D 02 -Preparation Necessary Successful

PREPARATION FOB THE MINISTRY

2. What preparation is necessary or needful for a successful ministry? Of course it is assumed that the primary preparation and essential qualification for this service is faith in God and in the gospel of Christ and a Christian experience and spirit. But our question relates to the special training for this calling, and the answer to it would vary with different denominations and is subject to modifications in exceptional circumstances and cases. Everyone, however, entering this field should get the largest preparation possible for him. This should include a regular college course and seminary training. These terms may be exacting for some, but they are the necessary price that must be paid for competency for this vocation. The standard of preparation has been greatly raised for all professions and even for mechanical trades, and the minister must rise in his equipment with this general rise in the level of intelligence and trained ability. The pulpit calls for greater general talent and more thorough specialized training in our day than ever before. Formerly the minister was the most highly, if not the only, specially educated man in the community, standing head and shoulders above his people and speaking to them in terms and tones of authority. But this day has passed, and now the preacher is only one among many, and he is speaking to many who stand on the same general level with him, and usually to a few who are his equals or his superiors in intellectual attainments. Even to hold his own with his people he must stand with them if not above them. The minister must be a man of universal education and culture, knowing every thing about one or a few things, and some thing about everything. Without this large background of knowledge he may at any moment blunder into statements disclosing some ignorance or bigotry on his part that will ex cite the criticism or ridicule or contempt of his people and damage his usefulness. The ministry has become a much larger and more complex work than formerly, and the minister must be an organizer and administrator and promoter and must know how to handle men and people of all types and temperaments, and this calls for a richly developed personality, a full-grown man. The young man entering the ministry to day should take time to get ready. The service may be short, but the preparation for it must be long. The harvest may ripen in a day and be gathered in an hour, but through weeks and months it slowly absorbed juicy sweets and ripening influences out of the soil and the shower and the sun for that golden wheat and rosy apple. A meteor burns itself out in the twinkling of an eye, but through how many millions of invisible miles did it accumulate momentum for that brief flash of splendor! A great surgeon said that if he had only three minutes for a critical operation he would take two to get ready. Jesus took thirty years of preparation for just three years of work. Young men are often impatient to get to work and take a short-cut and rush into action before they have been drilled into skill and efficiency. Many a minister has greatly lowered and injured, if not ruined, his usefulness by hurrying into the pulpit instead of going patiently through a thorough course of training. Take time and get ready. Pay the price of preparation. Lay deep foundations on which to build the structure of after years; prepare a rich soil out of which good sermons can grow. Develop a personality of poise and power that will be a perennial fountain of fresh force. The minister, above every other man, ought to be a workman that needs not to be ashamed, and such a workman must serve a full apprentice ship.