Come, follow me
Matthew 4:19
I believe in The Call. I believe God calls some to pick up and go serve far from the familiar, while others are called to serve the exact neighborhood where we happen to live.
In this economy, and perhaps even when the economy is strong, I watch professional ministers look for the best paying job rather than a “call.” A friend once told me that following a true call is a luxury he can’t afford. He needed to provide for his family and so he took the most financially lucrative job he could find.
I understand this, practically speaking, but there is nothing quite like serving a community where the call to be there is abundantly clear. I don’t ever want to be in a place where I haven’t been called. It’s too hard on my soul.
Several friends and I were talking recently about The Cost of Our Call. What if we’ve clearly been called to a place where the whole family has to move to a new part of the world. Kids are plucked out of schools they love. Spouses have to leave their own jobs and leave pensions behind. Maybe we can’t sell our homes or we must leave close friends and family. There is often a great cost when we follow God’s calling. To a person, this group had paid a high cost when they’d followed where God had led them.
Years ago when two missionaries were kidnapped in Afghanistan, a friend commented that they were asking for trouble by going to a place like Afghanistan. I remember thinking, “But what if they were called there? What if that voice whispering in their ears or that deep urge they couldn’t shake made going there irresistible?” Nobody with a Bible can dispute that God sometimes calls people to go to dangerous, unfriendly places.
Like Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, we might long to be called to Orlando, but sometimes God calls us to Uganda. Or maybe we are truly called to go move to Orlando.
Are you finding that you and the professional clergy you know are following authentic calls or are we simply taking positions that we can live with? Hope you’ll share.
A Church for Starving Artists 
Thank you for this, Jan. I think I needed to read this for a variety of reasons. In part it reminds me why I gave the Spirit a chance in this whole thing. I don’t think the Spirit was wrong and I need to listen to that and learn from it.
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This hits a little too close to home. Stop it. 🙂
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When I was getting ready to graduate from seminary, our Diocesan deployment specialist came down to help the group of us fill out our Church Deployment Profiles. Of the 6, I was the only one not already drawing a pension or a retired baseball player. I was also the only one under 50. He helped the others first and then sat down next to me and said, “Steve, you’re going to want to be a Bishop or the Dean of a Cathedral someday, so here’s how your career needs to go”. Thankfully, I had been warned of the stepping stone mentality in the Church and was made keenly aware of the “crush fingers on the corporate ladder” mentality in me, so when it came time to find a first call, I was ready to listen for the Spirit rather than my resume. I’m certain others from my class did the same, but when the “experts” are feeding seminarians these lies, it starts the whole process off on a bad foot. And don’t get me started on my tradition’s (Episcopal) history of Bishop’s placing people in their first call, often to have a warm body with magic hands in a place, rather than for any reason of giftedness, call, vocational training or the like.
Great post, Jan. Thanks.
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Call often comes with sacrifice.
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The call process is always grueling. The calling of spouse and parent and child of minister are each unique and yet related. Each will suffer loss in their own way, just as each will find joy in their own. Having been in two calls that were a bad fit, all share the burdens and joys as one – though I have felt responsible for all of it. God is yet bigger. God is yet more able to shoulder the burden. God is yet more capable of offering joy in the midst of difficulty and pain. I have learned that I would not do well in the corporate environment (church or other), but I am comforted to know that Jesus did not either. I prefer the corporeal environment that attempts to be the body of Christ – broken for the world. Sometimes I find that I can be part of that. Sometimes I find that I am part of that, whether I am doing it well or not.
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