Congregational administration

Preface

The following lectures, published substantially as they were delivered, attempt to state sympathetically and constructively the principles of the Congregational polity with reference to present phases and problems. Attention is not turned upon the past. The Scriptural deduction of our principles and the story of our historic development have been given repeatedly. These lectures, while consistent with the past, desire to serve immediate conditions and emergencies in our church life. We are in no little confusion, such as always attends progress. There are earnest inquiries and disagreements among us respecting methods of procedure. Reorganizations in the interest of closer ranks and united action are proceeding in many parts of the land, and as well in oversea Congregationalism. We are feeling our way toward the better thing. That there is a better thing and that we can and must achieve it large numbers of us are convinced. The Congregational churches in large majority seem intent upon becoming the Congregational Church.

Our problem is that of an efficient democracy, how to organize an effective union without overriding or fettering personal and local liberty; or, in the words of Mr. John Fiske, "the task of combining indestructible union of the whole with indestructible life in the parts." 1 It is, moreover, 1 Beginnings of New England, p. 48.

how to do this in our Congregational way, how to make our own peculiar contribution to modern development in both Church and State. With local independence we are perfectly familiar; of union of the whole we are still not a little ignorant and afraid. Upon that union, however, in some wise form, we are resolved, answering the charge of inefficiency and defeat, and responding to the call of modern organized life to unflagging zeal and grander enterprise. The mission of Congregationalism — whether in other hands or ours — to human progress is still great and long. The service of our own body of churches is believed to be far from complete. Our augmented resources, personal and material, have overtaxed the old methods of service, and are waiting half inactive to be marshaled afresh. The new ways, so far from being less than denominational, are taking interdenominational, national and international proportions. Many-voiced and sharp is the challenge to enlarged administration for mightier movements afield.

Charles Sumner Nash.

Berkeley, California, August i, 1909.

Contents

Lecture Page

L Essential Congregationalism i

II. Ministerial Leadership 35

II

In our Congregational theory the Church is first of all, composed of ordinary men and women who love our Lord Jesus Christ and unite for service in his name. This theory, as held in completeness and consistency by us, distinguishes our polity. Out of the Church comes the specialized ministry of religion. Needing instructors and leaders, the Church lays hands on a sufficient number and puts them forth. They in turn are evermore responsible to the Church and depend upon her for opportunity and resources. The Church is first, the ministry second and subordinate.

In practical administration, however, the ministry leads. Scarcely an individual church anywhere is organized apart from its Primacy of agency. The machinery of the Leadership Kingdom is in its hands even to an unfortunate degree. This leadership of a class of men is inevitable and not to be deplored. No more than the State, can the Church prosper save by competent and devoted leaders. The primacy of leadership among practical problems of administration needs emphasis, but not argument. Mr. John R. Mott, in his latest volume, "The Future Leadership of the Church/' is saying, "Wherever the Church has proved inadequate, it has been due to inadequate leadership.

. . . The failure to raise up a competent ministry would be a far greater failure than not to win converts to the faith, because the enlargement of the Kingdom ever waits for leaders of power. ... To secure able men for the Christian ministry is an object of transcendent, urgent, and world-wide concern. It involves the life, the growth, the extension of the Church — the future of Christianity itself/' *

At the present moment we Congregationalists — and others with us — are convicted of remissness and consequent weakness on this principal point. Our problem of leadership is affecting to an alarming degree our whole enterprise. It has been for some years a low time with regard to our ministry. Full ranks of young men have not been coming. Too few of the best equipped men have come. We are painfully aware of a low conception of the ministry among college students. The phases and causes of this situation have been much in print, and are freshly given in Mr. Mott's volume. There are this year encouraging signs that the tide will make in again, but it is too soon to predict this with assurance.

Primary responsibility for its leadership rests upon the Church. It may not be discharged upon The Church Pri- the ministry, nor upon the mariiy Responsible young men in colleges, nor even upon the Christian home. This mighty institution named the Church, whose existx The Future Leadership of the Church, pp. 3, 4.

ence, prosperity and usefulness absolutely depend, under God, upon its leadership, should maintain measures adequate to insure that leadership. Its best agency for this is the Christian home. At this time the Church and the home are not furnishing the conditions and motives which, when present, will always carry a sufficient number of their sons into the ministry. That vocation is now discredited in the minds of great numbers of Christian parents and church-members, and hence inevitably in the minds of the boys and young men. Mr. Mott's unequaled observation leads him to testify that increasing numbers of Christian parents and church-members in the evangelical churches generally do not care to have their sons enter the ministry, are not thinking them prayerfully on in that direction, but are actively turning them toward other vocations. This atmosphere cannot be kept negative, leaving young men unaffected to reach an unbiased decision. Indeed, there is little scruple about making it affirmative and influential. Until it is corrected the best hope tarries. Until the ministry is restored to its sacred place in the regard of church-members and parents, no formal measures can contend successfully for recruits. Nor is there any correction of this state of things save by what the psychologists are calling reeducation. The mind of the Church and the home, now working too habitually away from the ministry, must be restored to a favorable habit. It is a case for mental and spiritual healing — disclaiming the technical meaning of the phrase.

