One of the many things I wish I had known when I started ministry is how crucial holding onto “the call” or calling to ministry. One of the privileges, especially in my years as a Director of Missions, then Church Planting Catalyst, and currently as a Regional Director, is assisting with or presiding over many ordination services. When the time comes for the “laying on of hands,” a go-to verse that I have quoted as I prayed over many of a pastor candidate is from the Apostle Paul’s writings in 1 Thessalonians 5:24, “He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.” The “He” is referring to the previous verse, “our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Being called into ministry is not something we can generate. A calling from God is both a blessing, a gift as well as a burden. It is a gift because when the going gets tough (and it will most certainly come), the call of God on a pastor’s life is a rock to stand on.
Recently, I have noticed a change in pastors’ phrasing of accepting a call to be a church planter or pastor. They refer to the position as a “job” rather than a “calling.” Perhaps we have lost what it means to be called by God, and we just pursue positions at church like a new job opportunity? Perhaps it is why we seem to have a lack of resiliency in ministry, and pastors are leaving the ministry in droves. Estimates from various sources say 1500 to 1700 leave the ministry every month. I know that since the Pandemic, it has been difficult navigating through new challenges, yet I must wonder how many never really established a firm call.
My own story of God’s calling began my freshman year of college. I was at a worship service, and the pastor was preaching out of Romans, specifically, Romans 15. Having grown up unchurched and in an area where Bible believing churches were culturally unacceptable and a lot of lostness, I was struck and convicted by the Holy Spirit of the need for a gospel ministry in places that were pioneer or frontier areas of the gospel. These verses are my “calling” verses: “And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man’s foundation; but as it is written, ‘They who had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand’” (Romans 15:20-21). I have returned to these verses whenever I have prayed about where God is leading me to serve.
One of the blessings I have had the privilege of experiencing is walking alongside potential church planters coming to Northern Colorado since 2006. I have read about their call in an exploratory questionnaire that was developed locally. Yet, when the North American Mission Board (NAMB) created the Send Network Assessment retreat and invited, as a requirement, all church planter couples to participate as a part of the endorsement, one of the key components or features of that assessment was the “Calling” piece. Hearing couples articulate a clear calling to plant is paramount, especially hearing that they have a Bible promise or passage to claim.
I learned this when I went to the Promise Keepers Clergy Conference back in 1996. Pastor Tony Evans preached about a call to ministry and being “recalled” if necessary. I went back to my Romans 15:20-21 and made sure I stood on those verses like the Rock of Gibraltar!
I wish I would have known how important a call from God would be in the successes and the struggles in the ministry.
A call to ministry is to be a God-thing. But a call to a specific people and place is essential to hear from God as well. The great truth and promise is God who calls us IS faithful and he will accomplish what he begins in us (Philippians 1:6).
I guess since I grew up and was called to ministry in the 1900s (wow, that sounds old!), before there was social media where we can get instant feedback on decisions we make or philosophies on life, we have forgotten how to determine God’s will. A central tenet of Henry Blackaby’s book, Experiencing God, emphasizes that God communicates with believers through the Bible, prayer, their church community, and the events of their daily lives. Blackaby says that it is paramount that a Christian learns to recognize God’s voice so that they can know and do the will of God. Therefore, a pastor or minister needs to be able to recognize God’s call on their lives so that they are operating in the center of God’s Will. That’s the call of ministry. We can’t get advice from others or discern God’s Will or calling on our lives “by committee.”
Though mediating and praying through God’s Word needs to be the source of God’s calling, we need other trusted biblically grounded believers around us to confirm God’s calling.
I have had the privilege of serving the churches of the Longs Peak Baptist Association for nearly 20 years. It’s a definite calling I received in the late autumn of 2005 of “seeing God be great in and through his churches and pastors/leaders.” No matter what title or role I have had in these past 20 years, that one call has been the filter by which I have changed roles here. I had no idea what God had in store when he called me to this ministry. When I graduated from seminary in 1990, I had no idea that I would ever serve in a ministry role for an association of churches. I thought that I would be a pastor in a local church in one form or another the rest of my life.
Yet here is what I sense of some of the pastors who have come and gone in Longs Peak Association of churches these past 20 years. Some, not all have had the idea (not spoken but portrayed in one way or another) that when they said “yes” to God and accepted a call to plant a church or pastor a church, they somehow felt that God seemed to owe them a particular form of success. Yet, we are to put our “yes” on a blank sheet of paper and let God determine by his sovereign purposes what the results of our answering his call is to be! Look back to those called in Scripture by God: Abraham, Noah, Moses, David, Daniel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Peter, Paul and John to name a few, none of them had any clear understanding of the outcome of their saying “Yes” to God! And they certainly were not promised “success,” especially according to the world’s standards of success. And we are not either. We are not to serve, “entitled.”
I think of the now old (1990) Steven Curtis Chapman song and lyrics, For the Sake of the Call:
“We will abandon it all for the sake of the call
No other reason at all but the sake of the call
Wholly devoted to live and to die for the sake of the call.”
Pastor and Christian leader, I encourage you and exhort you, in your calling when you placed your “yes” on a blank piece of paper, entrusting God to fulfill his purposes, to remember the words of 2 Chronicles 16:9a, “For the eyes of the LORD roam throughout the earth to show himself strong for those who are wholeheartedly devoted to him.”
