HOW ABOUT THE PAID MINISTRY?

In a recent meeting in the home of Bob and Mary Denney in Redondo Beach, California I had the honor of sitting with the venerable Jimmie Lovell, who lives in the same area. Jimmie, with his wife Vivian, are delightful people to be around, and it is their kind who made this country great and who give us hope for the future of the church. As editor of Action and as promoter of missions around the world, Jimmie Lovell has done far more than any other man among us to motivate our people to share the gospel with the nations of the world. One of his favorite expressions is “Use me while I live,” an attitude toward life that helps to explain his success in the business world as well as in religious endeavors. He is indeed a man of action, and he is ubiquitous along with it, having traveled upwards of two million miles by air alone. Now in his 70’s and presumably retired, he continues to be what he has always been, an inspiration to all those whose lives he touches.

Realizing that he is a man of vast experience in the life and work of the Church of Christ, I was eager to learn what he thought of the future, and especially his idea of what we should do today to make possible a better tomorrow. He emphasized the need of religion in the home, with parents teaching their children, and less stress on the Sunday School. But what impressed me the most was his answer to my question, What basic change would you make in the life of the church if it were within your power? He said that he would do away with all salaries in the church, allowing for the ministry to be carried on by laymen or those who are self-supporting. He thought a move toward a mutual ministry rather than a professional one would be a blessing to the church’s future. He suggested that a professional ministry invites a secularism and a materialism that thwarts our spiritual energies and that a return to a shared ministry would draw upon the talents of many of our people that now go unused.

That a brother of Jimmie Lovell’s experience and background would make this kind of evaluation I found most engaging. All this he said to me, talking about the church of tomorrow having no salaried ministry and exalting the potential of mutual ministry, with an apparent obliviousness to the fact that I cultivated a notorious reputation in the Church of Christ for advocating the same views. It was as if he were making off-the-cuff remarks to some professor at Pepperdine rather than to one who had been hauled off to jail for contending for the same sort of thing that he was saying. It struck me as odd, and yet it was reassuring for one of brother Lovell’s stature to be making this kind of critical evaluation regarding the church’s future.

A few days after this I was in the home of Louis and Bess Cochran in Nashville. Louis is known to our readers as the author of The Fool of God and Raccoon John Smith, and the two together are remembered as authors of Captives of the Word. It is less known among our people that Louis has written several other novels and that Bess is a writer in her own right. In our visit together the conversation somehow turned to the question of the church and its ministry. Bess revealed that she had some rather strong convictions along that line, adding that she just might have to start her own church, said facetiously of course. That was an opener for the jesting Louie, who insisted that his wife would do very well indeed as the head of a new church!

“What changes would you make, Bess, if you could make the church over your way?,” I asked. She replied that first of all she would do away with the paid ministry. I asked her why she felt this way. As the daughter of a minister she recalled the old days when preachers were dedicated, studious, and hard working, giving Saturday nights for preparation for Sunday’s sermon, all with only modest financial reward. Today it is different, she explained. Big salaries make preachers competitive for the richer churches. Preachers are more worldly than before, more concerned for things. On Saturday nights they are more likely to be out on the town than in devotional study. She told of an old minister who recounted to her that in his youth, when the preachers got together, they talked about the Lord’s work; whereas now, when they get together, they talk about what salary the various churches pay. So, Bess thinks it just as well that we be good Campbellites and think in terms of having a mutual ministry that draws upon the talents of many rather than a professional one that for some reason leads us more to the world than to God.

Lou and Bess Cochran are Disciples, so their knowledge of our skirmishes in other wings of the Restoration Movement has to come second-hand. As historians of our Movement they are aware of the issues that have been discussed, but they can hardly be expected to appreciate the ramifications of the ministry issue in the Churches of Christ. We do, after all, have several small groups of congregations that do not follow the minister system for conscience sake. With some of us it is such a crucial issue as to effect the validity of the church’s ministry.

It is interesting that in these two experiences, with Bess Cochran and Jimmie Lovell, doubts were expressed from responsible and representative thinkers from both the Disciples and the Church of Christ about a system that I have long adjudged to be the taproot of so many of our most serious problems.

I realize that Bess and Jimmie were not suggesting that all our preachers be immediately fired or that there is something scripturally or inherently wrong with a paid ministry. They were saying no more than that out of their long years of experience in the church it is apparent that something is basically wrong and that it may be in our failure to restore to the church a true priesthood of all believers. But that is saying a great deal, and it is a matter that we should give serious consideration.

Many times through the years I have recommended a policy in respect to the paid ministry that I believe would go far in correcting the abuses of “the pastor system,” and that is to support men financially only as they labor in ministering to people other than those who pay them. This means, of course, that I do believe in a paid ministry so long as the ministers are carrying the gospel to the lost and needy. Many an evil is averted if the minister is supported by people other than those to whom he preaches. What a difference it would make if each of our congregations resolved: we will gladly support men to preach the Word so long as they take it to others, but we will never pay a man to preach to us.

This would restore to a church the scriptural function of elders, who are to be teaching pastors of the flock, and it would provide for the mutual ministry implied in the scriptures. It would turn ministers out into the world as evangelists to work with weak churches or in mission fields.

It should embarrass those of us in the Restoration Movement, supposedly an effort to make all God’s people ministers, that there are others who do so much more along these lines than we do. The Quakers are known for their goodness around the world, and yet they have no professional ministry. The Mormons have far-flung missionary programs and their youth spend two years in special witness of their faith, all without anybody being on the payroll. The Plymouth Brethren have chapels all over the world, but none is ministered to by a professional.

More significant than those doubts expressed by the likes of the brother and sister mentioned above is the misgivings of the younger generation in the church, who see most ministers as products and preservers of an institutional system. Even the younger preachers are taking a second look at their “calling” as professional prayers and sermonizers, wondering if it is really scripturally, psychologically and socially valid. Some have already resolved to leave the system and make a living some other way, while others, still in college; are determined not to be caught in that ecclesiastical trap that often makes men less than honest.

Whether we should go on having a paid ministry is not so much the question as whether we are to have a valid and meaningful ministry. In Eph. 4:11-13 Paul describes the ministerial function as being “to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” The minister’s work, then, is clearly to make ministers of others. He ministers himself out of a job, so to speak, and then moves on to others who need him. Gal 6:6 seems to be saying that one who does that kind of work deserves to be rewarded financially. — the Editor.