March: Pastoral Ministry
The work of a minister is altogether too difficult for any man. We are driven to God for wisdom.
This World: Playground or Battleground?, 86.
March 25
Pastoral Ministry: Read or Get Out of the Ministry
A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding
will attain wise counsel.
--Proverbs 1:5
When a very young minister, I asked the famous holiness preacher,
Joseph H. Smith, whether he would recommend that I read widely in the
secular field. He replied, "Young man, a bee can find nectar in the
weed as well as in the flower." I took his advice (or, to be frank,
I sought confirmation of my own instincts rather than advice) and I
am not sorry that I did.
John Wesley told the young ministers of the Wesleyan Societies to
read or get out of the ministry, and he himself read science and
history with a book propped against his saddle pommel as he rode
from one engagement to another. Andy Dolbow, the American Indian
preacher of considerable note, was a man of little education, but I
once heard him exhort his hearers to improve their minds for the
honor of God. "When you are chopping wood," he explained, "and you
have a dull axe you must work all the harder to cut the log. A sharp
axe makes easy work. So sharpen your axe all you can." The Size of
the Soul, 33.
"In the busyness of life, Lord, help me to always guard time to
sharpen my axe. Amen."
