Arthur W. Spaulding
Secretary of the Home Commission
This was written after Spalding had worked in the field of the home for twenty years.
Why trouble the pastor with the social problems of the flock? Because the pastor is a physician of souls. He is constantly confronted with the problems of his flock—spiritual problems, educational problems, social problems. All these combine in any situation—in the family, in society, in the church; and among his people the pastor either is appealed to, or, uninvited, recognizes the need of his services to solve the problems. He cannot be rid of the trouble by ignoring its causes, or by turning his back upon it, or by neglecting its cure. Evil must be eradicated, if its results are to be effaced; but knowledge, wisdom, tact, and love must be the instruments of healing. Let us trouble the pastor to face his social problems squarely, and then to find the means of their solution.
Prominent among the pastor's social problems are the unhappy conditions often evolved in home relations. A man and a woman poorly trained in childhood and youth for social adjustment, enter marriage, sometimes so ill-advisedly that wreckage seems almost certain. If they survive its initial storms, they bring into existence children for whose care and training they are quite unfitted, and the church, the school, and other community agencies are burdened with antisocial characters.
Spiritual life cannot flourish under such conditions, and the pastor, in seeking the uplift of his people, is confronted with the social causes of church deficiency and weakness. He has to deal with the conditions created by divided homes, by homes lax in discipline, by incompetency, by improvidence, by intemperance, by immorality. He cannot leave these sources of corruption untouched and do his duty or succeed in his mission. Christ heals sick souls by destroying sin and by pouring in His own life of righteousness. The pastor, who is the minister of that life, must be intelligent as to causes and effects, and skillful in the administration of remedies.
But the pastor's social problems are not all negative, not all vexatious. There are problems of affirmative interpretation, of teaching, of construction. He has to build, that he may not have to destroy. It is better far to build lives in righteousness than to have first to tear down in order to replace. And it is possible, in great degree, to avoid the necessity of correction if we begin with the beginning of life to build aright. "The gospel is a wonderful simplifier of life's problems," and the gospel, which is the means for "the restoration and uplifting of humanity; begins in the home."—"Ministry of Healing,' pp. 363, 349.
That pastor does well who regards as his first parishioners the babes in the cradle, and who preaches the gospel to them through teaching their parents to live the gospel. Such teaching involves not merely exhortation, but training. And training demands, first, knowledge; second, skills; third, teaching methods. Can there be any question that the home is a legitimate field for the pastor to enter and work? Listen to instruction from an inspired source:
"In all that pertains to the success of God's work, the very first victories are to be won in the home life."—"Testimonies," Vol: VI, p. 354.
"In the formation of character, no other influences count so much as the influence of the home."—"Education," p. 283.
"The well-being of society, the success of the church, the prosperity of the nation, depend upon home influences."—"Ministry of Healing" p. 349.
"The minister's duties lie around him, nigh and afar off ; but his first duty is to his children. He should not become so engrossed with his outside duties as to neglect the instruction which his children need. He may look upon his home duties as of lesser importance; but in reality they lie at the very foundation of the well-being of individuals and of society. To a large degree the happiness of men and women and the success of the church depend upon home influence. Eternal interests are involved in the proper discharge of the everyday duties of life. The world is not so much in need of great minds, as of good men, who are a blessing in their homes."—"Gospel Workers," p. 204.
"Ministers should be educators who understand and appreciate the needs of humanity."—"Testimonies," Vol. VI, p. 302.
"A minister may enjoy sermonizing; for it is the pleasant part of the work, and is comparatively easy; but no minister should be measured by his ability as a speaker. The harder part comes after he leaves the desk, in watering the seed sown. The interest awakened should be followed up by personal labor,—visiting, . . . teaching, . . . praying with families."—Id., Vol. V, p. 255.
"We need to meet together and receive the divine touch that we may understand our work in the home. Parents need to understand how they may send forth from the sanctuary of the home their sons and daughters so trained and educated that they will be fitted to shine as lights in the world."--Id., Vol. VI, pp. 32, 33.
