The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Ministers should impress upon the people the necessity of individual effort. No church can flourish unless its members are workers. The people must lift where the ministers lift.
Ministers have received their wages, and some have their minds too much on their wages. They labor for wages, and lose sight of the sacredness and importance of the work.
We ministers have undoubtedly failed to connect and apply Christianity to the practical everyday problems of the average man. In this, we have failed to follow in Christ's footsteps. For the religion which He taught and revealed in His own life and ministry was an intensely practical and down-to-earth affair.
Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.
Churches know more about poverty than any government will ever know, because we're dealing with the poor every day.
While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades... the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships.
Television preachers extract money from the poor to live in a style and to indulge in shameful acts which equal or outdo the worst of the Renaissance Popes.
In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo.
It is opposition to economic orthodoxy that leads us into austerity and cuts. But it is also a thirst for something more communal, more participative. That, to me, is what is interesting in this process.
One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.