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Pastoral Ministry
Pastor-Parent Team
Parents criticize the minister for their own neglect—Your sons
and daughters are corrupted by your own example and lax precepts;
and, notwithstanding this lack of domestic training, you expect the
minister to counteract your daily work and accomplish the wonderful
achievement of training their hearts and lives to virtue and piety. After
the minister has done all he can do for the church by faithful, affec-
tionate admonition, patient discipline, and fervent prayer to reclaim
and save the soul, yet is not successful, the fathers and mothers often
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blame him because their children are not converted, when it may be
because of their own neglect. The burden rests with the parents; and
will they take up the work that God has entrusted to them and with
fidelity perform it? Will they move onward and upward, working
in a humble, patient, persevering way to reach the exalted standard
themselves and to bring their children up with them?—
The Adventist
Home, 188
.
Pastors need the help of parents in converting the youth—
Many seem to think that the declension in the church, the growing
love of pleasure, is due to want of pastoral work. True, the church
is to be provided with faithful guides and pastors. Ministers should
labor earnestly for the youth who have not given themselves to Christ,
and also for others who, though their names are on the church roll, are
irreligious and Christless. But ministers may do their work faithfully
and well, yet it will amount to very little if parents neglect their work.
It is to a lack of Christianity in the home life that the lack of power in
the church is due. Until parents take up their work as they should, it
will be difficult to arouse the youth to a sense of their duty. If religion
reigns in the home, it will be brought into the church. The parents
who do their work for God are a power for good. As they restrain
and encourage their children, bringing them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, they bless the neighborhood in which they
live. And the church is strengthened by their faithful work.—
Child
Guidance, 550
.
Some parents are active in Christian work outside the home
while their own children are strangers to the Saviour—There are
fathers and mothers who long to labor in some foreign mission field;
there are many who are active in Christian work outside the home,