Just Say No (While Also Saying Yes)

If you want to be a doctor, there are several concrete steps one must take: med school, boards, etc.

If you want to be a lawyer, there are different steps: LSAT, law school, etc.

If you want to be a professional pastor, there are completely different steps and those steps vary by denomination or tradition.  But here’s the thing:  any individual can check off . . .

• required college and seminary degrees
• required field education
• required psych tests
• required ordination exams
• required random hoops

but still not be called to professional ministry.  We used to call professional ministry The Ministry of the Word and Sacrament in my denomination.  Now it’s called Ministry as a Teaching Elder. 

[Personal pet peeve:  when people refer to “ministers” and they mean the ones who graduated from seminary and were ordained as Teaching Elders.  Please stop doing this.]

If we really truly believe in “The Priesthood of all Believers” and that line on the back of the worship bulletins that says, “Ministers – The Congregation” please don’t refer to your pastor as “the minister” anymore.  It ruins it for all the other ministers in the world who feed strangers, knit prayer shawls, serve up lasagna casseroles in shelters, love stray animals, teach little children, rock crying babies, paint run-down living rooms, repair broken fences,  and every other countless act of compassion that scripture includes in “ministry.”  Really.  Please stop calling your pastor the minister.

Everybody’s called to ministry.  But not everybody’s called to professional ministry including The Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

In our give-everybody-a-trophy culture, we’ve become excellent at encouraging each other, but we are not so accomplished at telling people what their gifts are not.  How do we explain to someone who truly believes he is called to professional ministry that we do not see him as a professional minister – but we see his gifts and affirm that he’s called to a different kind of ministry?  How do we explain how one candidate is so clearly called and everyone sees it, while the community just doesn’t see it as clearly in another candidate?

It is a mystery  – this call to serve.

When a commission  – or a bishop – charged with discerning a candidate’s call says, “no” it feels soul-crushing like an absolute rejection of our very selves.    But this is not about rejection for all ministry.  It’s about being true to God’s calling for a specific ministry. 

A call – any call – from God never involves a sense of entitlement, personal  aggrandizement, or parroting responses we think people expect to hear from us.  It’s about a real, God-whispering-in-your-ear, humbling, irresistable, ineffable, shocking, unexpected summons to do what is messy and upheaving.

How do we help those who want to serve in a certain way, but what they see as their calling is not actually their calling according to the faithful team of people who reflect theologically with them in conversation, work, and wonder?  I believe that we who have the responsibility to help with this discernment need to be authentic and speak the truth.  Be loving.  Be compassionate.  Say yes to ministry but not to every ministry.