“Hireling!” A sour epithet to hand a preacher; but the word is not
mine. Look at it, if you will, in its original setting and judge for
yourself:
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own
the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and
fleeth.... The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth
not for the sheep.”
So spake the Man of Sorrows, who, as he went about preaching the Gospel
of the Kingdom, spake as never man spake. And nineteen centuries
of unbroken Christian usage look down upon “pastor and flock” as an
almost perfect characterization of preacher and parish. Passing quickly
through the gateway leading up to the porch of my tale, let me in a few
words taken from “Town and Country Church in the United States,” set
before you the pastor-and-flock-hard-luck story in rural America:
“The total number of communities within the town (town refers to places
of 5,000 people or less) and country area is 73,230.”
“There are 33,808 communities, or 42 per cent. of the total number,
that have churches, but do not have within them any resident pastors.”
“It would require 34,181 more ministers giving their full time to the
work of the ministry to provide one for each community, if they were
evenly distributed.”
“The great advantage of the town over the village, and of both town
and village over the country, in the matter of resident pastors, is
a characteristic of all regions and of virtually all counties. Thus,
while 78 out of every 100 town churches have resident pastors, and 60
out of every 100 village churches, only 17 out of every 100 country
churches have them, and less than 5 out of every 100 country churches
have full-time resident pastors.”
In a nutshell, this is the inglorious fact: 30,000 flocks in rural
America have no shepherds. Thirty thousand rural flocks are open to
the wolf--because (for it so appears) American preachers care not for
country sheep.
_Sentenced to Purgatory_
An eminent rural-life leader a few weeks ago came back from a
country-life conference of rural ministers, reporting that these
ministers had a saying among them, “A country charge (pastorate) is a
sentence to purgatory.”
This report sounds like a piece of clerical humor; grim, maybe, but
harmless and meaning nothing. Would to God this were true! Then perhaps
the picture of these 30,000 shepherdless flocks might turn out to
be only a nightmare. I tried to shake the thing out of my mind; but
immediately the long line of my ministerial acquaintances passed
unwillingly before me; and I solemnly affirm that, with a few princely
exceptions, these men after being plunged into their ministry, coming
up for air, as it were, faced toward the city parish as flowers turn
toward the light; from the country, they struck out for the village;
from the village, they struck out for the town; from the town, they
struck out for the city; from the city, they struck out for the
metropolis.
_The Preacher’s Flight_
The more I struggled to free myself from a conclusion on this matter,
the deeper into conviction I sank. I recalled, much against my
inclination, a bad half-hour several years ago at the headquarters of
one of the great religious bodies of America. The occasion was the
meeting of the National Social Service Commission of that denomination.
I had just finished reading a report, which expressed the idea that we
might look forward to the day when country parishes would be put up
in packages containing people enough supporting one church, so that
churches in the country would be as powerful, ministers in the country
would be as influential, as city churches, on the one hand, and city
ministers on the other. A captain of city industry was a member of the
commission. During my paper, hands in pockets, he paced the floor up
and down--somewhat to my discomfiture as I recall. When I concluded
reading, he broke out with:
“Bosh! All bosh! The country church will always be of little account.
It gets culls for ministers--it always has; it always will. Just as I
left the farm for the city to improve my lot, so every country minister
who can will leave the country parish for the city parish to improve
his lot.”
That I suffered a shock as if by lightning may easily be imagined. The
steel-blue tone of this man did something to my heart; did something to
my faith in human nature hard to define. This captain of industry--and
I suspect that this is what did the damage--never seemed to question
the legitimacy of the preacher’s flight. Representing, as he did, the
leading laymen of his denomination, quietly accepting the exodus of
country preachers as perfectly normal--because running true to the
economics of good business instinct--he appalled me with his cynicism.
And it took me many a month, I confess, to get back my belief in
humankind. But it came back, and came back strong in the following
manner:
_Around the Glover’s Cot_
By accident, one summer, I made a find; in one of the 30,000 pastorless
parishes, a man lying prone on a cot; the cot standing on a stone-boat;
the stone-boat lying close to a deep pool in the bend of a little
river, in the shade of a great elm-tree; the man all alone, flat on his
back, silently whipping the trout-pool with his fly. I came to believe
in this helpless fisherman, and again all things good and beautiful
seemed possible. I got the story from his sister, but can give only
hints of it here.