"The work that lies next to our church members is to become interested in our youth; for they need kindness, patience, tenderness, line upon line, precept upon precept. Oh, where are the fathers and mothers in Israel ? ... God requires that the church arouse from her lethargy, and see what is the manner of service demanded of her at this time of peril. The lambs of the flock must be fed."—"Counsels to Teachers," p. 42.
"The people will seldom rise higher than their minister."—"Gospel Workers," p. 342.
If the church members are to do this work that lies next to them, they must be led by their pastor. He must do the work that lies next to him. And what is that? To convert the heathen on the other side of the world? To relieve the necessities of the stricken in war or famine-desolated areas ? To preach the third angel's message to unconverted multitudes? To maintain the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution? All these are component and worthy parts of his ministry, for "all branches of the work belong to the ministers." —"Testimonies," Vol. V, p.. 375. There may be a hundred duties that belong to the pastor. He must be interested in and support the Sabbath school, literature distribution, Harvest Ingathering, medical service, Dorcas Society, relief of the poor, Bible teaching, lecturing and preaching. But the work that lies next to him, as to all his people, is to become interested in our children and youth in their homes, and in the parents who make those homes, that there may be schools of righteousness out of which these children and youth shall come forth messengers for the King of kings.
This demands definite attention, intense study, constant effort, increase of power and skill. If we had saved and trained all the children given to Seventh-day Adventist parents through the last century, how much greater and more effective would our ministry now be ! "With such an army of workers as our youth, rightly trained, might furnish, how soon the message of a crucified, risen, and soon-coming Saviour might be carried to the whole world !" —"Education," p. 271.
This leadership and teaching by the pastor covers a wide field, and yet reduced to its essence it is very simple. It resides first in his example and the example of his wife. They must be all things that they would have their people be. Their home is to be the example for all the homes of their people, in love, in discipline, in order, in purposeful program, in maintenance of the principles of health, in social ideals and control, in teaching in all lines according to the pattern laid down by the Bible and the Spirit of prophecy. This is a great goal, a tremendous requirement, on the one hand made difficult by the minister's preoccupation with numerous outside interests, but on the other hand made easier by the training, the consecration, and the consequent self-discipline that the pastor and his wife must have had to be acceptable ministers of God. Let the pastor's family be an example of the perfect Christian life, and the half of his work is done. (1 Tim. 3:2-7)
The other half of his work will be done in the active teaching of love. This does not mean a nebulous pietistic sentimentalism. Love is not merely sentiment, neither is it the relation so often made common and base in human experience. God is love, and love is of God. Love is the deepest, the highest, the holiest subject in heaven and earth. It will be the central science studied through eternity, and its study and practice now are indispensable to Christian life. Its existence in human lives and its application to human ideals, attitudes, and activities make the greatest subject ever presented for human study.
The pastor needs not only to preach love, he needs to translate it into the experience of the church. Human love is an investment of divine love, and only as the pure love of God operates in the lives of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brethren and sisters, church members, and through them in children and youth, can there be a sincere Christian experience and success of the church.
The love of God is an unselfish love. The devil's distortion of it is self-love, from which springs rivalry. The world in great part, lacking the love of God, has for its greatest incentive rivalry, competition, contest. "The world is too much with us," and unless the pastor and his helpers are on guard, the world's motivating power—rivalry—will creep into the activities of the church.
Is there rivalry between classes of the Sabbath school ? Is the Harvest Ingathering campaign conducted as a contest between rival bands ? Does the church school employ competitive devices to arouse ambition? Do competitive games and sports comprise the recreative life of the children and youth ? Is there jealousy, backbiting, gossip, heart burnings, envy, feuding, because of individual or group rivalries? All this is opposed to the spirit of Christ.
Rivalry is a cancer that will eat the heart out of home, school, society, and church. Rivalry is forbidden by Christ and by all His spokesmen. (Mark 9:33-37; 10:35-45; I Cor. 10 :12 ; Gal. 5:19, 20; James 3 :14-16 ; "Education," pp. 225, 226; "Testimonies," Vol. V, pp. 236-248; "Gospel Workers," pp. 483-485.)
