50 years ago — August 11, 1969
The celebration of our national achievement of space travel and the Apollo 11 moon landing brought a brief respite from troubling domestic concerns. There were still great issues we faced as a nation and recent seminary graduates were being sent out to minister to the people. The Outlook established a forum for key seminary faculty to bear words of encouragement to the new pastors and the churches they would serve.
“The greatest problem, as I see it, for pastoral ministry in the years lying immediately ahead, is the rapidly increasing polarization of opinion, not only within congregations, but in our culture as a whole. It will not be helpful, even if it were any longer possible, to strive for a non-committal neutral posture in the face of strong cleavages of opinion on crucial questions that plague every institution and structure in our society. Pastors will have almost unprecedented pressures brought to bear on them to take a firm and visible position on an ever-expanding spectrum of questions.”
A response by Lewis A. Briner, professor of pastoral theology and liturgies at McCormick Theological Seminary, in the forum article “The church as pastor”
