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[ Inaudible ] And we honor him as speaker today. [INAUDIBLE] [inaudible]

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And I saw Matt move by locking one of the blue-billed jets to take off on a five-flight. He looked so interested and rapturous in that newly finished jet that was taking to the air for the first time. I looked at him and hadn't had a chance to get close enough to ask a question. I said, "Do you fly these planes?"

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He looked at me and shook his head. I said, "No, son. I don't just fly. I make them. I don't just fly them, I make them. Every now and then we have preachers and lecturers come to us who just fly the prayer.

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But the man that I present now can and does know how to fly them, but through the years has been in the business of making them. We are highly honored to have a former bishop professor, former head of the School of Religion at Bishop College,

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and I'd really like to take that former away from it because to many of us he will always be ours. We're grateful to have him come all the way from Virginia to the Lone Star State to join with those persons who have come to sharpen their wits and to be inspired for the future. I take great pleasure now in presenting our lecturer for the day, Dr. William R. Strassman. Would you give him a big amen as Dr. Strassman comes in?

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[Audience responds] My friend Brother Rowe and my brethren, it is a pleasure to greet you on this second day of the Ministers' Institute here at Bishop College. I want to thank Brother Rowe for those kind words.

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You see, he was only telling you what I am to him. Sure, I was his teacher and dean of a school of religion at Bishop when he was a student there. But that fact might make you think that I'm very old, particularly when you look at Brother

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And you see, the fact of the matter is that I was very young when I taught him. I still am. You see, you are as old as your mind. And many people get old before their time.

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I'm going to stay young. Mother Earl was not only a student, and a good student, but you know, he used to drive for me. He was with me when I bought my first Buick car.

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I think that was in Waco, Texas. We had driven down from Marshall in a Ford. When we came back, we were driving a Buick. Brother Earl was partly responsible for my buying that Buick.

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I think he wanted to drive. I don't think he was trying to influence his grades any. At least I didn't take it as such. But he did make good grades.

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because he got his lesson, and I knew that he had in him the qualities of a great preacher and a great pastor. So not only do I want to thank him for his kind words concerning me, but I want to take heart at least of the credit for whatever success he is enjoying in his ministry.

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There are several other ministers here whom I taught also as bishop and those were five of the happiest years of my life. Now, I'm scheduled here for a lecture. You know, it's hard for a minister to give a lecture.

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(audience laughing) Whenever he tries to give a lecture, it's pretty likely to slip into a sermon. (audience laughing)

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So I suppose you could call it a sermonic lecture. (audience laughing) But I'm going to try to resist the temptation today to preach, for I don't know anything

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that I like to do any better than that. But I'm going to resist the temptation if I can, to reach, and I'll give you maybe a shamanic lecture. Why do we attend ministers' conferences like the one we have at Hampton Institute in Virginia,

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and the institute which we have here at Bishop College. Why do we attend conferences and institutes like this? Well, I suppose we want intellectual stimulation As we study together the various problems that confront us in our ministry,

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investigating those areas that are indicated under the various seminars in your program, We want to peruse and investigate those problems and find, if we can, solutions to them. And then we attend them also because we want social enrichment, as we have fellowship with kindred minds, our brethren from various parts of the country,

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and share the experiences which we have in our work, social enrichment, fellowship. And then we want spiritual renewal. You know, preachers need to hear somebody else preach beside themselves. And preachers need revival just as much as anybody else does.

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So we want our souls revived. We want spiritual renewal and new vigor, so that when we go back to our various fields of labor, we can go back with a stronger determination and with a clearer vision of our task. All of this is very important.

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Many things are important to our ministry. I want to talk to you, however, on this very prosaic subject, the essentials of an effective ministry. essentials of an effective ministry. Now as I said a moment ago that there are

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many things that are important to our ministry, but there are some basic essentials. Some things without which our ministry would certainly be less effective than it is. We ought to take a look at a few of those things, those qualities, those essentials of an effective ministry.

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I think that one essential is a deep sense of mission. A deep sense of mission. I remember in our theological class in preaching, the professor used to say to us, "Do not preach if you can help it."

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In other words, preach only if you can't help it. Well, if you can help it, you'd better not preach. That's what he said, and that's what he meant. Don't preach if you can help it.