The remedy is love. The pastor, as the leader and teacher of his flock, needs to grasp more and more fully the great science and the mighty power of love. He must eliminate rivalry. He must set love to work. He must find ways of inculcating it in the home life, and from that source it will permeate all the church. Here indeed is the basic work demanded in building the home; for the home is founded by love, and can thrive only under the exercise of love. And as the home is, so is the church.
In part, the pastor may teach through public address. He should not fail to devote some of his preaching to the ideals of Christian home making and child training. These ideals must come from his heart and life ; but he will find them succinctly stated in the Testimonies, particularly in the section on the home in "Ministry of Healing," and in more detail in "Counsels to Teachers, Parents, and Students," in "Education," and in other works of Ellen G. White. He will find them amplified in the books of the Christian Home Series : "Makers of the Home," "All About the Baby," "Through Early Childhood," "Growing Boys and Girls," and "The Days of Youth." With his wife he should familiarize himself with these teachings, live them in the home, and thus be able to translate them to his people.
But the pastor will find that lecture and exhortation fill only a part of the need. There is required for parenthood a training as specific and intensive as for the ministry, or teaching, or medicine, or nursing, or business. Read "Education," pages 275, 276; "Counsels to Teachers," pages 107-118. The church is obligated to furnish this training for parents, and the church has responded to the obligation.
Whether this school for parents shall function in every church depends primarily upon the initiative and support of the pastor. Next month we turn to the means for accomplishing this.
Every pastor who faces frankly the problems of his church which to a greater or lesser extent have their origin in the home, must come to the conclusion that definite, well-planned action must be taken to improve the abilities of parents, that they may do more effective work in homemaking and child culture. The only alternative to such a conclusion is a despairing philosophy of predestined damnation.
That church is rare indeed which does not contain some families in which discord, negligence, and low ideals are playing their part in making the membership feeble in spiritual power, and sometimes disgraceful to the community. What pastor has not faced the problems of obstreperousness in childhood and delinquency in adolescence, ending sometimes in the juvenile court? Who has not had to deal with the problems of divided homes, of divorce, of working mothers, of street-educated children, of difficult school discipline, of gangster tendencies among the youth? And who does not long for some solution to what one pastor called "this almost insoluble problem"?
We are not to despair. As God lives, and as He loves His church, there is victory for us in every situation. But that we may have victory, we must follow our Leader, we must accept His plans and adopt His methods. He has laid out for us the course to follow, the means to employ. We can expect success only as we do His bidding. Then He promises that we shall succeed.
"Solomon says, 'Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Prov. 22:6. This language is positive. The training that Solomon enjoins is to direct, educate, develop. But in order for parents to do this work, they must themselves understand the 'way' the child should go."—"Counsels to Teachers," p. 108.
"The child's first teacher is the mother. During the period of greatest susceptibility and most rapid development his education is to a great degree in her hands. To her first is given opportunity to mold the character for good or for evil. She should understand the value of her opportunity, and, above every other teacher, should be qualified to use it to the best account. Yet there is no other to whose training so little thought is given. The one whose influence in education is most potent and far reaching is the one for whose assistance there is the least systematic effort....
"Upon fathers as well as mothers rests a responsibility for the child's earlier as well as its later training, and for both parents the demand for careful and thorough preparation is most urgent. . . Never will education accomplish all that it might and should accomplish until the importance of the parents' work is fully recognized, and they receive a training for its sacred responsibilities."—"Education," pp. 275, 276.
Parents must be trained. Parents must have an education for their sacred responsibilities. They must definitely be seeking improvement in their ability to understand the child's nature and needs, and how to teach and train the child. This requirement laid upon parents by their heavenly Father, their Master Teacher, must be pressed home to them by the pastor, and then he must offer the means for the education demanded.
This he can seldom do by himself, for his duties are many and varied. He may direct, encourage, assist, but he must have the help of fit persons in his church who may be trained, or whom he may train, for these specific teaching duties. And he must have means which the church organization, through the General Conference, offers for this very purpose. In this he is not left alone. Help is at hand.
First let us note the basic concepts in this matter of home education.
"In His wisdom the Lord has decreed that the family shall be the greatest of all educational agencies. It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life,—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. They are in many respects silent and gradual, but if exerted on the right side, they become a far-reaching power for truth and righteousness. If the child is not instructed aright here, Satan will educate him through agencies of his choosing. How important, then, is the school in the home!
