Pastoral Tea

Many of today's mega-churches (those with thousands of members on the role) tend toward the evangelical side.  Some have gained nationwide and world popularity thanks to TV or radio broadcasting sermons. The focus is usually on the main preacher whose combination of dynamic delivery and provoking thought (depending on your definition of "provoking") keeps an audience's attention.

Nintey years ago there was such a preacher in New York City, whose popularity spread through radio and the newspapers as head minister at Riverside Church in upper Manhattan.  But he would not be considered, by many, today to be an evangelical (although he might have labeled himself as so).

The preacher was Harry Emerson Fosdick. This post is not to critique his theological modernism amdist the context of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy; rather I'd like to point out a part in a biography of Fosdick by Robert Moats Miller in Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet.

The disadvantage of shepherding a large congregation is that it is difficult in doing just that, shepherding. A pastor may have help with associate/assistant ministers, but there is an intimacy lost between pastor and parishioner when the only contact is from a far pew in a large church once a week. Miller notes that in the biography, which I quote directly.  The underlined part is my point of emphasis.

In the midst of all his helping activities—counseling in office and home, writing letters of consolation and advice, penning personally helpful articles and books (to say nothing of sermons), supporting a raft of organizations, all in addition to performing baptism, wedding, and funeral services and visiting the hospitalized—was there the time and energy to continue the old custom of pastoral calling? The answer is “not much.” His ministerial associates and lay zone leaders did visit in homes in times of trouble and perhaps not many of the flock were “lost.” Still, was Fosdick correct in his insistence that social calling in the home was a waste of time?

Is the pastoral ministry an activity reserved for crises or special moments in the rites of passage from birth to death? A Riverside parishioner who “vastly respected” Fosdick, nonetheless noted that save for a very small inner circle of lay leaders, few in the fellowship spent so much as an hour in their entire lives in his personal company. After his retirement, a maiden lady wrote Fosdick a note from her apartment near the church:

I love my home. Sometime, if you and Mrs. Fosdick are able to come, how I would love to fix you a cup of tea. A minister has never said a prayer in my home. I have an old-fashioned notion that a house is never a home until the minister has been there and blessed it. Dr. McCracken with his family problems is far too busy to do this as are all of the ministers at the church. So are you, I know, but maybe sometime you will need a cup of tea badly enough to come. I just want you to know that you would be welcome and that I would be highly honored. If you do come, I hope that you are not afraid of small, timid lame cats, because I have one. Thank you for being such a wonderful man and for giving people like me a faith to live by.

The logistics of pastoral calling in a large metropolitan church are formidable. But just perhaps having a cup of tea in a parishioner’s parlor, with no particular problem to be solved, furthers the Kingdom of God in a way that no formal, clinical counseling session can do. Maybe all the restless activities sponsored by The Riverside Church and all the aid made available did not quite satisfy the hunger of some parishioners for a quiet talk with their pastor about this or that in the intimacy of their homes, not the minister’s study. (pp. 283-84)

I have never forgotten that line from the first time I read it a couple of years ago. A cup of tea in a congregation member's home furthering the kingdom of God?  You'd be surprised at how tea can be used as a channel for solving the world's problems.

In the midst of a church's programs, sessions, and other activities, it is a welcome respite just to talk to your pastor about God and about life. A friend of mine has had his pastor over for smokes on the back patio on more than one occasion (he's in one of those denominations).  It's also a smaller congregation where pastoral calling is emphasized.  It's not crisis counseling, although there is a time and place for that.  It's just godly, plain, funny talk.  The kind of talk that keeps us on our toes in the path of holiness, keeps our minds sharp, and our hearts open.

So, raise a cup of tea (or some other beverage) in honor of pastors. Pray that more would knock on the door and hear the words, "Welcome to my home!"