The Gladness of Our Call
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Among the experiences I enjoy as a United Methodist District Superintendent is I often get to hear people tell about their call to ministry. Some are young adults; others, well along their life span road. The route to ministry as a Local Pastor, Elder or Deacon is not for the faint. Yet it leads to a wonderful life worth living and dying for.
Oh my, how our church, our world, needs such people for the specialized ministry of clergy! And yet, understand clergy, ordained or licensed, is a subset of what is called the General Ministry of All Christians, the Priesthood of All Believers. Clergy at our best are player-coaches, even ‘go-fors’, for the skin in the game, in the world ministry of laity.
The world needs even more people to discover that God’s call is upon every life…to be a minister-channel of God’s love. THE ordination for Christian ministers is baptism. ‘Minister’: from ‘ministerium’ in Latin, to New Testament Greek ‘diakonia’ – service, servant. Archetype of minister/deacon: table servant - one who brings nourishment to others for their lives.
You may have missed the CNN/60-Minutes piece on the 10th anniversary of my PEOPE OF INTEGRITY: Authentic Christian Living. That little book took big help from others. Central is the portrayal of the joy for our lives and positive impact on others when we respond to the call/claim on our lives to be minister/channels of God’s love in our work and relationships.
I wrote of a man who operated a carwash in an old service station. After bad weather, crusty cars lined up. Busted water heater, customers at the counter, jangling phone, stepping out to coach his workers, the man was nobly trying to respond and not react. In the cramped little waiting space, I overheard his quiet words to himself in between it all, a sort of breath prayer: “Lord, help me. This has got to be a calling. Lord, you know I couldn’t do this job unless you called me to it.”
Later, when I related this ‘amusing’ story to a friend, she said, ‘don’t you know he’s a minister, has a little church. The business is for income but mainly to give at risk young guys a chance to develop work skills.’ With or without his church, this man did life-wash business ministry! I have been blessed over the years to witness all sorts of people finding ministry in their jobs, professions, and volunteer efforts.
Under the rubric of ‘integrity’ as responding in our lives to the best we know of God’s love and justice, instead of just reacting on our own, the book explores ‘the ministry of competence’ – ‘the ministry of showing up’ – ‘the ministry of encouragement – ‘the ministry of seeing Jesus face in people’.
Also shared was a three-question process for youth and all life stages.
+ One, what do you like to do, that you are pretty good at, could with practice, even be excellent? Music, computers, relating to people, figuring out things, fixing things, making money, making dinner, whatever? These can be manifestations of your life gifts.
+ Two, with a job or volunteer service, can you imagine doing this thing you enjoy in some form that helps others with their lives…that relieves hurt, increases beauty, builds up/protects the earth?
+ Three, is the doing of this thing that you are pretty good at/enjoy, that can build up people and/or the earth…something that can honor and serve the life-giving mystery who we detect in Jesus? (pp.95-99)
Perchance by grace, it may not require changing jobs as much as changing the way we do our work, the way we treat others and ourselves in our work.
Once again, I have both said too much and too little. In a way, all this is commentary on a sentence Frederick Buechner, author-minister extraordinaire, penned with luminous concise clarity in his 1973 WISHFUL THINKING.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (p. 93)