“In the seminaries it seems there have been an inordinate number of students who are pointing toward some nonchurch type of ministry, such as teaching. Certainly teaching is a valid and needed ministry. I wouldn’t question the motives of anyone who plans to enter the teaching ministry. Yet I cannot help but feel that the attractiveness of teaching is increasing because the glamor of the local church as a place of service is decreasing.
Obviously each person must find his place of ministry under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. It is my judgment, however, that the local church presents one of the pivotal battlegrounds and one of the key opportunities for ministry in our time. A call to the local church may be a call to the most difficult spot—more difficult than a call to the world. It may be to the church that God is calling his most able men and women—that is, those most able to love, to suffer, to forgive, to be reviled and rejected yet continue to pray for those who despitefully use them.” [Findley B. Edge, The Greening of the Church (Waco, TX: Word, 1971), 19.]
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