Required reading
Discussions (Vol 2) by Robert L. Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'Pastoral letter on ministerial support'.
My summary
Today Dabney continues exhorting churches to pay their pastors.
He discusses:
(i) what is adequate support;
(ii) why insufficient salaries are given;
(iii) the testimony of the Holy Scriptures to the minister's right to a just maintenance;
(iv) the hindrance that inadequate support is to ministerial efficiency;
(v) the effects of increased secular prosperity on ministers.
What grabbed me
Another interesting chapter.
I appreciated the point that inadequate support encourages ministerial inefficiency: 'Suffer us to point out the modes in which the usefulness of ministers is herein wasted, in order that you may apprehend your own loss in it, as well as that of Christ's cause at large. It is too obvious to need remark, that when the minister is driven to secular labor for a part of his support, so much of his time is lost to the direct service of his Master. But this is not all. His energies and thoughts are divided, and the remainder of his time is less efficiently employed in his ministry. Too often secular labor, reluctantly begun under a stern necessity, forced upon him by the injustice of his people, results in the loss of studious habits, the chilling of pastoral zeal and the secularizing of the spirit. Does providence bless those secular labors with success ? Do the minister's intelligence and energy make him a prosperous teacher or farmer? That success becomes often a snare, and he grows less and less a pastor and more a man of business. Thus, too, often the finest energies have been almost lost to the church, contrary to the early intentions and wishes of the minister himself. It has been remarked with much truth, that the pastors of our church are usually found richest in those districts where the salaries are most insufficient.'
You harm yourself when you don't pay your pastor.
Next week's reading
Read 'Ecclesiastical equality of Negroes'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
No comments:
Post a Comment