One of the biggest trends that has risen within evangelical circles is the desire to be involved with ministries and serving in a mission-minded capacity. What I am talking about is the vocation of ministry in what we know in most Western society as a paid position as an employer of a church. You walk around every church and talk among individuals who have great desire to serve God in all that they possibly can. When you begin to probe more and press with questions regarding their future hopes and plans a good amount of them begin to say they want to be in ministry. You begin to ask where in ministry and many are usually specific (youth, pastoral, missions) but there are some who are still undecided but know they still want to serve God and the universal church in a major capacity. If they do not achieve this goal head-on many begin to find themselves internally struggling and begin to deal with bouts of depression, leaving the faith, and worse case scenario is some become suicidal because they loss the feeling of purpose in this world apart from being in ministry.
There are many dangers to being in the ministry field as well which is something I think is more reserved for actual ministers to give their input on. Where this is going is to help explain and discern with people why they might not be called into full-time ministry as they assume and how to properly discern upon this because we see many who do not stay in the ministry field longer than 5 years on average and this is something we need to help not be a trend, mainly for those who leave because they get burned out.
One of the first case you might not be called into full-time ministry staff is the lack of clarity on what calling is. One of the major figureheads we can look to on this is John Calvin. In his writings he describes two type of callings. They are the external and internal callings. Internal callings is where we feel a burning desire or a sense of obligation to go where you believe you belong. The external call is just the opposite of internal. This is where, instead of you, there are others confirming your calling from their faithful observance of leadership (elders).
These two callings need to coincide with one another and if they do not then we are setting ourselves up for failure. Scripture does help confirm on how important it is to have outside opinion and discernment when it comes to calling, especially for those wanting to pursue the field of ministry and missions. One prime example of this coming to practice is in Acts from the early church in Acts 14:23. Once they had the introduction of elders they were called to a specific role within the body of Christ and one of the important roles is to shepherd the flock. Helping by determining someone’s call to ministry by discernment is one of their jobs as well. If they do not confirm your calling you are probably not called to ministry- at least not at that present time but in the distant future is a possibility.
Another misconception within the broad evangelical circle that gets noticed is the idea if someone within the congregation appears to take their faith more seriously than their peers, particularly younger people who are in their teens, then that should automatically mean they are set for ministry. This has been the biggest misconception I have observed from my years growing up. To get on a personal level, growing up in an evangelical church I began to believe that since I am taking my faith more seriously than many of my classmates or friends within the local youth group at the time then surely I was destined or had a gift to use in entering the ministry field. This was a false notion and I learned going forward this was not the case. Of course this does not disqualify us from serving our church. We need to be serving the church in every capacity we can, we should not correlate our desire to serve to equal to being called to ministry.
Thirdly, is you might not be ready yet for full-time ministry field or never will be. This is the hardest pill to swallow even if you feel you can serve in some capacity in ministry. There is a lot of sacrifice that comes with being in the ministry field that sometimes a local church or others do not tell you of and you do not prepare for. One of the biggest things is you will not have a comfortable lifestyle. That dream of having a nice house with a family is an Western concept but it is far from reality of ministry most of the time. You might live in a run down apartment, you might live in a trailer because that is all you can afford. You might have to work another job to make ends meet to provide for your family because your first ministry is to care for your family. There are a lot of factors of sacrifices that are made that you have to realize you will possibly not live a luxury as the rest of society. That isn’t to say you won’t have nice things. It is good to take blessings in that God gives to us all and if that is to provide you a nice house for your family, great, if not then God is still glorified.
Another reason you might not be ready or called to ministry is to realize God might call you to a different area of your desire. We see many times God called many people to go different places, some did respond well but there were many that were not quick to being obedient in their response. Take Jonah as a prime example. He was unwilling to go to Ninevah. It took God’s sovereignty to act upon him and to work on Jonah’s heart to bring obedience to him to minister and preach in Ninevah. Peter is a New Testament example when God revealed to him that no only was this good news only for the Jews but also for Gentiles and God used Paul (formerly known as Saul before conversion to Christianity) to minister unto Gentiles even though he was a devout Jew before conversion murdering Christians. God will call you to different scenarios that are sure uncomfortable because He is the one that sends and calls, we do not send ourselves. If this is something you can not willingly embrace then it is put to question of your calling to ministry at the moment. God is not going to call us to a life of our own choosing. When God calls we must respond to laying our lives down. Jesus said if we are not willing to lay down our lives for Him then we can not be His disciples (Luke 14:33).
To end with this topic, you might not be called into ministry because you are possibly not gifted with the gift of evangelism and not gifted with the calling of ministry by God. This is the most straightforward and biblical approach as we see in Paul’s letter to Ephesus of numerous callings that God places each of us in. God calls some to be pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets, and shepherds and they are all uniquely called to fulfill every good work among the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-12). Your calling to serve your church might be to work behind the scenes and volunteer, teach a Sunday school class, or with the men and women’s ministries. But the office of Pastorate and Elders is a very specific call that God does not call everyone toward even if they surely aspire to be one badly. God knows who we are and He is the one that knitted us in our mothers womb (Psalm 139). Our roles within the church varies because God cares about His church immensely and knows what is best for it. May we trust Him and the people God has put in place biblically to ensure we are obedient to God’s calling for our lives.
newperspectives92 