Do You Say You Are Not Fitted for Leadership?

By Charles S. Bauslin

Do you say you are not fitted for leadership? Moses, Livingstone, and Dwight L. Moody felt the same way.

One evening and young man heard a minister say publicly that God had yet to show the world what He could do with a life placed absolutely at His disposal. The young man was Dwight L. Moody. He said: “God shall have His chance with my life.” And, oh, how God has blessed the world because Dwight L. Moody put his life completely at God’s disposal.

But no one ever knows what God can do through him until he has given Him a chance. If we are ready to give “our utmost for the highest,” the undreamed and the impossible will be accomplished through us.—J. Campbell White

The man of sense in choosing a life work views it from every angle. He thinks not merely about what he can make out of his life work—he thinks still more about what his life work will probably make out of him. He studies naturally the entries it will make in his cash book, but he has in mind also what he will find when the other books are opened where the entries are not made in dollars and cents.

And of course we shall never ask men to become prophets and apostles for the fat competency involved and you have lived long enough to know that the man who fights for pay is a soldier of fortune, a pirate, a buccaneer. But even so an honest estimate will show a large percentage of clergymen’s homes well cared for financially thank almost any business or other profession, if the amount of college training and equipment is taken into consideration in each case. If the minister is not making so much money there are other remunerations that are infinitely more worthwhile than money or anything that can be bought with money, and these are the things which make preachers such a jolly, happy lot wherever you find them.

It isn’t fair to let you young men rest under the false conception that the ministry is a life of sacrifice and self-denial, and austerity, fit only for the goody-goody and sissy fellow. That is why it delights us to send you this splendid little monograph of Dr. Baker’s—a true leader, a genuine friend, a successful pastor, a virile preacher of righteousness. You cannot fail to see the minister is not a man who spends his days and nights reading only, and beyond the preaching of an uninteresting sermon on Sunday, with an occasional funeral, has no further opportunity to function. In these pages he gives you a cross section taken out of actual experience. There is no other calling where human contacts are so many, so varied and so rewarded. Read this carefully and I am sure you will be amazed to find how little possibly you know about the varied opportunities for usefulness which come to any active minister.

Why should you, young men, when you think of business and law and medicine gauge these professions by the ablest men in them, but when you think of ministers, think of some ill-fated preacher who has never made it go, and forget the lawyers, doctors and business men who are sticking away in some little, old, dingy office unknown and unheard of, but they are there by the scores just the same.

Every healthy man desires self-realization in the truest sense, the esteem of his fellows and the sense of God’s favor. Does any calling offer such an opportunity for gaining all three as does the Christian ministry?

There belongs to any minister who will make his work count, to be an outstanding character in the community and looked up to as a leader. Even in the large cities the names of preachers are better known to large numbers than any other profession. They are quoted in the papers, pushed forward into prominence at nearly every gathering, and their influence solicited for every important movement. During the war, as a mere policy of molding, public opinion the government sent more printed matter and asked the help of the preachers more than perhaps any other set of men, except editors.

There is no other calling which furnishes so many opportunities for leadership. For any individual who is unspoiled by selfishness and the sordid lust for gain there is no other one factor which so enriches life as does friendship. The business of creating and enriching friendship is a part of the minster’s daily work. It’s a side-line and a by-product in other professions, but the minister becomes the heart center of more and larger circles of friendship, and is counted a part of more homes and more groups than any other man in the community. If you have ever once felt the indescribable joy of being a great friend you can never again be satisfied without it, and no young man has a same conception of the values of life who would not count that to be worth infinitely more than position or money.

And the privilege of preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus and leading men to the “Son of God that taketh away the sin of the world”—this is the superlative of all. But I must not say more to you now. I wish this great message from Dr. Baker to speak itself to your heart. Just this, no man casting about for his life work can afford to undervalue the privilege of coveting for himself the experiences set before him in this message.

For young men, this thing is eternally and unavoidably true, that if God wants you in the ministry and means you to be in the ministry, if you choose something else your whole life will be one of dissatisfaction and disappointment, and after a while it will be a tragedy—the tragedy of a man who has missed his calling and whose heart is eating itself out in the bitter consciousness that he has lost something better and happier than anything he has found.

Sincerely yours,
Charles S. Bauslin