What About the Calling? (with a lot of side notes)

In a sermon I heard a few months ago, a pastor threw out the following statistic:  Of all the young people who receive a call from God to go into full-time ministry, only twenty-five percent follow through to become pastors, missionaries, and the like.  He lamented the seventy-five percent who turn to secular careers, asking "What about the calling?" and suggesting that these believers had been lured away by money, power, and leisure.   Something about the whole thing did not quite sit well with me.

My first and unavoidable thought was that he (and whoever calculated the statistic in the first place) would count Geoff and me among that deplorable seventy-five percent.  We both, at various times in our lives, have felt a tug toward ministry.  I spent a semester in a cross-cultural studies program, rubbing elbows with would-be missionaries.  Geoff spent a year in seminary being prepped to be a pastor.  Then he decided to go to law school, and now here we are...  part of the seventy-five percent.  A little secret about me...  (If Liz Kennelly Smith is reading this, feel free to laugh, my friend, and laugh hard)... I kind of, sort of, maybe, really, seriously tend to over-analyze things.  So when this pastor suggested that I, being part of the sad Seventy-Five, have been lured away from God's will for my life... deep breath...  the wheels in my head start turning ever so slowly, gearing up for months of intermittent consideration.

(As a side note, these months of consideration are far more indicative of my tendency to think every possible aspect of a situation to a long and tortuous death than they are of self-doubt, another of my vices, but one that did not play as prominently in this scene as it might appear on the surface.  There will always be the "What If..." when I think of the paths we have taken, but I believe God has led us to where we are now, trust He will continue to lead us, and hope we will be willing and ready to go wherever He leads - or to kick off our shoes and make ourselves at home wherever He compels us to stay).

I want to make two things clear before proceeding to share the culmination of these months of mulling over the pastor's take on this statistic.  First, I have many friends who are in full-time ministry as missionaries, pastors, and pastors' wives.  I have the utmost respect for the difficult tasks they perform and the grace with which they perform those tasks, and I am unspeakably thankful that they heard God's call to full-time ministry and responded with wholly surrendered hearts.  I pray that nothing I say in this post will in any way take away from the sacredness of their service to Christ, for that is as far from my intention in writing this as anything possibly could be.  Secondly, there are many who walk away not only from the ministry, but from Christ Himself.  Those departures from the call are indeed lamentable and in such cases, I echo with deep sorrow the pastor's question, "What happened?"

However, he wasn't speaking only of such cases.  He was talking about people who in their youth and young adulthood felt a call toward full-time ministry, but gave it up to pursue secular or "worldly" careers.  (This is the group of which I will be writing.  Please go back to the previous paragraph anytime you think I'm suggesting it is alright to be spiritually apathetic).  It's easy to associate such people with Jonah, who tried so hard to dodge his call to Ninevah, but I wonder if a kinship to Abraham might be more appropriate.  In Genesis 22, God called Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice.  Did Abraham follow through?  No.  Do we condemn Abraham for abandoning his calling?  No, because just when he is on the verge of killing the boy, God intervened to place Abraham on a different path, one that, much to Isaac's relief, did not involve following through with Plan A.  (As another side note, I can't help wondering what Isaac was thinking through this entire event and how it affected his relationship with his father...  It kind of makes your family seem normal, doesn't it?)   The Lord commends Abraham for his willingness to follow Him at all costs.  He did not want Isaac's blood, but Abraham's heart.   It may not be the best analogy, but I think it works.

I suspect that many of the Christian youth who respond to cries to help the poor in body and lost in spirit  throughout the world, including here in the United States, find after the initial passion has subsided that their calling is not about the doing, but about the being.  God is not looking for a job applicant, but a surrendered heart.  Some will and do go on to serve at home or overseas in positions of full-time ministries.  Some are, as the pastor suggested, lured away not only from the ministry but also from Jesus Himself by money, power, and leisure.  But there is a group of individuals who find themselves following Christ into more familiar territory - as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, plumbers, burger flippers and so forth.  It's as if God has said, "Would you, for My sake, leave all that you hold dear, move into an African hut, and shine my light among this people?  Great!  Now, for My sake, go home, grill some hot dogs, and shine my light among your neighbors."

The call to follow Christ in ordinary, every day American life often does not come as dramatically as the previous call to full-time ministry.  It may not even seem like a call at all, until one glances around and realizes that God has placed him in his particular circumstances for a reason.  Like me, a woman may watch her children playing and know that every step along her disjointed, indecisive, emotionally varying path led to this place and time, a place and time overflowing with the enormous task and privilege of showing her little ones the Savior in a million tiny ways.  I never said, "Lord, I feel you calling me to be a wife and mother, ministering to my husband and children that they may know and love you and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior."  I wanted to get married and have babies, but being a wife and mother happened to me while I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.  It is a calling, in the sense that God calls us to perform whatever task He gives us with love and integrity and such, but no angels or high church music accompanied my marriage, and the only bright light in the delivery room was lighting the doctor's way.  But I look at my family, my church, my community, and my world, and I know that I am just where I need to be...  at least for now.

Not long ago, I found a slip of paper from my missions major days.  On it, I had written, "God says, 'I want you, and I want all of you.'"  Clearly, I was not in an eloquent frame of mind, but the sentiment foreshadowed what I've concluded about the seventy-five percent who do not proceed into full-time missions - that following God is not a matter of careers, but hearts.  So I will not be discouraged by any who would lament or chastise me for not going into full-time ministry.  Instead, I will go back to that piece of paper and ask not, "What happened to the calling?" but "How am I responding moment by moment to God's calling in my ordinary, everyday life?"  That's the heart of God's calling - not a commitment to go to far off lands and preach the gospel, but a lifelong devotion to Jesus that may or may not include traveling to far off lands to preach the gospel.

I can't help but think a little of romantic love at this point.  It is a beautiful thing when the exuberant passion of young love matures into a different sort of love, a love whose passion has solidified into steadfast devotion to the object of its affection.  Lovers may be a tad disappointed that the frenzy has subsided, but often find immense comfort in the assurance that love has passed the tests of time and emotion and has settled into their lives like an anchor.  It's an under-appreciated sort of love that reminds me of those in the seventy-five percent who realize that their calling is not to a specific ministerial career, but to serve God wherever they are.  It's unglamorous, but no less attuned to the will of God than if He had continued to lead them to the rainforest or inner city.

Since the purpose of this post is not to defend my choices, but to offer an alternative view of the seventy-five percent, I won't tell you you many times a day I fail to be all that I should be, but lest anyone be tempted to think I've got it all together (Everyone who knows me at all, please feel free to laugh, but not too loudly, please, or I might burst into tears), I close with a paraphrase of Philippians 3:12:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on (sometimes meander, sometimes go kicking and screaming) to take hold of (sometimes stumble upon, sometimes have thrust into my hands by a God who's a lot smarter than I) that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.