MINISTERS OF RELIGION

Lake County Mail, Issue 35, 4 February 1948, Page 8

MINISTERS OF RELIGION

This article is brought forth because the Church of England in the Wakatipu has recently received a new vicar, a priest of no little experience. It is something which concerns everyone, whatever church he attends or fails to attend. What do we expect of the man who has received a vocation to serve our Lord, and has been duly authorised and commissioned by the church and the Lord which he represents? First of all that he should be a man of prayer. Religion is a way of life in conformity with the will of the Creator of Life. One of His desires is that we worship Him with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our souls and with all our strength. Worship is by means of prayer in its fullest —not just asking for things! If the priest who is our minister is to lead us in worship through prayer, then he must be a man of prayer himself. However, he is not only to lead us in corporate prayer. If he is to do that effectively he must be practised in it. His main duty, according to the Anglican Prayer Book, and I presume in other religious bodies, is to administer the word of God and the Sacraments. To administer the Word of God he must be a man of study. “My study has ever been in Thy Statutes,” •as the psalmist reminds us. Yes, if the priest is to be a teacher of the Word of God he must also be a student of it. To administer the Sacraments: God in His mercy has given us outward forms as means of giving us His grace, His life. These are called Sacraments. The priest, or minister, is to be a dispenser of the Sacraments. God acts through him for the benefit of mankind as surely as He acts through the rain and the sunshine to bring growth and food to the world. Realising the impossibility of living without the Grace of God, the priest himself will be a frequent and regular partaker of the means of Grace. “My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God.” Nothing has yet been said about a minister being a good organiser, vocalist, economist, story-teller, or anything else. Why, I have said nothing about the necessity of his being a good mixer, a social success, an excellent chairman or anything else. Why? Because these are not the main things of a priest’s character. If you expect a minister of religion to be a Man of God, a man of prayer, a man of study, that is all you have a right to expect. If the other gifts are added it is all to the good, but they are not essential. On the other hand, the minister has a right to expect the loyal cooperation of his people, backing him in all he does for the glory of God, supporting him financially so that he has a reasonable standard of living, but above all, praying for him. The? heresy common to the English race is Pelagianism, named after a priest of the early British Church, who thought and taught that one could live a good life without the help of God. This ancient heresy is current among us to-day. Few people feel .the need of God in their lives, and come to church, if they do, and when they do, from no desire to receive God’s Grace, but to be entertained. That is the underlying cause of the small congregations in our. churches. We lean upon ourselves, our own resources, our own strength, and we fail time and again. “ Lean upon Thy God ” is the advice of the psalmist which we do not heed. Go back to our Bibles, study history, the history of the early church or even modern secular history, and we will find that the men who have done most for the world, who have_ been greatest in the affairs of men, are those who, with St. Paul, could say: “By the Grace of God, I am what I am; and His 6&oe, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the Grace of God, which was with me.” Phillip 0. Williams.