"In the home school—the first grade—the very best talent should be utilized. Upon all parents there rests the obligation of giving physical, mental, and spiritual instruction. It should be the object of every parent to secure to his child a well-balanced, symmetrical character. This is a work of no small magnitude and importance,—a work requiring earnest thought and prayer no less than patient, persevering effort. A right foundation must be laid, a framework, strong and firm, erected, and then day by day the work of building, polishing, perfecting, must go forward."—"Counsels to Teachers," pg. 107, 108.
To grasp this concept of the home as the first, the foundation, school, most of us will have to revise our ideas of education. And we need to. "Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need of a broader' scope, a higher aim."—"Education," p. 13. The place to begin broadening our concept of education is right here at the start of education. The education of the child does not begin when he enters the schoolroom door. The elementary church school is not his first school. The home is his first school, not in any figurative sense, but actually.
Christian education is not merely the acquirement of knowledge of the common branches, the sciences, and the humanities. Christian education is the work of character building. ("Counsels to Teachers," p. 61.) That work begins in the home. Education begins with the beginning of life. And according as the home school, "the greatest of all educational agencies," does its work well or ill, the after education of the individual is staple and valuable, or otherwise.
Mark well, then, that in the scheme of Christian education there are four divisions: first, the home school ; second, the elementary church school ; third, the secondary school, or academy; fourth, the finishing school, or college.
The home must be visualized as an educational agency, a school. But that does not mean that it must be organized upon the plan of the formal school. Quite otherwise. The school is not the model of the home ; the home is the model of the school. So God planned it, and so are we to make it. (See "Education," pp. 20, 30.) In many respects the professional school is defective in its forms and methods, and its reform should come through study of God's model, the home. In any case, let us not try to put the home upon the status of the school, with its confining regimentation, its formal lessons, and its mass-education methods.
The home school is to be organized ; and it may gain some very valuable lessons from the experience of the day school. But essentially it is to be a home, conducting its educational work according to the conditions and needs of the home. Education does not consist merely of set lessons. Education goes on all the time. The attitudes and the acts of the parents, as well as their specific lessons (which are many), constitute their teaching.
But since parents, "above every other teacher, should be qualified" to teach, they must "receive a training for its sacred responsibilities." Such training is offered by our church. The work of parent education which the Home Commission initiated in 1922, and has carried and developed for twenty years, has now been recognized as an integral part of our educational system, and as such is incorporated in the Department of Education, co-ordinate with the elementary, the secondary, and the college divisions, and staffed accordingly. New courses in homemaking and child culture have been prepared, and will hereafter be provided by the Home Study Institute, at slight charge.* This work of parent education and home education will be under the fostering care of the Department of Education, and the secretaries and superintendents of education in the General Conference and in all the various division, union, and local conferences will be in charge of its promotion and upbuilding.
The courses of study may be taken through the Home Study Institute by any individual —parent, youth, or other. But there is far greater inspiration and mutual help to be gained and given in group study ; and every church should provide for this. The local organization at our hand for this group study is the Home and School Association. This is the Adventist equivalent of the Parent-Teacher Association. But it is much more. It is, as its name is meant to indicate, an agency for uniting the educational work of the home and the later schools. It belongs not only to parents and teachers, but to all the youth and all the children and all the church members and all the church officers and the pastor.
The Home and School Association should be organized and conducted in every church in which there are any children. Certainly it must function where there is a church school. But also it should come into existence and function strongly where there is no church school. Where there is any home with children, there is a school. And the teachers of that school must receive training. The Home and School Association is to be made the school for parents. It may have other worthy objectives, some of them financial, some of them recreational, but the prime purpose of the Home and School Association is to give parents essential training.
This organization should be conducted much as the Sabbath school is organized and conducted. The Sabbath school has financial goals, and it puts much of its energy into reaching them. It has entertainment features to make it attractive to young and old, but those entertainment features are to be educational, pointing to its prime object. The main purpose of the Sabbath school is to be a school to train in Bible knowledge and missionary enterprise. To this end it gives the greater part of its time to its classes.
