God's Call Waiting - Christianity Today

I keep a small rock on my desk with a single word painted on it: naviget. I cherish that rock. My wife gave it to me during a spell that was dry for me and hard for us; when I felt like my past was crumbling and I was not sure what the future held. And if you don't know Latin, keep reading; you'll eventually find out what it means.

I first came across this word in a wonderful article by theologian Gilbert Meilander called "Divine Summons." The article was about the notion of calling and vocation, which have long been vexing subjects for me, because I wondered if I would ever get one.

I have been a pastor for a long time now. When I was ordained in the Baptist church, one of the questions I knew was coming was, "Tell us about your 'call.'" In our tradition, if you became a pastor, you had to have a "call": a mystical, vivid, (but non-charismatic) experience in which you have an inner sense/compulsion/Voice (but never quite audible) that tells you to become a preacher.

"Only become a preacher if you cannot do anything else," the old-timers would say knowingly. And many people followed that advice, which may be why the competency bar for preachers got set pretty low.

I come from a long line of pastors. My great-grandfather, Robert Bennet Hall, got his call working in a small grocery store more than a century ago. He had run away from the orphanage where he grew up and married a grocer's daughter. He was sweeping out the storeroom when he got the call. My brother-in-law got the call when he was working in a grocery store in our old hometown of Rockford, Illinois. Possibly my problem was that I never worked at a grocery store.

Because I never got that kind of call, I could have done other things besides be a pastor. Probably not too well, but I could have done them. I was open to a call. I asked for one. But Heaven was silent. I had to figure out what to do myself. Being a pastor seemed like a good fit for what I understood of my gifts, and it seemed worth the effort.

But I never got marching orders. Partly, I think, it may have been because God knows that I will grow much more as a person if I have to figure things out and exercise judgment and make a decision and accept responsibility than if I just got a postcard and followed directions. Another reason may be that I don't think God separates people into "pastor" groups that have to get calls and "non-pastor" groups that are call-free.

I have worked at churches where the expectation was that if you were on staff, you had "the call," places where everyone sensed that if they were not working at that church they would be guilty of disobedience. I never got that kind of call. I don't think it's necessary or (sometimes) even healthy. I think calling is much more God's business, often expressed through the voice of his community. I think someone can have a fabulous calling without knowing everything about it.

I also think that the whole language around calling can lead churches and pastors to be less honest than the people we serve. Presidents fire cabinet members. Football coaches switch schools to make more money or lead bigger programs. But in a church, we have a hard time talking honestly about why staff people leave. We paper over toxic cultures and power struggles with sanctified spin: "He got a call from the Lord" or "I just had this restless sense in my spirit—I couldn't explain why."

Eventually, I quit pestering God about it. I decided he probably had good reasons to give me the level of information and direction that he gave me, and if he wanted to say any more, he would make it clear. Nevertheless, as I have gotten older, younger people interested in church ministry often talk to me about the notion of calling.

"Tell me about your call," a recent seminary grad once said. "I think I have the call, and I just hope I can last in ministry as long as you have." I was 45 at the time, but it made me feel very old.

When I came to Menlo Park, it was a by-now-familiar decision process. I did not sense God telling me to go or stay. My best understanding was that I was free to make the decision. I had been here for a couples of years when we had a bad weekend: staff departures, serious misbehavior, an ugly congregational meeting, budget problems—everything bad happened at once.

I had recently read Gordon MacDonald's book The Resilient Life, in which he talks about how his mom never finished what she started, and he was sobered by the possibility of having a "quitters gene." I had never thought of myself as a quitter, but I reflected on how I don't like being frustrated; how I can feel that life should come easily to me.

I was driving down Stanford Avenue one day when a thought came unbidden: John, take your being at this church as my call on your life. Don't waste energy asking if someone else could do the job better. Don't waste energy asking if some other place could be more fulfilling. If you put your hand to the plow and don't look back, you will grow in ways you otherwise never would.

And it was a strange moment, after almost 30 years of church ministry, to have a call in that more specific and mystical sense.

It hasn't been particularly romantic. Sometimes it's more of a pain in the neck. Which brings me back to the article by Meilander. He writes about how Aeneas, in Virgil's The Aeneid, has a divine summons to be the founder of Rome—"I am the man/whom heaven calls." But building Rome is not what Aeneas wants to do. He is forced to give up his love and his attachment to the past.

For a calling is very different than a quest for fulfillment. A calling, though we glamorize it, is not glamorous. It is a response to a summons. It is a kind of surrender. It is a willingness to die to the past and move to the future. C.S. Lewis wrote, "To follow the vocation does not mean happiness, but once it has been heard, there is no happiness for those who do not follow."

Aeneas does not want to leave his home to follow his calling; it means leaving old dreams and old loves. But there is a larger and better destiny to which he is called to submit. So Jupiter says of him, "That man should sail."

And he does. Sailing means embracing the pain of leaving behind what he thought was his comfort and fulfillment. It means trusting that somehow he is not just moving into the future; he is being led. It is Abraham leaving Ur for he knows not what. It is Moses leaving Egypt for a land he will never enter. It is Jesus walking the Via Dolorosa toward a hill he does not want to climb.

"That man should sail." It meant—a little like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show—it's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy. That life and growth and meaning can come only in the risk of obedience. The future—even if it's hard—is better than nostalgia.

It meant that in leaving port there was something to sail to. It meant hope.

"That man should sail." I did. I have. I am. The phrase in Virgil is a single Latin word written on the rock my wife gave me in love and trust. The word sits on my desk each day to remind me: Naviget.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and the pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.

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