As a boy on the farm he had made up his mind to get an education. At
sixteen he was looking forward impatiently to beginning his courses
of study, when one day in the woods a tree which the men folks were
cutting down fell on him and broke his back. He never walked again,
nor, in fact, ever again sat up. Doomed to lie on his back, all his
hopes blighted, he asked for something to do with his hands. They gave
him needle and thread, shears and a piece of buckskin. He made a pair
of clumsy buckskin gloves. He made a less clumsy pair. He made pair
after pair, better and still better. Then dozens of pairs, until his
skill built up a small business. But his ambition mounted with success,
and he asked whether he couldn’t study something.
“Can’t I study law?” he pleaded.
They got him law-books. He read law, he made buckskin gloves; he
made gloves, he read law. He was admitted to the bar. He became
justice-of-the-peace in his backwoods settlement. Men got to coming
for miles to the glover’s cot to tell their troubles and look into his
deep eyes, hear his counsel, and feel his glad hand. He was a real
peacemaker under the guise of a lawyer. His ethics backed up to and
rested upon the Sermon on the Mount. He bought land, hired it tilled,
built himself a better house, and settled into the character of a
country squire. He was of the little church flock, and the rest of the
flock came to set great store by his good sense, his wholesome cheer,
indomitable activity, and, withal, his straight reliance on God. In
fact, the helpless glover’s dwelling was the meeting-place for the
flock about as often as the church building; for everybody said, “We
get new strength to keep a-going when we meet around the cot.”
_The Modern Wolf a Playful Cub?_
See how I got back my faith? The prone fisherman on his stone-boat was
a godsend to me. I saw that personal life is so rich that no one can
be broken in body to the point where, in case he “layeth down his life
for the sheep,” he will be making a mean gift. I half suspect that God
raises up out of the ground, as it were, in many of these pastorless
communities a proxy for the parson that, beholding the wolf, leaveth
the sheep and fleeth to the city--a proxy, like the glover-lawyer, who
is no quitter. And in some parishes where the preacher still sticks
(his face set, however, toward the city) I fancy a man or a woman or a
child can be found who is naïvely scaring off the wolf.
Norris Shepardson was such a man. Farmer, poet, refined spirit, he
went about his work making everybody believe that a new day is fresh
from God. Ambrose Brimmer, a member of the community, didn’t happen
to be much of a churchman, and his Sunday haymaking teased the parson
mightily. I remember well one perfect trout day, when Ambrose was
showing me the holes in a stream strange to my rod, that we got to
talking about preachers.
“I don’t care a damn if the parson does see me haying on Sunday,” said
Ambrose; “but if I get a sight of Norris Shepardson driving up the
road, I skedaddle and hide, you bet! You know Norris Shepardson. Well,
Norris Shepardson is a Christian and no quack.”
And Ambrose was right. Norris Shepardson was a Christian from his
eyelashes to his finger-tips; and his sweet belief in you put you
straightway under obligation to goodness when he cast a glance your way.
It is probably true that I have been something of a modern-life fan.
But when I try to think of the Master’s parables of the shepherd, the
sheep, and the wolf, and of the one sheep that was lost while the
ninety and nine were safe in the fold, I confess that I am troubled
about my modern-life philosophy.
Are modern sheep any the less in need of a downright shepherd because
they are modern?
Isn’t there a wolf any longer in times that are modern? Or may he
perhaps be just a playful cub? Or possibly, by this time, a toothless,
plain, doddering beastling?
Has the age of lofty heroism in religion--the age of sheer contempt
of some of the traditional goods of life--clean passed away? And does
economics furnish the better clue in modern days to those who are
called of God to preach?
Do we need any 30,000 more preachers in the country trenches? Do we
need any shock troops at all? Isn’t it perfectly orthodox pacifism in
these days for all the picked soldiers in the war on the devil to fall
back into comfortable winter quarters?
