The Call to the Ministry

No more urgent need exists in the Church today than that of confronting gifted young people with the challenge of the call to the ministry. During the past several decades Christian leaders have become increasingly aware of this need. But the Church has not been sufficiently aroused at the local level for enough of our youth to consider prayerfully whether or not God might be calling them. Moreover, several factors have caused difficulties.

First, the amazing opportunities for work in science and technology attract vast numbers of young people. These fields often claim the best students in high schools and colleges before these young people have so much as considered the challenge of the ministry.

Second, the problems of the ministry have often been paraded in magazines and have also been on display in seething communities engaged in the struggle over human rights. Many parents do not want their sons to get involved in complicated social issues. They envision little more than disfavor, trouble, and meager pay for a minister. Besides this, periodic attacks of ignorant people who insist that the ministry is infiltrated by Communists or other subversive groups have done some damage. These strangely twisted minds, who “see a scorpion under every stone,” have created misgivings and aroused needless fears.

But the chief difficulty lies, not in these factors or in others like them, but within the Church itself, in the spirit and thinking of ministers and laymen. There is an inadequate understanding of the whole sweep of the biblical revelation according to which the sovereign purpose of God is to realize his Kingdom through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our tendency is to start with the need for ministers, the number who retire and drop out each year and the number needed to replace them, the job opportunities in the various fields of Christian work. This information we must have. But it will not do much to inspire a gifted young man who has an opportunity to go into industrial management, electronics, international affairs, law, or medicine.

Since our understanding of God’s revealed purpose is often obscure, the thought of the call to the ministry tends to become vague and remote. The sense of urgency evaporates.

There must be absolute clarity at this one point: God’s policy is to realize his Kingdom through people under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The proclamation of his Gospel requires the ministry. God does not leave the carrying forward of his work either to the mercy of blind chance or to the whims of people. He deliberately acts through the Holy Spirit to call some into the ministry because only in this way does he choose to accomplish his holy purpose. No one knows before confronting God’s challenge whether or not God wants him to preach the Gospel. But God expects consecrated ministers and laymen to be alert to his aims and policies and therefore to assist in presenting the call.

Some Questions

Someone may ask, “But are you sure that God calls people to the ministry?” The question is natural and must be faced. The answer is to be found in an adequate theological understanding. The God who created the universe deliberately for his purpose, who sent the Saviour into the world to die for sinful men and to inaugurate the new era of the Kingdom, who sent the Lloly Spirit to create the body of believers who magnify Jesus Christ as Lord—this God would not be so irresponsible and foolish as to neglect what is necessary for continuing what he started. And the ministry is necessary for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul rightly thought of himself as “set apart for the service of the Gospel” (Rom. 1:1, NEB).

But does not God call everyone? The answer is that he calls everyone to surrender his or her life to Jesus Christ but calls only some to devote their whole time and energy to the understanding, teaching, and communication of the Gospel. At this very point there is confusion among both ministers and laymen. I have been at many conferences on Christian vocations in which the impression was left that almost any good work connected with the Church is on a par with the ministry. Is not any honorable work a divine calling?

There is a truth here from the heritage of the Reformation that must be preserved. Every layman, doing his task faithfully under Christ, is surely called of God to be a true workman wherever he is. Moreover, when anyone prayerfully decides that it is pleasing to God for him to do a particular kind of useful work in making a living, that work becomes for him a divine calling. But there is a difference between this and the call to the ministry. Some are set apart for the awesome responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel. Although they might do any one of many things that would otherwise be honorable, none of these other forms of daily work would be honorable for them, since God has called them to be his ambassadors through leadership in worship and service at home and abroad.

Moses was doing an honorable work in tending Jethro’s flock. But he would not have been honorable had he kept on doing that after God called him to lead the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. All useful tasks contribute in one way or another to God’s holy purpose. But unless some are specially called and commissioned to understand, preach, and teach the Gospel, every activity of mankind will get lost in a barren and futile secularism. The minister is called, therefore, to speak for God, in behalf of God, to the end that all of man’s activities may be coordinated toward the realization of God’s Kingdom. The minister’s calling is not special because he as an individual is different from other men. It is special because his commission and work have to do with what is at the heart of God’s revealed policy for mankind. It is special because it requires, in a way that no other responsibility does, the direction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. All noble work takes on a new glory when it is carried forward under the inspiration of the Spirit. But in a unique way this is true of the work of the minister.

It cannot be emphasized too much in these days that Christianity is revealed religion. At its heart is the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ to all who repent, believe, and have faith. This Gospel, then, is no merely human discovery. God acted through the patriarchs, through Moses, David, and the prophets, to prepare the way for the coming Deliverer. Then, in the fullness of time, he sent forth his Son. Indeed, creation itself was aimed toward fulfillment in Jesus Christ. To understand the deep meaning of the call to the ministry and the power of its hold over those called, therefore, we must have a clear view of God’s revealed determination to do his utmost to draw all men into his Kingdom through Jesus Christ. God has mightily acted toward this end through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the Saviour.

