Word: pulpiteers
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...game of musical pulpits has a protocol as rigid as that of court tennis. Ministers never publicly announce that they are ready to move elsewhere, generally let the word filter out through clerical friends. As a rule, pulpit committees play up "challenge" and "opportunity for service" rather than salary, insist that a minister dispose of any other offers he has before considering theirs. Under the rules of the game, an out-of-town candidate is seldom invited to preach directly to an interested congregation; instead, pulpit committeemen drop into his church to hear him unobserved. But most committeemen are about...
Stuck with the System. U.S. Protestantism actually has more unemployed ministers than unfilled pulpits. For most pulpit committees, the problem is simply finding a capable administrator who can preach well. Churches that offer impressive material as well as spiritual benefits set their standards higher. Everybody seems to want a nondrinking, tolerant intellectual who does not talk down to his flock-a man who is not too young, not too old, who is interested in the choir, is good at raising money, and who has a charming but unobtrusive wife...
...living or dead-meets their requirements. Much of the problem results from a Horatio Alger complex, a belief that you can go out and buy a good minister the way college football coaches buy a 250-lb. tackle." Wagoner thinks that the churches could stem pulpit jumping by setting up denomination-wide salary scales (today the pay runs from $3,600 to $20,000 in the major churches) that reward ministers on the basis of length and standard of service...
...many committeemen believe that pulpit turnover prevents both preachers and congregations from growing stale, and that the present method is the only one compatible with the policy of churches-such as Baptists, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ-opposed to a strong central authority. Argues New York Lawyer Arad Riggs, a committeeman of the Bronxville Reformed Church: "It brings the leaders to the top. It brings out the best in the ministry and the best in the churches...
Lacking any plausible alternative, most churchmen conclude that preacher shopping is likely to go on forever. As the chairman of a pulpit committee for a Presbyterian church in New York put it, "I don't know if it's the proper way, but it is the Presbyterian way, and I'm stuck with...