So also should the Home and School Association be organized. It may have its financial projects, in building, improving, and maintaining the church school ; and it may continue to give them due attention. It may have entertainment features, but that entertainment must not be idle and purposeless; it must be constructive, educational. Its prime objective, however, is to be a school for parents, and to this end it should organize a class or classes, according to the needs and desires of its members.
This classwork, with related activities outside and inside the organization, is to be the chief interest and work of the Home and School Association. It should meet as regularly, though not necessarily as frequently, as the Sabbath school. Those who take its courses will be given recognition by the Home Study Institute, but the great benefit to be gained will be shown by the improvement in the homes—in their order, purposefulness, discipline, reverence, and general efficiency for Christian work. So will the Home and School Association prove a mighty power in the hands of the pastor to build the church. "The success of the church depends upon home influences."
A father is understanding and sympathetic and compassionate toward his children, as God our Father is toward us, His children. He answers with ministry their call for help, he is burdened with their sorrows, he rejoices in their joys. He studies their natures and their needs, he seeks to supply their deficiencies, he notes and employs their abilities. He diffuses among them, by his own life, the love of God, and brings them into harmonious co-operation through the inspiration of a great purpose and the unifying influence of the Holy Spirit.
A true pastor is not content to preach homilies and dispense abstract advice. He studies minds and comes to know the wellsprings of action. He classifies his studies of the different age periods, that he may suit his ministry to the child, to the youth, and to the adult. He does not expect the reactions of age in the adolescent, or the behavior of the man in the child. He learns to suit his conversation and his instruction to the individual and the group according to their age, their education, their social background, their spiritual state. He seeks to become ever more adept in the means of attracting and holding different types and classes of men and women, by studying their interests and learning to engage in them. He learns the great art of storytelling, which Jesus employed for the delight and instruction of children and youth. He studies the principles and activities of Christian recreation, that he may, in mingling with the youth, show his appreciation of their needs, yet save them from dissipation and rivalry.
He becomes the confidant of his people. In him the child finds an intelligent and understanding friend, because he knows the workings of the child mind, appreciates the viewpoints of the yet immature, but developing, intellect, and masters the art of instructing and inspiring the little man or woman to be. In this he may not have all the wisdom of Jesus, but he is the student of Him who said, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
In the field of the adolescent, the pastor finds great and unique opportunity for service. He must study the science of this transmutation from childhood to maturity, must come to appreciate God's purpose in making a lengthy transition period instead of effecting the transformation overnight, and must then find means to make use of that probational time to effect the educational, social, and spiritual changes which will result in worthy manhood and womanhood. He has to understand adolescent psychology, and become skillful in applying his knowledge to leadership of the youth. He must become the counselor of parents in their perplexity and need in this critical time, and he must train efficient leaders among the youth to be his helpers.
As young men and young women approach the age of marriage, to whom besides their parents should they most naturally turn for counsel and instruction ? To whom but their pastor ? The counsel he has to give them should not consist of mere platitudes. They will quickly detect the emptiness of such talk, for they have need of vital knowledge as they enter upon the mysteries and the duties of married life and consequent parenthood. Many of them realize this need, and they seek for and welcome instruction and counsel based upon sound knowledge and wisdom gained from experience.
There are many sources in the world today that offer prenuptial counsel and instruction. Some of it is wise, some of it is very foolish, and some is vicious. The pastor should be competent to differentiate between the good, the indifferent, and the evil, and to advise accordingly. And he must not only be able to recommend others' counsel; he must have formed for himself a body of knowledge and a philosophy of behavior which, exemplified and re-enforced by his life, shall mightily influence the ideals and the conduct of his youthful members.
Here is the most delicate and responsible role that the pastor has to fill in all his ministry. For "it is the nicest work ever assumed by men and women to deal with youthful minds."—"Testimonies," Vol. III, p. 131. The adolescent is critically observant; he holds a high standard of conduct for his elders, even though he may excuse his own delinquencies—and rightly, for his elders, and especially his spiritual leaders, are set to be his exemplars. Some of the youth are high-minded as to their own conduct, and they especially are due to be given the most perfect pattern of life by their superiors. Terrible tragedies have been enacted in youthful lives by the moral failure of some minister or teacher or parent. And before the judgment throne of God, surely no crime can register higher than the crime of destroying youthful faith in righteousness and probity.
