Back again to pick up where we last left off. We are, of course, working our way through L. C. Sears’ biography of James A. Harding in a somewhat discursive fashion, stopping to linger at points of interest.
Last time, we spoke of Harding’s views on the subject of the “pastoral system” or the “located minister.” We observed that there were two major factors that contributed to a shift in practice among the churches in the late 19th century: “One of these has to do with the character of the American religious scene in the mid-19th century; the other has more to do with the demographics and internal dynamics of the Movement itself.”
Let’s return there now.
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The revivalist impulse in American Protestantism, at least as we think of it today, is largely a product of the Second Great Awakening. From Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham, revivalism relied upon the power of the speaker to move the hearts of his hearers through an emotional presentation of the message designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience. In Harding’s day, perhaps the chief example of this was to be found in the work of Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899). Moody drew enormous crowds in both America and Great Britain, and his work crossed every sort of denominational boundary. Harding’s assessment of Moody’s work is instructive:
Asked once about Dwight L. Moody’s great power and popularity as a preacher, Harding replied that the secret of it was the great buildup from the press and advertising and the fact that Moody knew just how much to say and what to leave unsaid.
“Very few have confidence in their own judgment,” Harding said. “Hence to draw large crowds is in itself enough to set the shallow pates to talking about the ‘wonderful preacher.’ All the clergy are on the platform with him and the advertising in advance has already made the meeting a success.
“Second, people like a bold, vigorous, emphatic man and despise the weak, wavering, undecided speaker; but their admiration quickly turns to bitter dislike if the speaker antagonizes the crowd. This Mr. Moody knows well. He is always emphatic, but he is cautious about what he says. Moody became satisfied with reading the Bible that baptism is immersion, and had Mr. Pentecost immerse him. But he never mentions immersion. If he said, ‘My friends, in order to make sure of a home in heaven it behooves us to follow the Christ and keep his commandments. Realizing this, I went to Dr. Pentecost, demanding baptism, and was immersed by him. I was immersed because I am sure Christ was, because I am confident he commanded it.’ What effect would such a speech have had? It would have burst his great meeting to flinders, would have raised a storm of indignant speeches from all pedobaptist clergy, and would have left the great preacher almost as weak as Samson with his hair clipped. I have never heard him without great admiration for his knowledge of human nature, but with a genuine contempt for his cowardice.”
Eyes of Jehovah, pp. 62-63
In late 19th century Protestant America, practically every church wanted her own Dwight Moody, a dynamic speaker who could bring in the crowds. And every seminary graduate was looking to some degree to Moody and others like him as a model for his own ministry. The revivalist ethos represented a change in emphasis in the major Protestant communions. But it was less disruptive than we might imagine because the machinery needed to enact it was already in place: congregational polity among Baptists, Methodists, and other groups was already centered around a single ordained pastor who was granted full authority to preach. Revivalism represented a change in that pastor’s style and emphasis rather than a fundamental change in polity.
Not so for the churches affiliated with the Restoration Movement. When the enthusiasm for revivalist methods swept over the churches of the SCRM, it had devastating effects on congregational polity. We spoke last time of how Campbell and other first-generation leaders discerned a tripartite order of ministry in the New Testament, consisting of elders, deacons, and evangelists. At the congregational level, elders and deacons provided leadership and oversight. Evangelists, while they were usually involved in establishing new congregations and appointing elders (although there was dispute on this last point), were viewed as extra-congregational itinerants, travelling from place to place.
Descriptions of an actual worship service are fleeting in the sources, and don’t always tell us what we would like to know. (Moreover, many of the clearest descriptions come from the British and Canadian churches. But they are cited approvingly by American leaders, so there is that.) What we can say, in general terms, is that the worship assembly was most often presided over by the elders, with the cooperation of male members in leading singing, reading Scripture, delivering a number of brief exhortatory talks (after the manner of 1 Cor. 14), and gathering around the Table. There might be preaching if an evangelist happened to be in town, but it was by no means a guarantee, especially in isolated rural churches. Moreover, the Sunday AM service was commonly thought of as being for Christians, for members of the church. The Lord’s Supper was thought of as the central moment of the assembly. (This understanding was retained by the British churches, who referred to the main Lord’s Day service as “The Lord’s Supper” until well into the 20th century.) Preaching, if a preacher were available, was often held at a separate afternoon or evening service that was explicitly open to non-believers and visitors.