God’S Sword Thrusts

While translating the Book of Jonah some years ago I came to that place which says that God “prepared” or “appointed” a great fish to swallow up the prophet (Jonah 1:17). When I checked on the Hebrew word (manah), I found to my surprise that it also meant “to ordain” (Koehler’s Lexicon, p. 537). “An ordained whale,” I facetiously thought. But my wonder increased when I came to the fourth chapter. There I found that God also “ordained” (manah) a plant, a worm, and a sultry east wind! “A whale or a worm, a gourd or a wind,” I thought; “if God ordains them, he can use them.”

Over the years this rather strange and humbling little lesson has often come back to my heart to encourage me in the ministry.—SIDNEY A. HATCH, Portland, Oregon.

The Need For Proclamation

But this good news requires proclamation. “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). Paul saw clearly that there must be an inherent connection between the Gospel and its proclamation. The same God who acted to reveal his redemptive purpose and strategy had to set apart some for teaching and proclaiming his salvation in Jesus Christ.

For this reason, the call to the ministry is not identified merely by adding up psychologically attested gifts, nor human attainments—whether educational or otherwise—nor even by natural ability. Paul knew that gifts and qualifications have their uses. But, according to him, prior to all else is God’s plan of sharing his Gospel with men. Nothing supersedes in importance here the willingness to be receptive to the authority of the Word and to the empowering grace of the Holy Spirit. No qualification surpasses that of the commission from God himself to proclaim his Word. Those who are thus set apart, of course, must prove themselves within the community of faith and must carry out the implications of their calling by applying themselves, through prayer, study, and discipline, to the tasks at hand.

In the light of all this, it is reasonable to suppose that God would give people some clear indication that he is calling them. To be sure, men must bring themselves close enough to hear. And if they hear, they must respond. Otherwise the call is of no avail. God commissions; man accepts.

How does God call his ministers? A few persons, like Paul, have received an extraordinary call, and their response was almost inevitable. They could not do otherwise. For most, however, this has not been so. In the lives of most ministers the call came as a growing experience. The Holy Spirit took innumerable events, impressions, and impulses, too mysterious to understand, and fashioned them into his divine commission. Often one person—a minister, a Sunday school teacher, a speaker at a youth camp—was God’s instrument in completing the transaction. But whether gradual or sudden, the fact of the call is no less real.

Four signs of the call to the ministry are worthy of special note here. They are not absolute; the mystery of God’s dealings with a human soul cannot be caught up into any simple formula. But whenever these signs come together in the experience of a young person, he may be sure that God is challenging him to take a careful look at the Christian ministry.

First, if in his highest and holiest moments there is the recurring sense that he ought to give himself to Christ for the work of the ministry, he should pay attention to this. It is very likely that this is the Holy Spirit calling. Everyone has mediocre moments. They are unauthentic. God finds it difficult to speak through the static of our trivialities. If the Holy Spirit speaks to us at any time in life, surely he does so in those moments of great inspiration and holy consecration. It is important to note the word “recurring.” For most people one experience is not enough. It is the recurring and growing movement of thought and life that goes deepest.

Second, if in a young person’s growing awareness of the world’s vast needs, he feels that he must do something personally to minister to those needs, this too may be the call of the Holy Spirit. The concern of a young Christian for humanity, for people in their needs, is a sure sign that God is at work in a special way. By itself alone this sign may indicate any one of many avenues of possible service. But, coupled with the first, it would definitely tend to confirm the fact of a call to the ministry.

Third, if there is a growing sense that the answers to man’s deepest questions, both individually and socially, are to be found only in the Lord Jesus Christ, this too is a mighty confirming factor. Here the negative experiences of people past and present suffice to show that Jesus Christ is not only the way but also the only Saviour from sin and the inaugurator of the Kingdom.

Finally, if a young person finds a growing sense of satisfaction in the opportunity to speak at youth services, in Sunday school, and in churches, or to visit the sick, the prisoners, and the lonely, or to lead in camp activities and social concerns, this too tends to confirm the validity of his call. In general, the desire to speak and serve in churches and other groups—particularly when accompanied with talents in this area—may be another sign that the Holy Spirit is calling.

A word of caution is needed here. Some are slow to find their way in public utterance. Others are shy at first. These too may be called. For neither slowness of speech nor shyness is a fatal obstacle. Moses, keenly aware of his inadequacies, said he was “slow of speech and of tongue” (Ex. 4:10); yet he was chosen to be the deliverer of Israel. God takes man’s weakness and turns it to his mighty ends. Nevertheless, it is still true that the increasing enjoyment of the kind of work that goes on in the life of a local church is a good sign.

No one of these four signs is sufficient by itself. Indeed, all four of them together offer no final proof. But when these signs are recurringly present in a life that is seeking God’s will, the Holy Spirit uses them to confirm the call to the Christian ministry.

Mack B. Stokes is associate dean and Parker Professor of Systematic Theology in Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He holds the A.B. degree from Asbury College, B.D. from Duke University, and Ph.D. from Boston University. The author of three books, he is an ordained Methodist minister.

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