Etiquette

Should I offer a prayer during a pastoral call? May I advertise my sermons? Should I visit female parishioners alone? How should I dress for a church picnic?

For 22 years many a Protestant pastor has kept himself Emily-posted on such clerical fine points through the pages of the Rev. Nolan B. Harmon's Ministerial Ethics and Etiquette. This week Methodist Harmon brought out his book in a new, revised edition (Abingdon-Cokesbury; $2.50). Some highlights:

On Getting a New Parish. "Ministers shrink from being drawn into a contest with each other for a vacant place, and preserve self-respect better by refusing to strive with one another for an open pulpit. A minister, like a maiden, should insist on being told that he is the one & only person who is in the mind of the wooer--in this case, the congregation."

Pulpit Manners. Author Harmon advises against "smoothing the hair, arranging the tie, or in any way putting the finishing touch upon one's personal toilet before the congregation . . ."

Women. "Women make up a large proportion of the minister's flock, and the pastoral relationship with them is complicated by the fact that they are women . . . When a woman is sick and in bed, the minister should always be sure that someone else is with her when he calls . . . Wise pastors usually try to have the nurse or attendant go before to arrange the room for the visit."

Funerals. "Every minister, of course, wishes to comfort the bereaved and to say what good he can of each person whose life's record he is called upon to close; but honesty and candor must not be forfeited in the process . . . Other funerals are yet to be held, and the minister who goes 'all out' for one person's father or husband or son or daughter will have other sons or wives or fathers or mothers facing him with their dead in the days to come . . ."

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