Perhaps you have already sensed the problem. The revivalist model, and the evangelistic results that it promised, absolutely depended upon the presence of a “dynamic” speaker, an accomplished rhetorician who could move his hearers to make a “decision for Christ.” The congregational polity and assembly structures described above could not accommodate this new model. Moreover, they came to be seen as backwards and amateurish, especially in the larger, more sophisticated city churches. In order to retrofit the churches for a Moody-style revivalist, significant changes would have to be made:
“As early as the 1840s some congregations began to invite young college graduates to settle in their communities. In contrast to the pattern that had developed with the earlier elders, these individuals were to be compensated for performing ministerial duties. By 1865, a specialized ‘College of the Bible’ in Lexington, Kentucky, was graduating leaders to minister to the congregations. The arrival of a located, compensated, professional ministry produced fundamental changes in the Movement’s ‘system’ of ministry.” (Morgan, “Elders, Eldership,” ESCM, pg. 298)
Bethany, College of the Bible, Northwestern (Butler), Drake, Midway, Bacon College all saw this as an opportunity. City churches needing pulpits filled, so they sought to fill them. But what was the exact standing of these young men as they graduated from college and took over pulpits? Were they to be considered evangelists? Not exactly. After all, they weren’t looking to travel. Were they to be considered elders? Obviously not. In many circles, especially in the Northern churches, these young men began to be referred to as pastors in distinction from the elders. The theological justification for this came in subtly shifting the older understanding of the evangelist toward a synthesis with the prevailing understanding of the pastor in Protestant circles. As with many other changes, all of this emerged partly out of a commendable desire to be evangelistic. In short, the same desire to be evangelistic that spawned the missionary society also spawned the new ministry model.
It was not uncommon for a new situation to emerge: a group of older men (elders), local to the congregation, in conflict with a young hotshot (pastor) who was better educated and more eloquent than them. It was quite often this guy who would represent the interests of the state missionary society in a congregation or who would move to introduce the organ into the worship assembly. This was almost exactly the pattern, for example, in a place like Alabama. In the 1880s, a small but determined cadre of young Kentucky preachers, to a man recent graduates of College of the Bible, came south to “organize” the work in the state. A. R. Moore at Gadsden in the mid ’80s may be the first example of the located minister in the State of Alabama.
Seeing this, most conservatives were staunchly opposed to the development of the located minister/pastor. It is often forgotten that opposition to the located minister among the Southern churches was a marquee issue in the division between Disciples and Churches of Christ. Time passed, though, and things changed. Again, Alabama provides a useful example. In 1910, C. E. Holt at Poplar Street in Florence was likely the only located minister among the conservative churches in Alabama (and he was very careful to avoid the term pastor). John T. Lewis certainly did not conceive of himself in these terms. He was not, in other words, the located minister at Fox’s Hall. Rather, he was supported by Fox’s Hall to be an evangelist in the Birmingham District. The distinction may seem academic to some, but it had real effects for congregational life and development.
Ours is an interesting vantage point. Within a few decades, at latest by the 1930s if the pages of the Gospel Advocate are a reliable source, the located minister (carefully, assiduously not referred to as the “pastor”) had been widely adopted by the churches, and discussion of the issue dropped off a cliff after the early 1950s. (A clear point of demarcation might be the DeHoff-Garrett Debate, held in Nashville in June 1954, at which Garrett’s opposition to the located minister was already understood to represent a fringe, minority position. See here for a brief account of the debate.) Respectability and evangelistic effectiveness, for roughly a century now, has been encapsulated in a congregation’s ability to hire an educated, well-spoken, full-time minister/preacher/pulpit minister/etc.
Predictably, the shape of the worship assembly changed as a result of this change of polity. In my youth, the worship assembly was sermon-centric in the extreme, with a “good” sermon taking up 45-50 minutes of an hour-long service. Preaching was the central act of worship in this view, and was best left to the professionals. This emphasis led to truncated observances of the Lord’s Supper, as well as the now-infamous “three songs and prayer” lead-in to the sermon.
As always, though, those who live by the sword die by the sword. The shift to the located minister model began at the high water mark of the age of the protracted tent meeting (often referred to as the gospel meeting in our circles). At the turn of the century such meetings might last for 3 weeks or more and draw enormous crowds in rural communities. But the evangelistic effectiveness of the protracted meeting started to decline precipitously around the time of WWII because of the enormous social changes that were taking shape around that time: widespread adoption of the automobile and concomitantly greater mobility, the advent of radio and television, and the migration of millions off the farm and into the cities.
Even as this became more and more apparent as the century wore on, the located minister model (and the revivalist assumptions behind it) held on tenaciously. Again, though, social changes are driving a reevaluation. First, there is the matter of simple economics. Adoption of the located minister model was a product of flush times among the churches, times that are slipping away and likely will not return. Shrinking numbers and dying congregations have forced many to make hard choices. Especially post-COVID, there are fewer churches with pulpits to fill, and fewer available candidates to fill those pulpits. Rapid de-Christianization of the population at large is also accelerating this trend. Even secular media has picked up on the preacher shortage in Churches of Christ.
The traditional model, however, is lying there still, waiting to be reclaimed. Let us have the courage to take up the mantle again.
More next time.
Anastasis 