I am an old man. Having reached advanced age, I am asked questions by young and old about features of my experience and about life in general. However, some questions are not asked, even by those who know that I was ordained to Christian ministry many decades ago. It was a crowning moment in my life, more important to me than the day I was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from a leading State University. The minister holds meaningful place in history and will be called upon to give important account to God, on genuine calling. Ordination presumes a calling from God. It is striking in how important the pastoral commitment has been for history. The Apostle Paul who ranks among the top ten most influential persons in all history was a preacher, theologian and evangelist. In my lifetime, Billy Graham ranked for decades as one of the ten most admired men in the world. He was an evangelist. Solomon, the writer of Ecclesiastes, appears to have regarded himself as a Preacher, and states his points in such a way that he equates it with the kingship he held. Periods of history cannot be told well without noting the preachers of particular eras in the arenas of society and history. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one.
During decades most of the leaders of Afro-Americans were preachers. Streets and schools are named after King, Jr. The leaders in early America were greatly influenced, or had to adjust to the ministers of their era. What Jonathan Edwards did in Colonial America had much to do with the formation of the new nation called, The United States of America. All this influence funneled down into smaller venues across America. During the early twentieth century there were highly influential persons: Mark Matthews in Seattle, William Bell Riley in Minneapolis, eminent preachers in New York, and in other cities across the nation. Their names are legion. From time to time I visited a church in New York City when I was starting my collegiate career in the early 1940s and heard William Ward Ayer who was polled as second most popular man in the city after Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. At the same time the eminent Harry Emerson Fosdick was the long time minister of the grand church built by the Rockefellers on the Hudson River, on the upper west side. (Space limits my listings. Trust me the list of effective preachers is long.)
One might add here the favorable impact of preacher/missionaries on other nations and cultures as Livingstone in Africa and Mother Teresa in India. Their stories have never really been fully told in the tomes of history. Nearly all of these have been overlooked as not only preachers of the Gospel of Christ, but as persons who contributed to a better life for the ordinary citizen. Their motivation was to give their lives for the spiritual and personal benefit of the people, churches, hospitals, schools and other institutions functioning throughout the world and expanding from their efforts. Many died for the purpose to serve mankind, so to serve God. It is not to be denied that there have been scandalous preachers, even missionaries, but one would not judge government or other institutions by their hypocrites. One of the great losses of my childhood was that I had no minister as a friend in my life. In that minister I would have been helped and blessed not only with the Gospel of Christ, but mortality and immorality as well. My experience with others, related to spiritual life, has special meaning. Perhaps great omission from a child’s life is a minister. Parents who do not provide that special person to their families have already erected barriers to the possibility of the child to discover for adulthood what it means to love God and be loved by Him. Even Christians sometimes omit that factor for their children by attitude, lack of commitment to Christian culture that leaves their children bereft of ministry. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020