The Ohio Independent Baptist, March 1961

IS THERE A SHORTAGE OF Ml NI STERS? t "\\ "t"< k, .le tl,e- Fo tor1a .11ly R , ,c.,, Ttn1cs tJrr1cd .1 , ) nd1cated article th.tt . )\.ln\i~ l .ln .1l.1.rn1 , er tl1e <l.ingerou ht )rt.tl !C: t)t , rudent~ for tl1e m1n1 tf)'. Our l etc tt) the eJ1tor ,, tll male a good t-.d1t ri.1.l in our o,, n mag.u1ne. Our prob– len1 in fu nd.tmental rank eem to be how t u~e .ill the , olunteer we have. ext month ,, e ma) on 1der our problem of o, er-. upply. De-.ir Editor: In last night' paper you published the lTPI a.rt1<.le on a hortage of clergymen, in "h1ch 1c v:a hov.:n that all the major de– nom1nat1ons 1n our country have a serious problem in getting enough young men co enter the ministry. " fr . Cassels gives the usual explanations that ministerial salaries are too low, and that our present n-iaterialistic outlook makes young men more anxious to make b1g money and enjoy worldly ways of l1v1ng than to serve God. " I have no dou b e that these things ex– plain pare of the problem, but they are o nly s,Tmptoms of deeper causes. When aul of Tarsus entered the service of the One he had persecuted, he did no t ask about salaries and job security, and free– dom to enjoy a worldly life. He knew he would have no salary, no security except the occasional protection of prison walls, and no fun except the holy joy of :;erving his Lord. "Our own country was not evangelized by callow seminary g raduates who asked their superintendents for hig h salaries, brick parsonages, car mileage, retirement pensions, and liberry to run to movies and swim parties. America would be like Russia today if we had h ad such spiritual leadership. "Thank God, all churches are not suffer– ing from a ministerial shortage, but are being pushed beyond their financial limits to send eager and well-trained young peo– ple to home and foreign mission fields. That is true of us Regular Baptists and local pastors of Bible-believing denomina– tions report the some situation . " one of these .{!roups has much to offer m ·nis-erial candidates in comparison with the large denominations. Our salar ies are smaller anal our parsonages poorer , and at least ,~ve Regular Baptists have no pen– sio ns to offer. either can our schools offer scholarships. ' 'More than chat, we cannot guarantee tl1at any church will call them after they have graduated or a new church call chem after they have resigned the one they had. Even our home missionaries have to win the vote of the little group that gets them for nothing, o r the missionary cannot come. 'Our foreign missionaries have it some– ~~hac bener while they are in active ser– 'Vtre. but they have no pension except a lirtle group insurance they have helped co pay for. Yet we have so many young people volunteering for service that we don't know what co do. Our schools are bulging with students, and our candidate lists for missionary service are long. '11 tl ()l 11 ) 1 I) Ii1 1 I N l) f· I 1\APTI , ·r - " ~ ' h)' 1~ this > c l,elteve ic i l)e , use: -;o<.1' Iioly l)irtt I looking for erv.ints ,,·110 have been t~1ught tl1e Bi ble 1 the very or<l of Gcxl. that hrist i the v1r– A1n-born, eternal on of God wl10 atoned for 10 o n h1 cross. We preach that men are lost and hell-bound until they are born again in a personal faith-appropria– tion of the merits of that cross. "We also preach that all Christians shou ld take up their own cross and fol– low their cru cified, risen and soon-coming Lord, and that those who have a special cal I from heaven should cou nt all chi ngs but loss and go out co preach . Hig h school and college aptitude tests mean no thing to us. They may be all right for secular jobs, but we scorn them for the ministry. Neither do we believe that parents or pastors should set their caps o n certain children and inveigle chem into the ministry. Ministers are ambassadors of Christ, and he chooses his own am– bassadorial staff! ANOTHER EVERY FAMILY CHURCH The Open D oor Baptist Church, Rev. D. W. Peltier, pastor, is another church that has taken advantage of our offer to let them have the OIB for $1.50 a year. It seems the small churches see the point the best. Yet what a blessing if some large church sent in 150 or 200 subscriptions for all homes where there is one or more active member over 18 years