The Call

This being Confirmation season—the last class is Wednesday and the Confirmation service will be this Sunday, Pentecost—I have been wondering if any of the Confirmands may be called to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. This, after all, is the time in their lives when they may begin to feel that nudge of God’s Spirit, probably not knowing what it is at the time.

I admit to being pulled in two directions on this. On the one hand, I get excited by the possibility that one of “my” kids will join me in this exciting, discouraging, exhilarating, frustrating, rewarding calling. On the other hand, I believe that there are many callings, and that the call to be a MWS is no higher than any other call. As the Apostle Paul says, “if all were preachers, who would fix the plumbing?”--or something like that. After all, when my care needs work, I don’t call a fellow pastor, I call a mechanic. I believe that he or she may be called to be a mechanic just as much as I am called to preach and administer the Sacraments. One of the bones I have to pick with Rick Warren is that he says in The Purpose-Drive Life that it doesn’t matter what you do for a living as long as it gives you the opportunity to witness to your faith. That, it seems to me, is not a Reformed understanding of vocation.

Having said that, I still get excited by the prospect of someone whose faith I have had a hand in nurturing decides to pursue a call as Minister of Word and Sacrament. Part of the reason may be that it recalls my own call and my own vocation, and in that I suspect that I am like a teacher whose student decides to go for an education degree. But there may be another reason. Knowing that young people still feel called to serve this amalgamation we call the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may be a sign that God has a future for us, whatever that future may be, and that gives me hope.

Yes, I do think I see a future minister in my current Confirmation Class, but I’m not saying who just yet. I just hope, when they do decide, I’m still around to say, “I knew it all along.”