But now, having laid this obligation where it fundamentally belongs, upon the Church as an Ministry Mainly institution, upon Christians and Responsible church-members in general, upon parents and teachers and church officers in particular, I feel like throwing it specifically upon the ministry itself. When you are not theorizing, but urging practical measures, you have to say that in every department of human activity results depend upon the leaders of action. Theirs is the prime responsibility for the long working of cause and effect. The ministry of the Church is definitely responsible for its own numbers and quality. The reeducation of the Church and the home on this subject is its task. And prior to that it has to rectify its own state of mind. For at the present time the ministry is not warmly accrediting and sustaining its own craft, is not exalting its own vocation, is not crying with an exultant challenge to the 3^>ung men, including its own sons. Here as elsewhere statements must be careful, and the appeal is to your general observation. On that basis, and on suggestive evidence appearing time by time in our religious journals, are we not within bounds in saying that there is in the minds and homes of ministers themselves wide-spread reluctance to have their own sons follow them?

Mr. Mott says : "Even ministers and their wives, in an increasing number of cases, are not encouraging their sons to consider this calling. Far too frequently they positively discourage such serious consideration/' * If this is true, there is much to be said in palliation and even justification of special cases ; there is also much to be said to the Church about suffering such a state of things, such treatment of its leaders, as would justify any number of them in reaching this state of mind. But my contention at this moment is this, that such a minister, or such a group of ministers, is both unfit and unwilling to lead other men's sons into the ministry, unfit and unwilling to reeducate the Church and the home on the subject The case must remain lean and unhopeful so long and so far as the ministers of Christ remain heavy-laden and dispirited with their task, so far as they judge it by its incidentals, so far as its great visions fail them!, so far as they cannot lay upon their own sons first and then on others a hand of joy unspeakable and full of glory. ^ \

And now — for we are in the domain of administration — it is urged that Congregational-

istS Should take constructive Adequate Measures

measures for sustaining their Required ministerial leadership at its highest point of efficiency. We certainly have no adequate measures at present. Far too little is being 1 Future Leadership of the Church, p. 96.

done, and most of that is volunteer effort, partial and unrelated. The Congregational denomination as such, with a national life and world-wide service, is conducting no apparatus for assuring its own permanent power through adequate leadership. It is wonderful that we fare on as well as we do. But are we not arriving at that administrative consciousness which would take earnest measures to restore conditions and develop provisions? It is time that the Congregational Church undertook its ministerial leadership in large-minded, far-reaching and patient plans.

What, then, have we to do that may be said to require so much? We have, in brief phrase, to reeducate our churches, to rectify conditions, and then to go out after the best young men in our colleges and homes.

I. First in the order of a minister's career stands his theological training. Our schools of oonsregationai theology possess the confidence

Divinity Schools f churches and ministry to a high degree. There is, of course, distressed and militant criticism; there are also better grades of the same fabric, not less firm, but inwrought with courtesy, faith and cheer. There are improvements and enrichments always due in theological training. It is desirable that these be pressed upon the seminaries, for vested interests incline to slow down into security and comfort. But criticism and impulse are in no danger of failing from the ecclesiastical earth.

What, then, should our churches, as organized into a branch of the Church of Christ, do for and with the seminaries? The question of denominational control, perhaps, comes first to mind. There is excellent historical counsel on this subject. It is vital to both churches and seminaries to enjoy unreserved intimacy together. The mutual benefits are too obvious for rehearsal. The seminaries draw their life from the Church and the Kingdom, and exist solely to serve these. Administrative control by the organized churches is logical and practical, even in Congregationalism ; its absence looks strange to many eyes, but this also is very Congregational. Local autonomy here does not imperil great interests, while it makes for that priceless thing, the freedom of the truth. Advance has come and must come through the fearless pioneering of men who grow used to the wide horizon. But, short of control, the association of churches and ministers with the theological schools should be perfect, promoted on both sides with perseverance and love. Each should offer the other all possible service. Each should be sure of the other's readiness. The active exchange should be continuous and whole-hearted.

