One of my goals for 2010 is to help persons who have been called to bivocational ministry recognize and respond to that call. Nearly every Protestant denomination is seeing a growing number of smaller churches that are unable to find qualified pastoral leadership. Studies consistently show that many seminary trained pastors are not interested in serving in smaller churches. There are a number of reasons for that reluctance, but they all result in smaller churches finding it harder to find pastors. One of the things I believe is that this problem has not caught God by surprise. I am convinced he is and has been calling people to bivocational ministry so they can serve these smaller churches. The challenge for us is identifying that call on a person's life.
Right now I know an individual who is struggling with God's call on his life. He has a very good career, and feels that when he retires he wants to enter the ministry. Currently, he preaches in churches in his community when pastors are away, but he knows he is called to do more. His struggle is whether or not he is called to be a bivocational pastor now or to use this time before his retirement to further his theological education and serve as a fully-funded pastor when he does retire. To complicate this issue even more, he wonders if his company may be planning to downsize in the near future and if that will cost him his job. These are questions only he can answer; the good news is that he knows he is called into the ministry.
You might be asking how he knows that, but the real question you're concerned about is how can you know if God has called you into the ministry? As someone told me years ago when I was struggling with my own sense of call: You just know that you know that you know. I did not know what my call to ministry would look like, but I had no doubt that God had called me to ministry. Virtually no one close to me supported me when I announced that God was leading me into the ministry, and some in my family were strongly against it. That did not stop me because I knew that I knew that I knew that God was leading me into the ministry. What were the indicators to me that God had a call on my life? There were several.
The first is that I recognized that I had some spiritual gifts for ministry, and these gifts were confirmed by others. Soon after being saved I felt an urge to become involved in some type of ministry, but I didn't know what I could do. I ended up serving as a mid-week teacher in our church of pre-schoolers. While their parents attended Bible study my wife and I taught this class about mission work around the world. I was a new Christian and didn't know much, but I figured that with the teacher's book I could stay at least one week ahead of pre-schoolers. I taught that class for a year before being asked to teach a young adult Sunday school class. It became obvious rather quickly that God had given me teaching gifts. I also found that I had other gifts as well, and when I approached our pastor about being licensed to preach, he agreed that he saw the same gifts in me. The church also affirmed those gifts and my call to ministry.
Second, I had a burning desire to minister. That pre-school class was normally led by our women's organization, but they had no one who wanted that responsibility. When I heard they needed someone to lead it I volunteered. I felt I had to do something even if it was making mistakes. God had given me a hunger for ministry, and I was willing to do anything to satisfy that hunger. After I started preaching in churches I would become upset if I didn't have the opportunity to preach for several weeks. One time, a friend and I rented a building at our local fairgrounds for a revival. We paid for the building, set up the chairs, bought advertising, arranged for some special music groups, and held services there for a week. I preached three nights, and my friend preached three nights. I had to preach even if I had to pay for the opportunity.
Third, I had a desire to make a difference for the Kingdom of God. God had done so much for me that I did not want to waste my life. I wanted to see people's lives transformed as God had transformed me. I couldn't not be a minister.
Some of you reading this are pastors. I want to encourage you to begin looking at some of the leaders in your church. Could God be calling some of them into the ministry? I encourage you to approach this question prayerfully because your response at this point could be critical as to whether or not those leaders respond to that call. I am in the ministry today partly because a pastor asked me if I had ever felt God might be calling me to the ministry. I had to admit to him that I did think that at times although I had never admitted it to anyone before then. His simple question and affirmation led me to say yes to the plan God had mapped out for my life. You may have people in your church who are just waiting for someone to ask them the same question.
I believe God has more than enough people called to fill every pastorate in the land, but we have to challenge people to respond to that call. You and I cannot call anyone into the ministry. All we can do is to challenge people to listen for God's call on their lives and respond to it.
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