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You see, the call to the ministry is a little different from going into other professions. believe that? A call to the ministry. It simply means that you are being called by another power, another influence in your life. A man who goes into other professions, he chooses a profession. But when a man is called a preach, the ministry chooses him. It's a little different.

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I was talking to a young man yesterday who was getting ready to graduate from Bishop college, he's a senior, and I asked him what he was going to do. And he said, "I think I'm going into the ministry." Well, I wonder if the ministry is going into him. That's Don't preach if you can help it.

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The individual who is a minister is one who has been chosen by a power higher than himself. You remember the apostle Paul said, "I was laid hold on by Christ." I suppose he was talking about his Damascus Road experience, when it seems that some power reached out and seized him and would not let him go.

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For he said, "Woe be to me if I preach not the gospel." You see, if you lay hold on it, you can turn it loose. But if the thing has got you, you can't get it loose. deep sense of mission. Now that was the essential quality of course in the

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ministry of Jesus also. He had this deep sense of mission. You remember in the temple when he was just a lad of 12 years of age he said I must be about my father's business. Or as some modern translation or interpreter it says, that means, did you not know that I must be in my father's house? But it doesn't make a

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difference one way or the other. There was that feeling that he must. I must be about my father's business when he was a lad in the temple. And then you remember also that at the baptism of Jesus, when he was coming straight way up out of the water, behold, the heavens were opened, you know, and the dove descended upon

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and the voice spoke out of heaven saying, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Now it doesn't make much difference about the liberal interpretation of that, whether others there saw the dove or heard the voice or whether only Jesus, whether it was a subjective or an objective reality, it doesn't matter. The main thing is that it was real to him. That's

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the main thing. Thou art my beloved son, in whom I dwell, please. Deep sense mission, is an essential to an effective ministry. And then you know this is also the essential quality in the life of the prophets. You remember that Amos said, "I was not a prophet, nor son of a prophet, but the Lord took me from following the flower, laid hold upon me, told

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me to go and prophesy." That's what happened to Jonah, you remember, when God made him go to Nineveh. He didn't want to go, but you see, he had to go. He did it because he had to.

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And when Isaiah was in the temple and he saw the Lord high and lifted up in a strange field of temple, and when one of the Sarabim took a live coal from off the altar and touched his lips,

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and he heard the voice saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" He said, "Here am I! You see, something had happened when his lips were touched by that lyre call, and when he had seen that great vision.

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A deep sense of mission. You've got to have that if your minister is going to be effective. Now, you can have a minister that's pretty good, all right, but he will not be as effective unless there is deep within you that sense of mission, that feeling of must, because

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You just can't help yourself. So the second quality, not only must there be this deep sense of mission, but there must be a personal dedication to the will of God. A personal dedication to the will of God.

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Now when we look again at the ministry of Jesus, and certainly if there ever was an effective ministry, his was, when we look at that we realize that Jesus himself perceived that it was the will of God for his life that he give himself for the salvation of mankind, redemption of the world. Now I think we ought to look at that matter of salvation and

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redemption a little bit. I think he conceived his mission to be the social salvation of man as well as the spiritual and all that, the social salvation. For as he walked about in the streets of Palestine, looked out upon the tragic conditions of mankind, he saw the suffering, the tragedy, the human degradation all about him. He saw

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He saw the sick and the lame and the blind, the poor, the hungry and the beggars on the street corners, the orphaned children, the widows. He saw all of that. And looking out upon that need, he felt within himself that it was his responsibility to go out and do something about it, to alleviate that need.

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You see, to him the whole of life was sacred. Not only just the souls of men, but the minds and the bodies of men. All of life is sacred. And that he must concern himself with the salvation, the social salvation of men.

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You know, at one time, the matter of ministering to the poor was the sole responsibility of the church. The church looked after the poor. But you see, I guess the job got too big for us,

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and so the state took it over. And we have all this welfare business, you know. But now our Ronald Reagan is going to give it back to us. He's going to give it back to us.

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I wonder what we're going to do with it when he gives it to us. Social salvation, human need. Now, social salvation is not an end in itself. Jesus did not heal people just to be healing them.