Given intimate association and sturdy criticism, there is but one further requisite for assuring continuous improvement increasea and adaptation in our ministerial Endowments training. That one essential is ample resources.

The same old cry, to be sure, simply because there is no other cry and no adequate response to this one. The required advances in training none see more sanely or desire more ardently than our seminary faculties and trustee boards. Give them power to do always the better thing, and they will do it; any timorous or indolent reluctance is easily overcome.

Down to almost the present hour in Congregational administration, financial action has been entirely local, individual and voluntary. A better day has dawned. Witness our scheme of proportionate benevolence, here at last and here to stay. We are reducing to system the use of money in the service of God; the day of sentimental disorder is declining. Into this process our theological institutions should be admitted. Endorsement of the seminaries by the National Council and other denominational bodies as conspicuous parts of our machinery requiring provision adequate to extreme efficiency would sound an urgent note in the ears of our generous givers. Enormous gifts go annually into education. No proper proportion of these is for theological education. If one or two of our seminaries are amply endowed through private generosity, the rest are straitened and strained well-nigh to the breaking point. Our churches want the finest young men out of the best equipped colleges of the land. They cannot have them unless they enable their professional schools to equal, in their own department, the amplitude, the freedom, the pedagogical quality to which the young men have become accustomed in the colleges. The lack at present is not in the methods in vogue in our theological halls, nor in the men who labor there ; it is in the financial inability of these alert and eager men to develop the methods.

II. Considering conditions in the ministry which need attention and repair, the first is that of the minister's salary. This is doubtless to salaries be regarded as the lowest thing of all but it canno be belittled out of sight. Recently the Rev. Jonathan Hardup and his friends have been expressing breezy and not at all sordid opinions in our religious papers. The National Council at its Cleveland meeting passed an earnest resolution that better financial support of the ministry be urged upon the churches. Several important articles during recent years in our magazine literature have discussed this factor in the situation; none so frankly and justly as Mr. Mott's volume, to which frequent reference is being made in this lecture. The cost of education for the ministry and of living as ministers must live, is steadily increasing. The special demands upon the parson's purse are not only greater than formerly, but greater in proportion to his income than upon any other person in the community. His salary has not risen proportionately; in many communities it has declined. "Thousands of ministers receive stipends which amount to less than the wages of day laborers/' Nor is the meager salary always paid promptly, while some of it is never paid. This financial injustice constitutes a main deterrent from the ministry. It acts upon the young men themselves, and still more forcibly upon their parents. But it were well if the churches could understand hozv it acts. It is no matter of shrewd commercial calculation. In this question are involved high interests and sacred values, such as a minister's financial integrity and standing in the community, his personal growth by means of books and meetings and travel, his mental ease and freedom for the high levels whereon lies the significance of religious work, his ability to create and sustain a home, the education of his children, his provision for sickness and old age. All these and other things belong inherently to manhood; they are human, not merely professional. And being human, they are not to be nullified by professional conditions.

Now the rub comes at the point of discovery that these financial conditions of the ministry are wrong unnecessary and morally wrong,

conditions Neither consecrated young men nor their parents are afraid of poverty. Ministers who are worth while do not abandon the ministry through love of money. Necessary and fruitful sacrifice commands as much heroism as ever. But the current financial conditions of the ministry are not necessary, and submission to them is ceasing to be heroic. "Men," says Mr. Mott, "are not less heroic than of old; but they have knowledge and discernment, and they see that it is not poverty, but carelessness and selfishness that dictate the financial provision for many ministers to-day." 1 This means that the pastor's work may lie among men and women who will discredit him in advance for accepting an unworthy and ineffective situation, who will be by so much less accessible to the high impulses which he brings, who will, worst of all, be so far forth themselves unfit toconstitute a sacrificial force for Christ and righteousness. Less wonder, in this view of the facts, that the young man shuns the barren sacrifice, and that his parents, living in a parsonage, perhaps, are sadly silent as he turns away.

