[At recent conferences, the Westminster and Bala, there was considerable discussion of the nature of the call to the ministry. Here are some helpful observations from Dr I.D. Campbell from Back Free Church of Scotland, the Isle of Lewis.]
It seems that the concept of a call to the ministry has fallen on hard times. A recent survey conducted by Affinity, the evangelical church partnership organisation, engaged with 400 ministers between the ages of 21 and 40. Of these, 30% said they were confused over what constitutes a call, and only 46% of them - less than half - said that they had felt a special call to the ministry.
One trainee minister commented: 'in my judgement, the notion of a 'calling' to the ministry is a major barrier to, and distraction from, the recruitment of pastors and teachers ... the notion of a 'call', if understood as an internal 'feeling', is unbiblical and must be abandoned'. Another says: 'I can see no biblical justification for the idea of a 'special call' to full-time ministry'.
In spite of the fact that churches constantly face issues over numbers of applicants for ministry, and are continuously evaluating recruitment of ministers, there is something deeply worrying in many of these responses. In fact, I am convinced that it does not bode well for the future of the church if more than half of those who stand in front of congregations to deliver a message from God to the people admit to having no divine call to that task.
I was brought up in a church world where such a call was assumed. All the ministers I knew could speak of a conviction and sense of call to ministerial office, which had led to their application. Never once did it cross my mind that anyone would become a minister for any other reason. We knew our history, of course; we knew that in the heyday of Moderatism in the Church of Scotland it was commonplace for men to seek status and prestige in the kudos of parish ministry. Had not Thomas Chalmers himself been ordained with little conviction of anything spiritual - parish ministry was a sinecure, which allowed him freedom to pursue other interests. Only with spiritual conversion to Christ did he come into his own as a herald of the gospel.
But that was then. Now, within the evangelical community it was rather assumed that anyone applying for the ministry could testify to a call, which was more than an internal feeling - it was a testimony to providences and Scriptures which left one closed in to the realisation that it would be an act of disobedience to God not to offer oneself to the church for divinity training. To put it otherwise, according to the received wisdom, one should stay out of the ministry if one could do anything else. So high an office was the ministry considered to be, that a sense of calling was both assumed and required; and if a man could, in all conscience, remain in any other vocation, he ought to.
Why else would anyone wish to stand in front of his peers as the spokesman of God, speaking to men about God and to God about men, unless God himself charged him with that task? Indeed, when we begin analysing the biblical material, this is one of the most prominent of Bible themes, as God, for example, takes issue with prophets who have spoken to the people, but, God says, 'I did not send them' (Jeremiah 14:14). Most of the classical Old Testament prophets address this issue of a personal call to office. Isaiah responded to such a call in the year King Uzziah died (Isaiah 6), while Jeremiah was set apart from the womb, conscious in young age of God's call on his life (Jeremiah 1:7). Ezekiel's call to the captives in Babylon was as clear as it was direct: 'I send you to them, and you shall say to them 'Thus says the Lord God'' (Ezekiel 2:4). Amos simply reports that the Lord took him from his secular employment and told him to go and prophesy to his people (Amos 7:15).
The pattern continues in the New Testament. As the prototypical servant of the Lord, Jesus himself acknowledged that he was sent by God with the message of grace (Luke 4:18; John 20:21). As the head of the church, he called Peter and Andrew to full-time Christian service, transforming them from fishermen to fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). Matthew himself was collecting the taxes when Jesus said to him 'Follow me' (Mark 2:14), as he did with the rest of the apostles for the express purpose of sending them out to preach (Mark 3:14).
The apostle Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, had his life transformed on the Damascus Road when he met the risen Lord. According to Acts 9:15, Christ told Ananias that Paul was Christ's chosen instrument to carry his name before the Gentiles. Writing to Timothy, Paul testifies that it was Christ who put him in the ministry (1 Timothy 1:9), and exegetes Psalm 68:18 as a direct statement of Christ equipping the church with men for ministry (Ephesians 4:8-12). Perhaps the greatest evidence of Paul's special calling is simply in his own words 'Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel' (1 Corinthians 9:16).
On the basis of the biblical evidence, C.H. Spurgeon was surely correct to say that no man should enter the ministry until he has tested his call to the ministry: 'his own personal salvation being secure, he must investigate as to the further matter of his call to office; the first is vital to himself as a Christian, the second equally vital to him as a pastor'. As on other matters, Lloyd-Jones is superb in his discussion on the call to the ministry. What is it? In his Preaching and Preachers he describes it, first, as a consciousness in one's own spirit that one's mind 'is being directed to the whole question of preaching'. Second, it involves a concern for the spiritual needs of others. Third, there is a sense of constraint - 'it almost becomes an obsession', says the Doctor. Fourth, there is a sense of inadequacy, what Paul called 'weakness, fear and much trembling'.
These have been the features of some of the greatest preaching and preachers in the history of the evangelical church. It was said of John Macdonald of Ferintosh that he was so dependent for his happiness on preaching, that the day of which he wearied most was the day on which he did not preach. Yet he said of himself that he never entered the pulpit without fear, and never left it without shame.
