The Pulpit Speaks: October 25, 1958

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

A young man had been off to college to further prepare himself for the ministry. His father was an influential member of the church at home, and when the young man wrote to his father, informing him that he would be home for a weekend, his father arranged for him to speak at the church.

The young man was very much elated over this opportunity and sat down and wrote a beautiful sermon. He had his mind all set on how he was going to display the knowledge he had gained in college. On Saturday, his father asked him to tell about the sermon for the next day.

The young man boastfully went to his room and came back with the sermon he had written containing elements of philosophy, sociology, and literature. The father listened to the sermon unmoved. After the young man had finished, he turned to his father and asked,”Father, how do you like it?” The father reminded the young man that out behind the barn was a place where they burned trash. He admonished the young man to take the sermon out there and strike a match.

The young man was very hurt with the idea of burning his masterpiece. The father then said, “They don’t need that. Tell them of Jesus.”

This young man was typical of many of the preachers of our day and time. I am fully aware of the fact that Jesus was a social being, a political being, and an economic being, but He did not stop there. His greatest strength was not in any of these. The thing that set Him apart from everyone else was that, foremost, He was a spiritual being. Being human, He could not escape the other things but His real purpose for existence was His spiritual presentation to the world. This fact takes on a new meaning when a newspaper editor writing for the Atlanta Constitution this week accuses “the so-called Christian ministers” of being largely responsible for the current conditions of the world.

A long time ago, the celebrated poet John Milton cried out in one of his poems, “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed!” Is not this the case in too many instances today? Are not the men who should be molding the spiritual and moral well-being of the people concerning themselves far too much with the unessential things and leaving the essential things unattended?

This to me seems to be the crux of world conditions. Many of them have taken the pulpit as a place for showing off some recently gained knowledge while the knowledge of Jesus is left unattended. The “call” from God carries with it the idea of enlightening people of God. THIS AND THIS ALONE IS THE BASIC WORK OF THE MINISTER. Anything else is contributing to current world conditions. The spiritually hungry people who come to our churches Sunday after Sunday must be fed.

I had the fortunate experience of going to school where one of my classmates was the pastor of the church where the chairman of the department of sociology attended. Every time this man would find out that Dr. _________ was going to be in the congregation he would center his whole sermon around sociology. One day in class, this instructor said, “Mr. ____, I teach sociology six days a week and I probably know more sociology than you probably will ever know. When I come to your church on Sunday, I want to hear about Jesus!”

Not only was this true in this case, but it is true in many others. There are ministers throughout our land trying to teach literature, science, philosophy, sociology and the like from their pulpits when there are people in the pews who know much more about these things than the minister will ever know and who came to church to be told about Jesus.

It may seem a hard thing to say but all our current world conditions may be traced directly to the pulpit. In far too many instances, our spiritual leaders have failed to take the spiritual and moral stands demanded of them by virtue of their particular positions. The minister’s biggest job is to temper the world activities with a sense of the moral and the spiritual. The most tragic thing is that the indictment made against the ministers was made by a layman.

It is bad enough for God to look down on us and see that we are not doing our jobs, but when one whom we are supposed to be helping and molding his life looks up and sees us in this tragic position, it should be reason for all of us to be concerned. Once again, we as ministers and as Christians must rethink and redirect our way of doing things. Then and only then will the kingdom of God come on earth as it is in heaven.