of the family, and especially when he can call them by name, a sense of companionship is strengthened, and the interest in the pastor’s personality and the church problems is the easy product.

Theodore Cuyler says, “Congregations are built up externally by thorough pastoral work, and then they are built up internally by a thorough setting-forth of Bible truth.”

Beyond question, these two phases of pastoral work involve mutual approval and contribute to the church progress.

It is a bit difficult for the ordinary man in the pew to feel the same interest in what the preacher is saying, when there is no personal acquaintanceship between the speaker and the hearer. It is certain that those who come into the pew, can never feel that the pastor is consciously dealing with their problems, or deliberately attempting to help in their solution if there be no acquaintance. Mutual acquaintanceship, then, is a prime factor in making the pulpit a successful and sympathetic instructor of the pew. The expression of personal sympathy and counsel tends to increase attendance.—Pastoral visitation alone affords opportunity to voice the one, and proffer the other. That layman who said, “The sermon always sounds better to me on Sunday when I have had a shake of my minister’s hand during the week,” was voicing this fact. As a matter of experience, I can bear my testimony that those members of my church with whom I have established an intimate friendship, to whom I have gladly gone when they were in trouble, and who have come to me with equal willingness when they felt themselves in need of counsel, have uniformly been my best hearers and most intelligent co-laborers.

Such personal fellowship makes for lasting friendship.—It is doubtful if the average preacher realizes the high esteem in which the average layman holds his friendship. It is my judgment that of all the friendships created in this world, one of the most intimate and prized is what truly great laymen often make with their ministers.

John B. Farwell was my loved and esteemed friend, for some years when I was pastor in Chicago, and later when I had come to the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, I seldom spent an hour with him, or any portion thereof, without his referring with pleasure and pride to his intimate fellowship with Dwight L. Moody. It was equally true of B. F. Jacobs and Dr. George Lorimer. They were spiritual pals.

It is my candid conviction that of all the experiences of John Wanamaker’s life, his most prized was that of his relation with J. Wilbur Chapman; and of all the experiences of John B. Farwell’s life, his most appreciated was that of his co-labors with Dwight L. Moody; and of Jacob’s life was that of fellowship in service with George Lorimer. What friends! How faithful! How affectionate! How effective!

Possibly the richest return that ever comes to a true pastor is the friendship of those beautiful godly men and women, who give themselves to him and his great endeavors in unlimited love and unstinted labor. The Preaching Will BE Thereby Re-enforced An admiring hearer is always an excellent listener.— “Love thinketh no evil.” A few mornings since I introduced to my students John H. Leslie, my Senior deacon in the Calvary Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois (1893-’97). I said facetiously, “This man never saw any faults in me; he backed me always,—right or wrong—it made no difference; he believed me to be right!” That facetious remark expressed an absolute fact.

Only the man who knows you well, who has had intimate companionship with you, comes to believe in you after that manner, and consequently to receive practically every sentence that falls from your lips without suspicion. When once such a mutual understanding is established, you can preach the plainest and most pungent truths to that man, and even though you deal with his frailties, he will accept what you say with good grace, and even gratitude.

I have a good many letters from men who tell me they are fundamentalists and on that account they are unpopular, the people will not receive the truth, and they are thereby compelled to move to a new pastorate. Will I help them? It is a rare thing that I take any stock in the statement. The preaching of truth is not, and never has been a particularly popular procedure, but the man who incites in the minds and hearts of his people an affection for him, can smite their sins and they will not only receive what he says, with grace, but in their innermost souls feel to him a debt of gratitude for his faithfulness. In three instances in the last thirty-eight years of this pastorate I have had men, who were my intimate friends in official relation, part company over questions of administration, and quit my membership; but in every instance those men remained among my admirers. One of them humbly but gladly returned to the fold, and the other two have never failed me in their affection or service, when called upon to manifest the same.

We are not only to preach the truth in love, but we are to win the respect and love of our members, and then they will take the plainest truth, and the most corrective counsel without complaint. The pastoral visit affords opportunity of Evangelism. —We hear a good deal in these days about the private ministry of the Gospel, and some speak of it as if it were a novelty in church progress. Not at all! At Pentecost, Peter was the speaker of the day, and his public address produced profound conviction. The private ministry of the 119 others, who had spent with him ten days in the Upper Room won the enormous number of converts, and the 2,500 accessions to the church.

There is need of a public ministry, and there is a crying need of the private ministry. The man, therefore, who has preached on Sunday, has not completed his labors. He may have produced conviction for sin, but to follow it with the pastoral visitation is often to fasten the nail in a sure place of the heart.

Dr. Theodore Cuyler tells us that he once spent an evening in what seemed a vain endeavor to bring a fine young man to decision for Christ. Just as he was leaving, this young man invited him up to the nursery to see his beautiful children. As he went around and looked at them as they lay, peacefully sleeping in their cribs, Dr. Cuyler said: “Do you mean that these sweet children shall never have any help from their father to get to heaven?” The arrow struck his heart. A month later he became a member of the church, and forever afterwards he was glued to the pastor and steadily glorified God. The pastoral visitation is not merely the performance of a social function; it offers the greatest opportunity for personal evangelism.

Finally, Pastoral visitation results in cooperation.— For every hour spent in the same there will come back two and more from the family visited.

Paul writes, “Love never faileth.” No one knows the truth of that statement better than the pastor who has won the affection of his people.

Henry Van Dyke says, “The crown of love is service.” Pastoral visitation, then, is an investment that brings a large interest return. With the rarest exceptions, the long and successful pastorates have been characterized by the true meaning of “episcopos.” The pastor has had an oversight of the entire flock, and has made the membership to feel his abiding interest and his unflagging affection.

It is in such churches that the most souls have been saved; the best buildings have been erected; the most money has been contributed to missions; out from which the most young men and women have gone to the direct service of the Lord. In fact, in such churches, and in such only, has the work been at once both glorious and great.

O. P. Gifford quoted Charles Spurgeon as saying to his people, “As for me, I beg a special interest in your prayers, that I may be sustained in the tremendous work to which I am called. A minister must be upheld by his people’s prayers, or what can he do? When a diver is on the sea-bottom he depends upon the pumps above, which send him down air. Pump away, brethren, while I am seeking the Lord’s lost money among the timbers of this old wreck. I feel the fresh air coming in at every stroke of your prayer pump, but if you stop your supplications, I shall perish.”

Then Gifford commented,—“The heart of the church throbs in the pulse of the pastor. If that beat strong and high, he is mighty; if that be feeble, he is weak.” But whenever did any people fail to pray for the pastor they ardently loved? “Love never faileth.”

OUTLINE OF CHAPTER TWELVE THE PROBLEM OF PASTORAL VISITATION I. THE PLAIN DUTY IS A PRIVILEGE a.He should adopt and cultivate the custom of pastoral visitation. b.The pastor should carry on this work to the limit of his time and strength. c.Even the overworked pastor should not fail at essential points.

II. PASTORAL PAINS WILL BE REPAID a.His house-going will produce church-goers. b.The expression of personal sympathy and counsel tends to increase attendance. c.Such personal fellowship makes for lasting friendship.

III. THE PREACHING WILL BE THEREBY RE-ENFORCED a.An admiring hearer is always an excellent listener. b.The pastoral visit affords opportunity of evangelism. c.Pastoral Visitation results in cooperation.