The aim of this moment is less to describe this situation than to urge denominational action to correct what has grown to be a great H ow correct wrong. In the unequal local con- the wrongr ditions of our churches the difficulty cannot be conquered separately. Cooperative effort is required upon a denominational and even an interdenominational scale. Example and stimulus are given us by our English brethren. The Congregational Union of England and Wales at its meeting in May, 1909, adopted with enthusiasm a plan for raising and 1 Future Leadership of the Church, p. 93.

administering "the Central Fund for Ministerial Support" The amount to be raised is not less than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It will be vested in The Congregational Union of England and Wales, Incorporated, and be controlled by the Council of the Union in accordance with the careful terms of the Central Fund Scheme. The object is "the better support of the recognized ministry of the Union, until an adequate minimum stipend shall be secured for all accredited ministers in charge," after which the Fund shall also be available for grants to ministers temporarily without charge and ministers superannuated. The Union has taken this radical step believing "that once this primary problem is satisfactorily dealt with, the seriousness of other denominational difficulties will be largely relieved." It may be added that the Baptist body in England has formulated an equally thoroughgoing provision for ministerial support. These examples, afforded by bodies standing equally with us for local autonomy, we Congregationalists ought soon to imitate. Our primary problem is the same and calls for similar denominational action. Yet even then it will remain inadequate to repair insufficient salaries out of a national Congregational treasury. The trouble is enormously augmented by sectarianism and the financial waste in overchurched communities. We must agree with Mr. Mott's conclusion, when he says :

"Nothing is clearer than that the different Christian communions should deal thoroughly with the problem of insuring adequate salaries for their ministers, and that the various Christian bodies unitedly should agree on a policy which would do away with the unnecessary multiplication and unwise distribution of churches." * ;

III. Close to this matter of adequate salaries lies that of putting within the reach of our ministers the means of sustaining their "The Doom of mental and spiritual power. In- Leaderslli P" creased salaries, even if they came at once wherever needed, would not obviate this further requirement. The draught upon the pastor's thought and vitality is incessant and uncalculating. His sustained intellectual production is equaled by no other man in the community. His sympathies may never cease to flow, for human need holds the spigot open night and day. It is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes who says, better lose a pint of blood than have a nerve tapped. Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, in a lecture from this platform, thus presented in thrilling words "the doom of leadership" : 3

"He who has borne the burden and heat of the day learns in bitterness of soul the doom of leadership. To stand in the midst of the ecclesia, with the ordinary vicissitudes of man's life transpiring upon one's self from day to day, its variations of mental activity, its episodes of spiritual depression, its yoke of earthly care, its fettering relationships, and yet to behold a thousand souls assembled and waiting for inspiration from one soul ; to be conscious per-

x Future Leadership of the Church, p. 94.

petually of this silent demand upon one's selfhood; to know that life must be maintained at the giving point, at the point of spiritual exaltation, where influence is generated for the uplift of many souls; to look into the faces of men and women gathered in the house of God, and to see in some the hunger of expectation that must be fed, in others the absence of energy that must be supplied — that is the doom of leadership." l

Every faithful pastor is consciously living this doom; many are living it with a disheartening sense of untimely, unforeseen and unnecessary defeat. Within a few weeks a pastor in New England has been reported unable to buy a single book since his graduation from the theological school several years ago. It is a confession of gathering tragedy. The greater tragedy is found in the large numbers of such pastors dwelling amid the dulness of church-members who do not buy books themselves and do not realize the minister's need. You may find in every state numbers of pastors, not all so-called home missionaries, who, not one year, but year after year, cannot afford to attend their State Conference and often are embarrassed to attend their local Association. Again the laymen who never think of going are blind to the worth of such privileges to the pastor's brain and heart.

These are two main points among others in which our ministry suffers and declines. Corporate duty, ecclesiastical strategy and brotherly love unite in demanding organized effort to turn back this ebbing tide of power. Nor should it 1 Qualifications for Ministerial Power, p. 173.

be done with an eye solely to individual pastors, though with personal regard for each one. It must be the action of a great branch of the Church of Christ providing for its own leadership for the ends of the Kingdom. We cannot let our leaders go unnourished. We cannot afford to leave our corporate life in the hands of weak men ; and the case is worse when inherently strong men go weak through lack of sustenance than when weak men are enabled to do their best ; it is the latter situation on which the divine blessing may be expected.

If it be asked what can be done on this line, the answer is in part ready; correspondence courses of study and reading, sum- Practical mer schools or institutes, circulating Measure * libraries, pastoral tours through remote regions, such as have proved so profitable in New York State, pastoral exchanges between centers and circumference. A great body of churches administering cordially such a purpose will not be at a loss for timely measures. Pastors who are unable to buy books must be provided with them by gift or loan. Pastors whose studious opportunities were brief and habits poorly formed must be given further training. Pastors who cannot reach the stimulating atmosphere of our Congregational meetings, our large churches and our mighty cities must be brought there or have the energy of these transported to them. We cannot afford, for the sake of our

