Who'd want to be a preacher, anyway?

Did you ever wonder why someone might hesitate to go into the ministry? Perhaps this description of the characteristics required of a successful minister might help to explain it!

To put it in its simplest form, people expect their minister to be serious but not solemn; unworldly but possessed of some practical sense; wise but not smart; gentle but not effeminate; poor but not a pauper; unctuous but not pompous; neat but not natty; diligent but not ambitious; upright in his own conduct but not censurious of their; forthright but tactful; affable but reserved.

Perhaps the best single word to describe the flavor of personality one must strive to achieve is "pious." This implies that the preacher will gather up in himself a host of qualities and  characteristics and distill them into an essence which he exudes at all times, and which advertises unmistakably that here is a man who has disentangled himself from the secular, soiling concerns which obsess most men - in short, a clergyman.

Now someone is bound to say that this means a preacher, to be a success, must be religious - a contention which this book is written to deny.

Here we must pause to make a distinction between "religious" and "pious".

A genuinely religious man is, as the sociologists would say, inner-directed. he has deep and abiding convictions usually derived from his faith in God and what he believes to be God's will. Thus he is likely to b socially irresponsible, largely uninterested in the kind of impression he makes on people, often involved in unpopular causes. He tends to be a crusader, frequently intolerant of what he conceives to be injustice or evil. Unfortunately he is usually tactless, making enemies unnecessarily and thus becoming an embarrassment to the church... He is the fellow who gives rise to the suspicion that the church is socialistic and brings the whole clerical profession into disrepute. If he wants to make speeches, he ought to hire a hall and leave the care of Christian souls to better-balanced men who understand that the true minister comforts and pleases his people.

 Reverend Charles Merrill Smith, in

How To Become A Bishop Without Being Religious