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He realized that the recovered life must be used for a higher purpose. In other words, he healed their bodies in order that he might save their souls. I think the programs that we have sometimes, slum clearance and good housing for the poor and all that, all that's very good. But you know, that isn't good enough.

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If that's all we do, we aren't doing the whole job. There is something on the inside of a man that needs to be cleaned up, as well as what's on the outside of him. and have all the good housing you want to, and all of that, and put the man in there if you haven't changed him

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on the inside, if you haven't given him a new outlook upon life, then all that good housing will soon be slums again. [LAUGHTER]

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Yes, sir. [LAUGHTER] Sure, we must be concerned about the social conditions around us. So you see, the ministry of Jesus in connection with the social situation

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required also the matter of teaching them. Teaching them. Now, if you don't teach a man where he's going or what he ought to be, he ain't gonna be any better than he was.

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Teaching them. Jesus was conscious of man's ignorance of God. He was conscious that the moral degradation of man was due to man's ignorance. All of the problems of life are due to our ignorance of God and of our relationship with

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him and with one another, what it ought to be. He therefore taught them, for he had a profound knowledge of God, a knowledge of God's will and love, and he must impart that knowledge to man. "You shall know," he could say, "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you

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free." You know the truth about God, and it'll set you free from heathenism, idolatry, materialism. You shall know the truth about man, that he is your brother, that out of one blood hath God created all mankind to dwell along the face of the earth. You know that. You shall know it.

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So he taught men, and our ministry must include the ministry of teaching. That's why we have to maintain schools like Bishop College and these other church-related colleges that we have. Now I don't knock public education at all, but you see we need a program of education

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that includes all of life. We need a program of education that will minister to the spiritual needs of the individual, first through his mind and then to his heart. The gospel, therefore, should be concerned about that, teaching them to observe all things

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whenever I have commanded them. The ministry of teaching is an important essential to an effective ministry. You know, one of the problems I think that we have in our churches is our failure to teach the people.

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I think that preaching ought to have an element of the intellectual appeal in it. You see, there are three things about preaching. The sermon ought to appeal to the intellect and to the feeling and to the will. But if you appeal only to the feeling and not to the intellect, you may move him, but

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you aren't going to move him very far. And even if you move him a little bit, he isn't going to stay there unless he's been taught. Thus saith the Lord!

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This is the way you should go. The element of teaching, appealing to the intellect, appealing to the feeling of the man in order that the will might move in the direction that you want it to go. Teaching.

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You know, there are some people who don't believe that religion ought to be taught. They think it ought to be caught. Well, maybe it ought to be caught, but it's got to be taught, too. Either one without the other is not going to do, you know.

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of teaching. Another element, essential element, in an effective ministry is that it involves contact with people. Contact with people. Now, you know, you cannot know

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people unless you have contact with them. Jesus was a man who had the common touch. And you remember the poet who said, speaking about a man who could walk with kings and not lose the common touch?

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Well, the minister ought to be like that. He ought to be able to walk with kings and still not lose the common touch. Touch with people. Jesus sought them out in the marketplace, along the streets, in their homes, in the synagogues. Wherever life was, there he was.

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and he transmitted his life to their life so that when they touch him it seemed that virtue went out of him. The common touch. He did that in order that he might give them the assurance of God's love and of God's care and of God's forgiveness. For it was in his presence that men realized that they had felt the presence of God. And as John has said, "We behold the hellish goodness, glorious as the only begotten of

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the Father, full of grace and truth." Now you cannot be aloof from people if our ministry is to be effective. We have to keep hope alive in the breasts of people, in the hearts of people. We've got to be someone like the prophet, you remember, Ezekiel, when they were in Babylonian

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captivity, he said that "I sat where they sat." I was with them by the river Keeber when I saw the visions of God. But the main thing is I sat where they sat. I was among them.

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I was among the captives. Now you know this contact with people is the fertile soil from which our preaching comes. You get your sermon from people, from the needs of people. Don't get it out of books altogether.

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- Yes, sir. That's right, sir. - You can get intellectual stimulation. - Yes, sir.

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- But that message must come from the heart and from the lives of people. - Yes, sir. their needs, their problems, their frustrations, their difficulties.