_Side-stepping the Law of Hire_
I try to find my answer to these troubling queries in a glance down
the centuries. There are the barefoot Black Friars of Dominic and the
Gray Friars of Francis of Assisi (him who took poverty for his bride)
in the thirteenth century. They gloried in mean clothes, mean shelter,
mean food, as they ministered out of their own poverty to the poor,
the overlooked, the no-accounts (in cities, then, because the troop of
comfortable parsons were fattening in the popular country districts).
There are the visionaries and enthusiasts: John Bunyan in the
seventeenth century; John and Charles Wesley in the eighteenth. In the
very face of the plentiful, complacent clergy, they fought the wolf as
if they had been apostles living in the first century.
There is Jean Frederick Oberlin, in the early part of the nineteenth
century, who protested, “I do not wish to labor in some comfortable
pastoral charge where I can be at ease. I want a work to do which no
one else wishes to do, and which will not be done unless I do it.”
Oberlin had just won his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the
University of Strasburg, at a time when Strasburg was a city of France.
His “call” to pastoral duty came all of a sudden with the wind of a
February evening rushing in at the door as a stranger stepped into
the bare room. Struck with the poverty of the place, Pastor Stuber
introduced himself. Beard’s translation from the French presents us
with the picture:
“I have learned about you, Herr Oberlin. Your name has been mentioned
to me as one who does not follow the beaten paths of ministerial
candidates. You have studied surgery and medicine. You have a knowledge
of botany and herbs. Is this not so?”
“In my leisure hours I have paid some attention to botany, to
blood-letting, and the experiences of the anatomical room,” replied
Oberlin.
“Will you be kind enough to explain to me what this little pan means
that I see here by your lamp?” asked Stuber.
A deep blush ran over Oberlin’s face. “Pardon the cooking, Herr Pastor.
I take my dinner with my parents, and I bring away some bread which my
mother gives me. At eight o’clock I put this little pan over my lamp,
place my bread in it, with a little water and salt. Then I go on with
my studies.”
“You are my man!” exclaimed Stuber, rising from his chair. “You live on
the diet of Lacedæmon. Yes, you are my man. I see you do not understand
me; but I have got my man, and I shall not let you go. I want you for
the pastorship of Waldbach in the Ban-de-la-Roche. There a hundred
poor and wretched families in want of the bread of life; four or five
hundred to shepherd and to save, poor, wretched, friendless.”
Oberlin’s heart was in a tumult. This was just the field of labor he
had wished. But what of the difficulties?
“The parish must be in a very cold region,” suggested Oberlin.
“My dear Oberlin, I do not wish to exaggerate anything. Six months of
winter; at times the cold of the Baltic; sometimes a wind like ice
comes down from the mountain-tops above; the sick and dying are to be
visited in remote, wild, solitary places in the forests.”
“And the parishioners, are they well disposed?” inquired Oberlin.
“Not too much so, not too much. They are frightfully ignorant and
untractable, and proud of their ignorance. It is an iron-headed people,
a population of Cyclops.”
Oberlin was taking in the situation. He slowly lifted his large blue
eyes and asked: “You say most of the parishioners are extremely poor?
Are there resources to aid the poor?”
“The parishioners have nothing. Four districts even poorer than the
mother parish are to be served. Not a single practicable road. Deep
mud-holes among the cabins. The people, abandoned to indifference, have
not the least concern to meliorate their condition.”
“Every one of your words has knocked at the door of my heart like the
blows of a hammer,” said Oberlin. And it was settled that Oberlin would
go to the mountains; and on March 30, 1767, in his twenty-seventh year,
Oberlin arrived at Waldbach.
No single piece of literature equals the story of Jean Frederick
Oberlin’s pastorate in the Ban-de-la-Roche as an interpretation of
a country minister’s social, economic, and religious relation to
his parish. Overture after overture came to him during the years to
give up his laborious cares in the hills and take charge of a church
where cultured life would bring with it superior advantages, greater
recognized honor, and a satisfactory salary. His answer was the same to
all:
“No, I will never leave this flock. God has confided this flock to me.
Why should I abandon it?”
