Religion: Be a Minister

Trade-school ads urged: “Become an Expert Accountant,” “Get into Radio Electronics.” Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, Presbyterian president of interdenominational Union Theological Seminary, thought to himself: if mechanical engineers can be recruited, why not ministers? Concluding that the best material for future ministers lay in the armed forces, Van Dusen got together with Union’s Board Chairman Thatcher M. Brown and Oilman-Philanthropist Walter C. Teagle. Result: a threeyear, $30,000-a-year program, to advertise the ministry as a career and to help students toward it.

Cornerstone of Union’s promotional campaign was a series of eight pamphlets, Service Men and the Ministry, written by prominent churchmen on practical aspects of the ministry as a career, and distributed by service chaplains. Excerpt:

“. . . The ministry has a special claim on the service man. This is because his experience is as wide as human nature and as deep as the searching questions of life and death and as high as the sovereign insight of the assurance of the presence of God. . . . Out of the crucible of the service man’s experience can come a Christian ministry of exceptional power and results.”

Last week, with two pamphlets and $1,000 of this year’s promotion budget still to spend, 150,000 copies had been sent out and requests for more were pouring in. Far from looking askance at such salesmanship, ministers and chaplains were generally enthusiastic, felt that God’s call usually needed some such secular amplifiers.