Religion: Church Management

• Share

Dr. George Arthur Buttrick, now pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, Manhattan,† was at Buffalo when he told a group of Presbyterian ministers how he evaded the enticements of his morning paper. He always read it standing up and so remained always aware that he must spend no time on drivel no matter how entertainingly written. That was shrewd self-management, remarked the Presbyterians, and his formula made the rounds of the ministers. Last week it appeared again—in William H. Leach's magazine on parish administration, Church Management. Editor Leach revived it in warning ministers against the "newspaper mind [which] knows all about the day's happenings in a jumbled, chaotic sort of way" and does not think. Nor should ministers permit themselves, Editor Leach admonished, to organize their sermons, as so many do, "in about the same way that newspapers are organized [with] a bit of politics, a bit of scandal, a bit of love, a bit of hate and a little bit of religion."

In another article Editor Leach advised ministers on what they should demand of congregations. The pastor "has the right to presuppose that his people; come to church prepared to worship.

"He has the right to presuppose that the Sabbath means more to them than one service and that they have tried to grasp the real spirit of the day.

"He has the right to presuppose that they arose with a spirit of good will; that they have kept irritating things from the family talk of the morning; that the last minute's rush to church has not provoked them to bad temper; that they come into the church to worship.

"He has the right to presuppose that Saturday night has not been spent in parties and festivity. No one can play until the early hours of Sunday morning and rise in the right spirit of worship.

"We do not believe that a program of worship has ever been devised which can turn a nervous, tired and irritable person into a devout worshipper without any effort on the part of the individual."