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Luther on Church Worker Recruitment and Support
by Timothy Teuscher
One of the Strategic Initiatives of our synod is the recruitment, education, and support of church workers. This is nothing new—as Jesus Himself says: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into the harvest” (Luke 10:2).
In this regard, we would do well to take to heart what Martin Luther said in a 1530 sermon entitled “On Keeping Children in School” (Luther’s Works Vol. 46). Here he addresses a situation similar to our day, when the number of young people going into church work was diminishing. In this sermon, Luther emphasizes three things that are still applicable for us today.
First, he affirms the high value and eternal impact of the office of the ministry, stating: “There is no dearer treasure, no nobler thing on earth or in this life than a good and faithful pastor and preacher.” While many in our society regard pastors as irrelevant and even some church members dismiss the importance of pastors, not so with Luther. The reason? “[Christ] paid dearly that men might everywhere have this office of preaching, baptizing, loosing, binding, giving the sacrament, comforting, warning, and exhorting with God’s word, and whatever else belongs to the pastoral office,” Luther says. “For this office not only helps to further and sustain this temporal life and all the worldly estates, but it also gives eternal life and delivers from sin and death, which is its proper and chief work.” Many young people today wish to invest their lives in meaningful causes, like caring for the environment or helping the poor and the suffering. But what more meaningful cause is there than that which gives heavenly, eternal blessings to the spiritually poor and suffering?
Second, Luther emphasizes the need to encourage young men to pursue the office of the ministry. He regards the mission of the Church as hinging on the pastoral office. This is why his goal is not just filling the office with warm bodies, but with raising up pastors of the highest character and abilities. To parents who did not regard this vocation highly, Luther says: “[God] has not given you your children and the means to support them simply so that you may do with them as you please, or train them just to get ahead in the world…. Your children are not so wholly yours that you need give nothing of them to God. He too will have what is rightfully His—and they are more His than yours.”
But Luther does not just rebuke Christians for failing to encourage the brightest and best young men to prepare for ministry; he holds forth the joy experienced in directing youth toward professional church work. “How much more should you rejoice if you have raised a son for this office of preaching in which you are sure that he serves God so gloriously, helps men so generously, and smites the devil in such knightly fashion?” he asks. “You have made of your son such a true and excellent sacrifice to God that the very angels must look upon it as a splendid miracle.”
Third, Luther advocates the financial support of young people who pursue the office of the holy ministry. To send one’s son to be formed as a pastor was a sacrifice in Luther’s time, and it is also so today. It is not cheap to train pastors and deacons, nor is it inexpensive for those who prepare to be such. This can place financial stress upon seminarians and their families—including their parents— as they prepare for pastoral and diaconal ministry. But the financial burden should not be borne by them alone. The broader church community is called to sacrifice and support seminarians and other church workers, as well as those who are called to teach at our seminaries. In fact, Luther says, there is no better investment that a person could make. “A man ought to be willing to crawl on his hands and knees to the ends of the earth to be able to invest his money so gloriously well,” he writes. “Yet right there in your own house and on your own lap you have that in which you can make such an investment. Shame, shame, and shame again upon our blind and despicable ingratitude that we should fail to see what extraordinary service we could render to God, indeed, how distinguished we could be in His sight with just a little application of effort and our own money and property.”
What a timely word of exhortation and encouragement from the Reformer! What a necessary word for us to hear and take to heart! So Luther adds: “Let the rich make their wills with this work in view, as some have done. This is the right way to bequeath your money to the church, for in this way you… maintain God’s offices [and] help the living and those to come so that they are redeemed from hell and go to heaven…. That would be a praise-worthy Christian testament. God would have delight and pleasure in it, and would bless and honour you in return by giving you pleasure and joy in Him.”
Luther concludes: “God grant that we may obey His Word, in praise and thanksgiving to our dear Lord for His precious blood so freely offered for us; and may He preserve us from the abominable sin of ingratitude and forgetfulness of His blessings. Amen.”
