Pastoral turnover and the call of preach

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2001 by Harrison, Paul V

Permitting a minister to change pastorates because there was an opening in a wealthier community or in one of the several pulpits that automatically made its occupant a colony wide clerical and social leader would have meant opening the ministry up to precisely the worldly ambitions for wealth, fame, and power that were thought to be antithetical to both the spiritual and the public character of the office.24

What this meant, of course, was that when an established pulpit was left empty, for whatever reason, the church generally had no choice but to look to fresh ministerial graduates who had no pastoral experience whatsoever. They might find some unattached former pastor, though such a status carried with it suspicion, but, more likely than not, inexperienced youths were the candidates. The Northampton Church in Massachusetts makes an interesting case study. The founding pastor was Eleazar Mather, who was ordained on June 18, 1661 and died July 24, 1669. Learning of Solomon Stoddard, a 1662 Harvard graduate, the church invited him to minister to them, barely reaching the young man before he sailed back to England. He received a unanimous call to the church on March 4, 1670, and four days later married his predecessor's widow, Mrs. Esther Mather. For some reason he was not ordained until September 11, 1672. He served as pastor of the Northampton Church until his death in 1729. Stoddard, during his nearly sixty years as pastor there, established one of the loftiest reputations in New England. His grandson, Jonathan Edwards, succeeded him as pastor, having served the last two years of the old man's life as assistant in the church. This was Edwards's first pastorate. In the course of his twenty-one year stay, he established himself as the greatest theologian in America.

Edwards was dismissed from his congregation in 1750 as a result of a theological dispute with his people over whether the unregenerate should partake in the communion service. This left the church needing a minister. Consider their situation. They have just enjoyed back-to-back the ministries of arguably the two most prominent ministers in all of New England. How would they now go about filling their pulpit?

Edwards knew the custom of the day, and so he expected them to look to fresh ministerial graduates. This is seen in his farewell sermon to his people, delivered June 22, 1750. After twice referring to the yet-to-be-secured pastor as "young," he prayed:

May God bless you with a faithful pastor, one that is well acquainted with his mind and will, thoroughly warning sinners, wisely and skillfully searching professors, and conducting you in the way to eternal blessedness. May you have truly a burning and shining light set up in this candlestick; and may you, not only for a season, but during his whole life, that a long life, be willing to rejoice in his light.25

Edwards's memoirs give us the names of the candidates who were considered by the church. They brought in a "Mr. Farrand, a young gentleman from New Jersey college" (now Princeton).26 Surely this is Daniel Farrand, born in Milford, Connecticut, in 1722, who graduated from New Jersey College in 1750. The Northampton Church "contended much about him," according to Edwards, so he left them, eventually being ordained August 12, 1752, in Canaan, Connecticut, where he stayed until his death in 1803.27