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All the things that harass them and make them miserable. You know, this matter of preaching, I think it either brought us or Patterson or some of the homileticians in defining the sermon, would say that preaching is a communication from God to man with view of persuasion. Another one said that preaching is the presentation of God that answers some need of the people,

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making them feel the presence of God at the point of need. Every sermon ought to be directed toward solving some problem. Now, if your sermon, or my sermon, does not aim at anything, it will hit it every time. Your message has to be connected with some real interest of the people.

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When they come in hungry, they ought to be able to go out filled. When they come in with their hearts heavy, with their problems of life, they ought to be able to go out feeling a little bit uplifted, you know. You know, religion is supposed to be a lift, not a load.

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A lift, not a load. Horace Bushnell, for instance, said, "There cannot be much preaching where there is no thinking." And Middleton Murray complained about much of the preaching that he heard, and he said

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was characterized by unction and willingness. Unction and willingness. In other words, there was no clear objective, no clear point to it. So another essential therefore is this contact we have with people from which we get the resources for our preaching.

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And another one, the minister's own devotional life. You know, we get so wrapped up in the life of people until we are likely to neglect the source of our own spiritual power. We neglect ourselves sometimes.

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You know, a man, a minister, pastor, of course he's got to be everything. He's got to be a financier, he's got to be a church builder, he's got to be everything, all things, all people, yeah. But, any time a minister is more concerned about the peripheral matters of his ministry,

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When he becomes so absorbed in the minutiae, the details of his ministry, he isn't likely to preach with much power. Any time a minister has to spend most of his time running around counting bits of lumber And then trying to find the money to pay for it, he ain't going to have much power in his

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preaching. You've got to be able to delegate some of these things to somebody else so that you can give yourself to the preaching of the word. For that's your main job.

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Brother, if the people say you can't preach, you can't preach. [laughter] I don't know why our professor used to tell us, you know. If the people say you can't preach, you can't preach.

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And they ought to know, because you're not reaching them. [laughter] Your own devotional life must not be neglected. Be still and know that I am God.

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Oh, we find it so hard to keep still. In quietness and in confidence is your strength. You know, Newton was running around busy himself with a lot of things when he discovered the law of gravitation.

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He was sitting quietly in a garden when that apple fell and he saw in it something. He drew it down. Your own devotional life is essential to your ministry, effectiveness of it. Take time to be holy.

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Speak often of thy Lord. Abide with him always and trust in his word. And you must remember that that is as much for you as it is for the people. minister must take heed to his own devotional life. You know that's what Jesus did in his

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ministry? You know when he fed the five thousand, then he went up into the mountain and spent a whole night in prayer. And after he had healed the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day, he went away to pray. And on the Mount of Transfiguration he prayed.

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And in the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed. His whole life was permeated with prayer and devotion and communion and fellowship with his Father. For without it he could not have had the strength and the courage and the power to do what he

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had to do. Now, you know, I'm about as liberal, I suppose, as anybody else about Jesus. I think that Jesus derived his power from God. It was not innate within himself.

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He had to depend on God for his power. Whatever he did, God gave him the power to do it, and you've got to do that too. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to be able to do anything.

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And finally, I think another essential to an effective ministry must be undergirded by the courage to pay the price, whatever it costs, you are willing to pay it. And if you have these other essentials that I have mentioned, and many more that could be mentioned, you will be willing to pay the price, whatever that price might be.

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There must be a fearlessness, an undaunted courage, unafraid of the criticisms, unafraid of what people say about you, unafraid of the fire and dark that they hurl at you sometimes. Sometimes you might feel like giving up, but you aren't going to give up. You couldn't if you wanted to. You couldn't give it up. You go on, you keep on keeping on. Personal

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sacrifice. Oh, the minister has to sacrifice so much. This family has to sacrifice. They know what it is to do without. They know what it is to bear the burden in the heat of the day. They know what it is. They're willing to pay that that price, a price sometimes that you have to pay in dealing with not only your congregation,

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but with some of these deacon boards that you have to deal with, an exacting price that you have to pay. In other words, the minister of life is a life of sacrifice. Every day he's sacrificing, giving himself his life in order that others might find their

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life. And he must be willing to do that. You see, I think the principle that without the shedding of blood there is no remission runs all through life, particularly the life of the minister.

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