[so corporate well-being, in duty to the Kingdom, to let our leaders stop reading and learning and thinking and greeting the new morning with a cheer. Hitherto it has been almost completely left to the individual, solitary there in his isolated parish. It has been every man for himself, and when he can no longer keep the pace, Christ have mercy on him ! A beginning of better fraternity and strategy has been made. About a dozen states have arranged courses of reading which are recommended to partially trained men, but which are confessedly of small value. There are summer schools and institutes here and there, useful, but limited. Some of our seminaries earnestly try to make their resources helpful, as when Andover assembles the home missionary pastors of Massachusetts for ten days of instruction and spiritual uplift, or when Hartford invites pastors and physicians to a course of lectures on Religion and Medicine, or when Atlanta maintains continual plans which carry her influence throughout the Gulf States. In many sections surely, though I have meager reports thereon, at least a little is done to give men the privilege of attending state meetings or district congresses, or to visit the cities, touch the pulse-beat of the great churches, and catch step with the marching throng. At this moment, as often in these lectures, I find myself speaking as a westerner in eastern conditions where my words sound alien and irrelevant. Does any pastor in New.England need to be helped to a city or to a central meeting? Lacking railroad fares, he finds the walking short. In California — and to some degree in other states — we have pastors whose fares to San Francisco are from $15 to $25 each way, and the running time a night and a day. A Sunday exchange is far beyond reach; the visit of a fellow minister rarer than other theophanies. Leave such pastors to themselves, and your prayers for them ring hollow. Leave them to themselves, and your devotion to home missions, to the growth of Congregational power, to the advance of the Kingdom, lacks wisdom at a main point.

In fine, the personal welfare and industrial efficiency of our ministers through the burden and heat of the day are coming to form a chief concern of our churches. In part by increased salaries, in part by methods of intellectual and spiritual supply, we purpose to do tardy justice to those who go out under the crushing ends of our common load, we purpose to organize victory in regions where we have remained indifferent to inefficiency or defeat. The National Council, at its Cleveland meeting in 1907, projected action along several specific lines and appointed a Commission on Ministerial Education, with which our theological faculties are heartily cooperating.

IV. When we organize the case of our professional leaders, we shall not stop short of another provision, viz., that of support in sickness and old age. In this we are behind other For sickness branches of the Church — of course

and Old Age we are . ^jg j g cor p 0ra t e work,

and we have been individualists. Now we all know in what caustic language this matter can be attacked by a well-to-do individualist, and in what cold and unsympathetic words the argument can be laid against pauperizing manhood. But there stands here a problem in righteousness and brotherhood, to be solved without prejudice, with appreciation of fortitude and sacrifice in terribly stringent conditions, and with a sharp conscience of justice instead of charity.

What does the Church demand of its ministers ? Nothing, some one replies ; the young man Ministry a who enters the ministry takes his vocation own r j s k s ail( j must not complain.

Happily this is not the universal reply, and yet many of us have fallen in with it, and the age has dropped toward a commercial conception of the ministry. But God will never suffer the conception to prevail. If this matter of the Church and her leaders is a business matter, it is spiritual business. It is engaged with God upon the spirit of man. The ministry is a vocation. The Church recognizes the divine call and adjusts her call to that. The Church cannot take pleasure in that easy running in and out of the ministry of which we see lamentably much today. It is not a business or profession to be lightly assumed with a calculating eye and presently to be discarded as unprosperous. It is the highest of vocations, to be entered with a lifelong purpose and uncalculating devotion. The Church demands the entire life of her ministers, their undivided attention and their unswerving purpose unto death; and quality of ministerial work is clearly seen to be in direct proportion to such unreserved and dateless consecration. With less than this churches often put up, but the Church is never satisfied. Really providential interruptions are understood; but the Church's conception of the sacred calling stands at the ideal height, and the Church's demands upon her ministers abate nothing from the man's total gift of himself and all that he hath.

Now the Church knows well enough where this brings a minister out in old age. He has made no material provision for himself ; he could not ; the Church would not permit him; it would not even allow him normal self-preservation; he is worn out untimely, and a younger man is called to his parsonage and pulpit — "Business is business!" Oh, but our vaunted individualism has led to such heartless evictions of faithful servants and such shameless denials of corporate responsibility for our brethren! Even now, with our clearer vision, we are making no haste to rectify our action, as our state and national funds for ministerial relief pitifully show. But the better

Congrega tional A dminis tra Hon

days will come, more dutiful on our part as a church, more sustained and relieved for servants of Christ worn out in the warfare.

It is a day of old-age pensions. The British and German governments exhibit them on the largest scales, while they are seen on all sides in smaller forms. More centralized denominations than ourselves have this provision in full operation for their ministries. We must follow them, for we cannot come near meeting the case by enlarged salaries. The Central Fund Scheme of the Congregational Union of England and Wales already looks in this direction.