Chapter II: Obligations Assumed in Becoming a Pastor

In accepting a call to the pastorate of a church, the following things are understood: 1. That the pastor accepts as scriptural the doctrine and practice of that church, and places himself under obligation to teach and defend them; for this is obviously a chief duty in the office of a pastor. If his convictions do not permit him to uphold the doctrine and practice of the church, he is untrue to himself and to it in accepting the office. And if, while occupying the pastorate, his views of doctrine and practice undergo a change, he is, indeed, entitled to full freedom of personal conviction and action, but he is under obligation to resign his office; for an essential condition on which it was conferred on him has ceased to exist, and every consideration of honor requires him to withdraw from it. It is difficult to conceive a more dishonorable position than that of a pastor who, after having accepted the sacred office of teacher and defender of the doctrine and practice of the Gospel, as understood by the church, and having subsequently undergone a change in his own convictions, shall still retain that office only to subvert the doctrines he had placed himself under solemn obligation to defend. 2. It is understood, also, that he accepts the care of the souls of that congregation as a sacred trust from Christ, to devote himself without reserve in labor and prayer for their salvation. The one great work of his life, to which all the faculties of his being are to be consecrated, is the salvation of those souls and the edification and perfection of that church. If he accepts the office for its emoluments, for the literary position it gives him, or the stepping-stone to some other position; or if he shall, while pastor, allow himself to become absorbed in other interests, so as to divert his chief energies from this sacred trust in the care of these souls, he is false to the pledge involved in assuming the pastorate, and is guilty of a dishonorable act. 3. It is further understood that he will maintain his post amidst the adversity as well as the prosperity of the church, as the shepherd to whom Christ has entrusted the care of that flock. Our Lord makes fidelity to the flock in danger the test of a good shepherd: "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is a hireling, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep" (John x. 11, 12). The trials which may meet a church, so far from justifying the pastor in leaving it, may be only an additional evidence of his duty to remain. He may not abandon, in a time of perplexity and danger, the flock the Lord committed to him.