This whole business of the call to the ministry is vital and fundamental to the wellbeing of the church. It would do us good to reflect on the proposition that there is one thing worse than having few ministers to fill vacant pulpits: filling them with men who are not put into them by God himself.
What are the practical implications of the position that has been set out? If we assume that ministers of the Gospel are not self-made or self-appointed, but that God sets them apart to that task by intense personal conviction - then what? What are the practical results of this?
1] There is, first, the church's recognition of such a call. I realise that I am speaking out of a lifelong association with Presbyterianism, but does not the apostle Paul, for example, speak to Timothy about devoting himself to the reading of Scripture, to exhortation and to teaching, not neglecting the gift which was given to him when the council of elders laid hands on him? According to the apostle, Timothy's ministry, which was a calling to the study of the Bible and to its public proclamation, was recognised by fellow elders who laid hands on him.
In our Presbyterian tradition, laying on of hands is associated with ordination to a particular form of Christian service. Before a minister is ordained, he receives license to preach. Before that he has been accepted by the church as a candidate for ministry, and his gifts and calling have been assessed over a long period. It may seem unnecessary, if a man is called to preach the word, that the church should have anything to do with it. The New Testament, however, does not know Christ apart from his church, and does not know the gifts he bestows except insofar as they will benefit his church. In the case of preaching, Paul rather assumes that the fellowship of believers will recognise his own vocation and the calling of others.
2] Second, there is the whole matter of authority. Why should the church insist that its message be heard amid all the other voices, noise and din of the world? In spite of the fact that the Christian Gospel continues to be marginalised, the church still calls on people to give attention to what she has to say.
The reason is this matter of authority. Take the Old Testament prophets, for example. Jeremiah describes God as having sent the prophets to the people day after day. Yet, says God, the people 'did not listen to me' (Jeremiah 7:26). The problem was not that the people did not listen to the prophets, although that was true - it was that in rejecting the prophets they rejected the voice of God. Similarly, in the New Testament, Paul says of the believers in Thessalonica that they received the message of the Gospel 'not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God' (1 Thessalonians 2:13). The proof of their conversion was the way they received the apostles as the heralds of God's truth, and the word they preached as the very word of God.
The idea of authority has been falling on hard times for a generation now. The postmodern mindset is entirely inhospitable to the idea that God has invested others with authority over us - parents, governments, ministers. The word 'authority' is related to the word author - and the meaning of a book or a sentence ought to be determined by the author, not by the reader. Respect may have to be earned, but authority has to be recognised. So, in spite of the modern antipathy towards the authority of the church, and however little respect the church may command in the modern world, there is still an authoritative message which the church is mandated to proclaim. We have been called by God to deliver his word. Pulpits do not exist to give opinions. They exist to speak forth God's Word clearly and authoritatively. If a man is called by God to that task, he ought to be heeded.
And, as R.L. Dabney points out in his Lectures on Sacred Rhetoric, this is what stops a sermon degenerating into a speech. Any topic might be the subject of a speech. But a sermon comes with the authority of the God of the Bible in order to make men do something in response to God. Although Dabney draws many principles of preaching from the classical art of public speaking, he is careful to maintain the distinction between the two. A sermon is not a speech.
3] Third, the call gives encouragement. As C.H. Spurgeon puts it, the surest test of our vocation is our experience: 'if God upholds us from year to year, and gives us his blessing, we need make no other trial of our vocation'. After preaching in Corinth, Paul was greatly encouraged by the reception of the message of grace. He was not long away from the city when the church became divided, undisiciplined and in need of reformation and repentance. That was why Paul wrote the book of the New Testament we know as 1 Corinthians. However, there were several who questioned his apostolic authority and sowed seeds of doubt among the believers in Corinth, questioning whether he ought to have written such a hard letter at all. It was not easy to maintain his dignity and his position in the face of such detractors. But his second letter is full of assurance that having been called by God it would take more than a few strong-willed rebels to overthrow him: 'having this ministry by the mercy of God', he says, 'we do not lose heart ... what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord ... we do not lose heart'.
Ministerial discouragement is a real issue for the modern church. A reluctance on the part of people to enter the ministry has been matched by a haemorrhaging of men out of it. But, as Paul himself puts it so magnificently, the gifts of God are without repentance, and where he calls a man into the ministry he can keep a man in the ministry. It is a blessing to know that even the eminent prophets of the Old Testament were not always riding on the crest of the wave. Elijah was a powerful voice for God in apostate times, called and commissioned to deliver a message from God to his generation, yet he was also 'a man with a nature like ours' who found himself lonely and depressed, despairing of his very life. Yet God sustained and kept him, and, at last, the ministry draws its encouragement and inspiration not from its effects but from its cause.
As James Henley Thornwell pointed out long ago, 'the doctrine of a divine call is set aside by all who make the ministry a means to any other ends but those with which Christ has connected it'. Only when we ask why Christ has appointed a Gospel ministry can we begin to appreciate what the call to the ministry is. Then, having been called to the greatest office in the world, how can a man stoop to become a king?
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