Chapter I: Evils of Change

The evils of a change of field are many and serious and only the most imperative reasons will justify a pastor in making it. For, 1. It involves a serious loss in the pastor's working capital, for the confidence and love of a congregation, which a true minister acquires, constitute a chief element in his power. These, however unlike mere popularity, are only slowly acquired; but, once secured, they add immensely to the value of his public and private work. But this advantage is all relinquished on leaving the field, and must be again slowly acquired at another post. A pastor's power also to benefit a people by a wise adaptation of his work to their character and needs must depend largely on his knowledge of them; but in making a change this is lost, and can be regained only by similar study of a new congregation. 2. Few ministers widen their range of original investigation after their first pastorate. At the first post they are compelled to push out into new lines of thought, but in a new field the temptation to use old subjects, if not old sermons, often proves irresistible, and their life-thinking is likely to move round in the same narrow range. Pastoral change often thus checks intellectual and theological growth. 3. This restless expectation of change also discourages broad, comprehensive plans for the instruction and development of the church, and tempts the minister to aim exclusively at immediate results. Hence, his sermons are largely sentimental or sensational, confined within a limited range of topics, and the development of church-life is correspondingly dwarfed. 4. The marked decline in public respect for the ministry is probably in part a result of this feverish restlessness, which weakens confidence in them as men of high, unselfish purpose, and compels a community to regard the minister no longer as a permanent force in its life, but rather as a transient sensation.