The human frailty of the clergy sometimes seems an insuperable obstacle to the coming of the Kingdom. To help keep it within bounds, one wise old Lutheran, the Rev. Walter E. Schuette, 85, has written a book called The Minister's Personal Guide (Harper; $2.95).
Pastor Schuette (pronounced Shootie) has a ministerial experience of 65 years to draw on, during 28 of which he was district president of more than 200 Ohio congregations of the American Lutheran Church. Samples of his advice:
The Call is a sacred thing, and ministers who talk about "being hired" are no friends of Dr. Schuette. He urges clergymen to consider themselves God's emissaries: "I fear there is a tendency among theological students to give far too much consideration to the material advantages and disadvantages ... in the fields to which they are called."
The Slugabed gives the ministry a black eye. Telling of a parsonage where the blinds were commonly still drawn at 11 a.m., Dr. Schuette warns: "There was much talk about this. The minister's published excuse for his late rising was that he burned midnight oil until three and four o'clock in the morning. This excuse did not get general acceptance."
The Door of the church after a service is an important test: "Some [ministers] are stiff . . . Others are so effusive and indulge in pleasantries so jocular that it looks as though they are glad to get away from . . . devotion and back into the hello and titter of the world . . . Backslapping is nowhere in order . . . And, while I am at this, let me say, 'Preacher, don't paw people, especially women!' ''
The Pulpit is the place where irritating mannerisms dog the most conscientious. Some of the commonest: "Leaning on the pulpit . . . using one's handkerchief like a mop . . . dropping one's voice to a whisper for effect . . . crouching, with knees bent, as if to make a spring; 'making faces.' "
The Sickbed requires the diplomatic finesse and toughness of a Talleyrand—and often the elusiveness. Sometimes the mere presence of a clergyman is enough to send the patient into a tailspin of fear that his end has come. Members of the family who ask the minister to pretend that he just happened to drop in are no help. Inexperienced ministers are likeliest to agree to this deception: "They come breezing in as though by chance, express astonishment at finding someone of the household sick, and, of course, under the circumstances cannot bear any burden of the seriousness of the situation." Other hazards are people faking illness, and designing women: "There have been quite well substantiated cases in which women have staged a sickness to entice the minister. Enough said."
The Female, in fact, is a menace to ministers outside the sickroom as well as in it. The fact that most pastoral calls are unwelcome in the morning (before the house is straightened), and that in the afternoon most women are alone, tends to put the minister in a situation that is "embarrassing, even dangerous," such is the power of gossip: "Let me set it down, plain and positive: it is a dangerous practice for any minister to call on a woman alone in her home." If the minister is lucky enough to have a child below school age, this "is an efficient bodyguard."