Guard Your Calling, Frodo

I ran across a striking statistic recently—90 percent of people who enter vocational ministry will end up in another field. (I wish I could remember the source. I’m pretty sure it was reliable, though I know our subculture is filled with what Christian Smith calls “evangelicals using statistics badly.” And 80 percent of all statistics are just made up. You can quote me.)

Of course, lots of folks who didn’t start in local church ministry will end up there. And we live in a day when job change is a way of life; “40 years and a gold watch” stopped a long time ago.

But it got me thinking about the notion of calling.

There is something sacred about being called.

And a sense of calling needs desperately to be guarded.

My daughter and I were re-watching Lord of the Rings before Christmas. At one point, on the last part of the journey through Mordor, Frodo turns to Sam and tells him how badly he wishes he did not have to be the one to carry the Ring. Being the Ring-Bearer was a difficult and dangerous role. He took it up voluntarily; he knew it was a worthy task; he understood in some dim way that he was suited for it—even his weakness was part of his gifting, and yet the cost of it wore him down.

Scholars sometimes speak of a distinctness that Christianity added to the idea of a vocation. The Greeks gloried in achievement; heroism was much to be aspired to. However, it was generally understood as a way to express the strength and greatness of the hero. The hero chose what army to lead and what battle to fight.

In the story of the Jesus movement, accomplishment was a more complex journey. From the history of Israel came the notion of a life not so much planned for glory as interrupted by God: “And the word of the Lord came to …” Having the word of the Lord come to you is a little like bearing the Ring—you may know it’s a glorious and powerful thing, but the task can wear on you after a while.

In ancient Greece, heroism was a chosen path.

In the Jesus story, it became a calling greater than oneself; both a glorious quest to be achieved but also a spending of oneself for Something larger.

“But you have been chosen,” Gandalf says to Frodo. “And you must therefore use such strength and hearts and wits as you have.”

You have been chosen. I don’t know if you (or I) am in exactly the perfect fitting job. But that’s not the issue.

You have been chosen.

And this sense of having been called—the worthiness of it, the glorious goodness of a life lived beyond an individual’s agenda—is a precious thing. It is sometimes subverted into grandiosity. It is perhaps more often lost in the ministry of the mundane. It needs to be guarded.

Sometimes, in the quest, we get to visit the House of Elrond; the Fellowship is united and strong, the plans are glorious, hope is fierce, and hearts beat fast.

But you don’t get to spend every day there.

All ministry involves slogging through Mordor.

Sometimes Mordor consists of opposition. I talked to two different pastors last week who each spoke of a sense of being “beaten up” in their church ministries. Paul would occasionally use boxing metaphors, he said he “beat his body”—but he didn’t ask anyone else to take a few shots at his torso.

Sometimes Mordor is general criticism. (“They have vilified me, they have crucified me, they have even criticized me,” the old Mayor Daley is supposed to have said.) Sometimes it is self-doubt—is what I’m doing really making a difference? Even if there is visible gain—will that really further the cause of an invisible kingdom?

Calling matters. Not because a successful career will make me happy.

Calling matters because the Caller matters.

A strong sense of call does not finally rest on being obsessed about what I’m doing. In fact, what I’m doing is—in a sense—a very small bit in a much larger picture. (“Because, Frodo Baggins, you’re only a small hobbit after all.”)

People with the strongest and healthiest sense of calling are not obsessed with their calling. They are preoccupied with the Caller. With a clear vision of a good and competent and loving God before me, the significance of my own tiny part in his world is safely and manageably held.

I need to be inspired. I love inspiration.

To have my mind racing and my heart beating fast over glorious possibilities is very close to the summit of life experience for me.

We were made to live by inspiration.

Callings can only be maintained if they are inspired.

But inspiration can degenerate into merely human attempts at manipulating motivation. Visions can deteriorate into scenarios of my own success and recognition. I can begin to imagine a romanticized life where I lead idealized Stepford people rather than the real, actual, obstinately human people who live with the real, actual, obstinately human me.

I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.

Elrond tells the Fellowship: “The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

The only true and lasting inspiration for life is genuine love for God, and submitted gratitude that I get to be a part of the redemptive quest.

Guard your calling.

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