Faults are the obverse side of virtues. We sin by excess or flaw in the exercise of some natural and normal trait. In nothing so much as in love, the primal power, is this manifest. Love must be under control. It is a virtue to love little children, to love youth and maiden, to love beautiful womanhood and noble manhood. But waiting at the gates of pure love is always the tempter and deceiver, who will pick the unguarded moment to deflect it into impropriety, indiscretion, and impurity.
We are not to be afraid of life or of love, for such fear engenders asceticism and that coldness of demeanor which repels and destroys. But our constant prayer is to be, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." The science of human and conjugal love is to be well mastered by the Christian worker, and at the same time the approaches of his soul are to be guarded by the assumption and maintenance of the legitimate conjugal state of marriage and parenthood wherein his prime affections are to be engrossed. Then, and then only, will he be fitted to be the intimate counselor of youth, the father of his people.
relations. Some of them may, by wise counsel and ministry, be happily resolved, In the affairs of his married parishioners the pastor has some of his most trying and difficult experiences. There come to him many cases of unhappy marriage and it is one of the greatest joys of ministry to be the agent of reconciliation and understanding love between husband and wife. Other cases are bedded deep in differences of temperament, training, and habits, and their solution is much more difficult. Some are close upon the brink of separation and divorce, and only a miracle can save them. But miracles are the specialty of God our Father. Nothing is impossible with Him. He can convert souls, change life habits, supply love where it is lacking, and bring safety and success where only defeat and wreckage seemed in prospect.
It takes deep soul searchings and wrestlings on the part of the minister of Christ to reach thus deeply into lives and to administer the saving power of Christ. But can he refuse? Sometimes the revelations of marital infelicities, of infidelities, of misuse and abuse and sickening crime, horrify his soul. There are some ministers who turn away in disgust from such revelations and from such sin-scarred souls. They themselves have never so sinned. They may never even have imagined such iniquity, and they experience a natural revulsion from the sight and the thought of this putrid mass. But the immaculate Christ is not turned away. He knows the secret history of every soul, the blackest as well as the whitest. We are all sinners before Him, and who can measure the degree of sin and infamy in the sight of God?
Remember what Jesus said to those who thought themselves holy as compared to those they abhorred; "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." The true minister of Christ will see himself as the chief of sinners and, having been rescued from the greatest depths of sin he intimately knows, he will be fitted to be the glad bearer of salvation to the repentant sinner, no matter how deep that sinner has sunk. Can any have sinned more deeply than Magdalene, out of whom was cast a devil of lechery, six times to re-enter and repossess? Yet never was she abandoned by the Saviour, who the seventh time cast out forever the destroyer of her soul, and earned in her the most devoted of His disciples! But the pastor who would succeed in this ministry must know that he must study life and the science of life giving, and that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."
Among the most delightful experiences of the well-equipped pastor is his guidance of parents in child training. In dealing with children, we are in the company of the purest, most innocent, most impressionable, most promising of all the recipients of our labors. This is primarily the field of labor of the parent, and to the God-fearing, intelligent, skillful, faithful parent, comes, in the end of his service, the purest, most soul-satisfying joy which the human heart can receive and bear. When his children, rightly taught, carefully trained, earnestly guarded against evil, and impressed with the image of the divine, come to the fullness of their manhood and womanhood, giving themselves to God and His service in the serving of men—ah, they who have that reward for their labors enter into the joy of their Lord.
And the pastor who has helped and counseled and guided these parents even in part, is a sharer in their joy. No other converts of his can equal the near perfection of these souls, who from their earliest years have kept the companionship of Jesus, and like Him, have grown in wisdom as in stature, and in favor with God and man.
But this service requires no slight science. It demands study, thought, devotion, earnest labor, closeness of communion with God. Yet it is the pastor's duty and his inestimable privilege. The feeling of many pastors of incapability to assume this role is due in part to the unfortunate fact that pastoral training among us as yet does not include study and preparation in social and home life and problems. May that lack soon be remedied in our schools!