On Calling and Hearing

Becky commented on the last post about calling. She wrote:

The whole issue of "calling" is one that's interesting to me. Not too long ago, someone tried to explain to me that they were "called" to a ministry where all signs pointed the OTHER way. But if we questioned, we weren't questioning the person, but essentially God, and God's call on their life.
So, what is a call? Is it something only you, the called, can see? Or is it something others can also discern. How do you really know when you've been called -- or just have persuaded yourself this is the direction you really want to go?
I have no idea.

Such a good question, I thought it deserved a post unto itself.

I believe a calling is personally felt and corporately discerned.

For me, I was headed into another field altogether, happily moving in a direction that had little to do with church work. Yes I was a believer and disciple of Christ's and sought to live an available life. One summer I gave to working with kids at camps, and all I know is that at the end of that summer God was asking me to work for Him, full time. Whatever that meant.

Sometime during the summer something shifted inside me that was different at the end of the summer. Don't know when or what happened, I just knew what I felt inside.

I didn't want to be a pastor, so I've fought that all along, but I have had a strong, personally felt calling from God to do what he wants me to do.

How I worked this out was that I immediately refocused my training towards pastoral ministry. I completed four years of college, always clear that God had called me to something, but not clear on the what.

When Lauralea and I returned to my church family, she taught at a Bible school and I got a job making pizzas for a living. We were waiting on God, asking Him for clarification and direction. Without feeling that I should push the agenda, (Read: "God has called me to be your pastor") the church began to ask me to do some pastoral things. Preach, care, lead the youth. After a few months they asked us to consider becoming laypastors in the church. It was a very large church with two official languages, so we answered the call to be layministers, working with the English people of the church.

This grew as the Sr. Pastor left for another church, and our responsibilities increased.

See, over time the church was helping us discern the calling on our lives. They spoke into our lives that we were gifted for the ministry. This confirmed what I had felt from God after that summer. After a year and a half, a small beginning church plant called us to Winnipeg, and God led it all to fall into place and the rest is history.

On days when it's all crap and failure and I wanna jump ship, I go back to that clarity I had from God after that summer. And that helps me get through.

My feeling is that God's head is not separate from his body. If the Head (Christ) says you have a calling, then his Body (The church) will affirm that calling. If somebody's walking around saying something that seems inconsistent from what the body recognizes, I'd question what
they are feeling. And whether they are even connected to the Head.

This is what troubles me about guys and girls heading off to seminary thinking that their call is a personal choice they made to go into ministry. They get all trained up and debt laden and no church will have them because they really are not called or gifted to do the thing. Or worse, a desperate church will pick them up and everybody, including the student, regrets it for years.

The Body should recognize some gifting and calling on the person, before such a huge commitment is made.

I think it was Spurgeon who said if you can do anything else other than ministry, then do it. But if you are answering a call, then answer it. That's been my story, and, I confess, it still is!

We need the body to help all of us discern and hear God. And yes, God still speaks.