Staying true to our call

For the minister there are many calls in one's life.  There is the call to faith as the Holy Spirit invites us to enter into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  There is the call to ministry as one somehow knows that God has called him or her to a place of service within the Christian community.  There is also the call to a specific place where we will serve God for a period of time.  Often, this will be in a church setting, on the mission field, or in some other place where we minister to people.  It is this second call, the call to ministry, that I want to address in this post.

After over three decades in ministry I still find it remarkable that God called me to become a minister, first as a pastor and then as a judicatory leader.  I know myself too well, and I realize God knows me even better than I know myself.  Still, for some reason, He chose to call me to serve Him in a ministry position.  Since that time I am sure I have disappointed Him many times.  I've disappointed myself at times and questioned again why He would have called me.  But He did and continues to use me in ministry.  This is one more example of the grace of our Lord.

Staying true to our call means that we honor that call God has placed on our lives.  If God has called us to pastor a church, we pastor that church.  We pour ourselves out into the lives of those people.  It's not a job to which we are hired; it is a place of service to which God has called us.  We serve there with integrity and attempt to honor God through our lives and service.  When we fall short, and we will at times, we confess our failures to God and move on.  Remember, throughout Scripture God never called a perfect person to any place of ministry.  Many had some major failures that were recorded for all of history, and yet God still used them to accomplish His purposes.  If God did not call perfect people in the Bible we should not expect that we are the first ones who are expected to be perfect.  Knowing this does not give us a license to be imperfect, but it does mean we should not beat ourselves up when we come up short.  We confess our failure to God and ask for His help as we move forward.

Many who read this are serving in a bivocational setting.  Stay true to your call in that setting.  Part of what that means is that we shouldn't be envious of those who are serving in larger places.  We should not resent having to work a job to provide for our families while we serve in this place where God has called us.  We are not to decide that this small church we serve doesn't deserve our best ministry efforts or that this place will never enjoy anything different than what they already know.  You are the pastor of men, women, and young people for whom Christ gave His life, and they deserve your best ministry.  That is why God has called you to that place.

In one of his books, H. B. London, Jr. wrote that if you are in a place enjoying a healthy ministry it is because someone made it such a place, and if you are in a place that isn't as healthy perhaps God has called you to be the person who will stay and make it a better place for ministry.  As usual, he's right.  Stay true to your call by being that person who will bloom wherever you are planted and see what kind of harvest God will bring.