of age - and what a saving to them– selves! Cost too much? Not if you get envelopes and ask all who can afford it to pay for their own and then make up fo r the two or three who cannot or will no t . A church saves instead. ttl believe the parent sin is not selfish– ness, as so many teach , but unbelief. That was true in the Garden of Eden with Eve, who believed Satan instead of God ; and that is true now. " If our generatio n is more money lov– ing and fun crazy than any ocher, it is because so few churches preach the Bible as the inspired and au thoritative W ord of God and no lo nger thunder out against human rebels, "Thus saith the Lord : ' "I also believe that thousands of young men during the last 60 years have turned sadly away from their hope and desire to be ministers because their own denomina– tio na l colleges and seminaries robbed them of their faith. I have read many thou– sands of pages of the infidelity that is taught in most of the seminaries of today and cou ld give chapter and page if I had the space. "Young men are caught that the Crea– tion Record is a myth, the Fall a myth, Noah and the Flood a myth, that Abra– ham, Isaac and Jacob are mythological characters from Israel 's p re-historic past, that four to six authors wro te Genesis, at least two wrote Isaiah, and that the Four Gospels deified Jesus, while Paul utterly changed the simple mo ralizing of the great Galilean. H ow can honest young men do 1v1ttrch, 196 l anyth ing else than to drop out of the min· istry with suc h a mis-education? "Tl1ose who f1n,l a shortage of m1n1sters w;11 no t cure the situation by building million dollar semi naries, as the Metho– dists and ou thern Baptists are doi ng, to mention two of the g roups that feel thi s shortage. Neither w1ll they find it in ministerial scholarships that allow young men to go through school with almost no effort to make a living, nor in higher and higher salaries and more and more fringe benefits. "The cure is to be found in a return to the Faith of our Fathers. And by the way, that will cure a lot of the political and economic ills of our country also, and our juvenile delinquency problem. 0 -------- STEPP I NG OUT BY FAITH After 40 years of preaching we are try– ing to encourage our younger brethren by the simple relation of some of our de– cisive exper iences. Last month we told of our growing convictions that we ought to leave the Northern Baptist Convention and how hard it was to come to the point of action. Now we want to tell how at last God gave us the grace to step out by faith . The long predicted split over modern– ism did not come in the NBC with a bang. No great leader picked up a Bible and marched out with a cry for others to fol– low. Yes, Dr. Frank Norris tried some– thing like that, but he was an intruder from the South and very few followed him. Dr. Earle V. Pierce became the leader of the Fundamental Fellowship of the North– ern Baptist Convention in the early thirties ; and naturally I tended to follow this man who had helped me financially through college. His great ambition was to purge the convention of modernism. When I moved to Pella, Iowa, in 1930, I found myself strongly tied to the con– vention. My church loved Bible preach– ing, but was very loyal to the NBC pro– gram. One year our women earned 6,300 points in the reading contest, and all of tl:em took ..M issions... The young people loved the Summer Assembly and their dis– trict rallies. The de.1cons were proud of the $1,000 a year we gave to the Unified Budget, which was generous giving in those days for a church of 250 members. Then I had come to this church through con– vention channels, and it hardly seemed ethical to try to pull the church out, even if I had been foolish enough to think I could. Our older brethren will uoderstaod how heart-rending such conflicting loyalties can be. We loved our church and many of the sound state pastors, many missionaries too, especially that giant from Assam ( 6' 6") I had led them to support - George Supplee. Yet we loved Christ and his truth more th an men , and began to grav– itate toward the Iowa Christian Fundamen– tals Association and its Bible conferences. There we discovered that the "fighting fundamentalists" were in the main loving, happy men, while we convention funda-