And in that out-of-the-way parish he played the shepherd and the man
for nigh on to sixty years. Like the Venerable Bede in the eighth
century, he died with the shepherd’s crook in his hand.
_Preachers’ Alibis Pass Inspection_
Now tell me, was Oberlin--remember he is only a hundred years
away from our time--temperamental and absurdly heroic? Was the
nineteenth-century wolf any less tender with the nineteenth-century
flock than the first-century wolf with the first-century flock? Is
the modern “world-the-flesh-and-the-devil” just a bugaboo to frighten
children? Is modern sin a whiter stain on the soul and more easily
washed out than in any previous century? It would take a braver man
than I am to champion modern life to such lengths.
These 30,000 runaway American preachers,--they all have good reasons
for running. As alibis go, they are perfect--humanly speaking. I have
often heard the recital: “Easier life for the wife,” “education for
the children,” “an American standard of living,” “congenial parish,”
“books,” “travel,” “art,” “greater opportunity for service.”
Just such reasons as bankers, clerks, teachers, merchants give for
their economic movements--to better themselves, following the law of
hire. And nobody protests; for nobody is in a position to protest, as
the law of hire seems to regulate the life of all. The protest--the
only great protest--comes everlastingly up from the first century:
“A certain scribe came, and said unto Him, Master, I will follow Thee
whithersoever Thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not
where to lay his head.”
_The Plight of Him Who Stays_
The preacher that sticks by the farm community takes pot-luck with the
farmer himself; and the socio-economic plight of the farmer has had
front-page head-lines since the time of President Theodore Roosevelt.
To-day, in the time of President Calvin Coolidge, those head-lines have
become bigger and blacker. The farmer’s dollar, meanwhile, has become
small and weak. His taxes have risen overnight like a spring freshet.
His debts stare him in the face. His children are forsaking him for the
high wages and high life of the city. He cannot pay the wages of labor
in competition with automobile factories.
The farmer’s social system in America has broken down under the strain
of new forces. He needs the social help of men and women who will
share his life, his privations, his hopes and fears. But they are to
be men and women who see the farmer’s plight and, giving themselves
to the task, struggle to organize a modern rural social system. It is
fruitless here to recite the tale of an underpaid country clergy, with
its sequel of a socially visionless, untrained set of honest parsons;
fruitless to point out how denominational strife has cut down the
preacher’s salary to less than a living wage. True, the country parson
has his poverty, and needs not to take any extra “vow of poverty.” This
sort of thing will go on and on until there is a right-about on the
part of those preachers who flee the country as if it were the plague.
Strong men of social vision, men who have come to understand the
farmer’s social and economic plight, must turn their back on the city,
and take up labors for the country flock.
_A New Type of Training School_
But will there ever be such a right-about-face of virile, holy men
until we have in America a new type of theological seminary for the
training of country-bound ministers of Christ? I doubt it. The present
schools of training are city-set, city-wise, city-satisfied; not but
that a score or more of them give some “rural courses”; not but that a
trickle of men has started already from them toward the country. You
can better understand the case if I were to ask what hope there would
have been for agricultural science, if total reliance had been placed
upon the great city universities, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago,
Pennsylvania, to develop the practice of farming. Each of these
universities has already made some notable contribution to agriculture
in one form or another; but the great hope of agriculture lay in a
farming college, and fortunately, the common sense of this country
perceived this truth.
In like manner, the hope of the rural ministry, in my estimation,
lies in a rural theological seminary under the eaves of one of our
great colleges of agriculture--preferably a college of agriculture
in close proximity to a great state university. Here is the farmer’s
intellectual center. Here are gathered men and women of hope for farm
life. Here are the men and women who have social vision for rural
society. In touch with these men and women, under the spell of the
intelligent hope for the American farm and farmer, a school of religion
can grow up which will train men to go into the country and help redeem
it from its present social chaos. They can carve out community churches
of distinction. They can create a line of such churches, wholly in
rural territory, which will furnish steps of promotion for the most
strenuous and ambitious pastors. Flight is not the cure of the plight
of country parsons. The cure is rather intelligent consecration to the
country flocks.