Got Hooked? Or Responded to God’s Call?

The Story of My Call to Vocational Christian Ministry

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

(Read This First! This is a post about my call to full-time Christian ministry. I would love to hear you story of a call to full-time Christian ministry, a call to bivocational/covocational Christian ministry, a call as a layperson to focus you spiritual gifts and lifestyle on Christian ministry. Feel free to send me a message with your story.)

Got Hooked? Or Responded to God’s Call

I was 12 years old. It was 1962. It was the annual revival services week at our church in Baltimore, MD.

Revivals were always a soul-searching time for me. I got hooked several times during annual revivals in our church.

The sermon concluded. The invitations presented. The hooks to draw people down the aisle announced.

As the invitation hymn was sung, people were urged to come forward to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior. To present themselves as candidates for baptism and church membership.

Come forward to rededicate your life to God as you have wandered from your Christian commitment or believe you should go deeper in your commitment.

Come forward to move your membership to this church as you search for the best Christian fellowship with which to connect.

Fourth, come forward to declare you believe God is calling you into Christan ministry. You want to make a public commitment that you volunteer for a life of Christian service.

It was the fourth one that hooked me. I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior five years earlier during a revival. (See my story at HERE.)

Now I felt God was calling me to commit my life to Christian service. But I had not told anyone.

I did not know exactly what role God was calling me to fulfill. It might be to serve as a pastor as my father had done for 30 years at this point. I did not think it was to be a missionary if that meant going to another country. But it could be.

I would wait and see. I needed openness to wherever and whatever ministry God chose for me.

By the second verse, I went forward and took my father’s hand. I told him I wanted to commit my life to full-time Christian service. He prayed with me, and I returned to my seat.

Ok. That was it. I did it. Now what did it mean?

Church-Related Vocation Support

This church had a quarterly gathering for people who felt a spiritual call to Christian ministry. It helped people clarify their call. Pray and support one another. Engage in training about church-related vocations and preparatory steps to take.

At one time almost two dozen people were in this group. I participated until we left the church for my father to accept another place of ministry.

We moved to Philadelphia where my parents led Southern Baptists in planting new congregations in southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The first one we were directly involved with met in a motel along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

We had a conference room and four sleeping rooms we could use for children and youth programming. It was a great experience in learning how to plant congregations. It reinforced my sense of spiritual call to Christian ministry.

After two years in Philadelphia, I left for college. I missed the missional engagement of helping plant new congregations. When I was home for Christmas, I realized how deeply I missed it.

Soon after I returned to college for my second semester, I sent word home I was ready to reconfirm God’s call to Christian ministry. To declare it was to be a pastor.

One book which brought me to my final decision was not a spiritual book but a secular one. It was The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer (See the book HERE.)

I believed in the mass movement of Christianity. Would I be willing to commit my life to it? That was the thought that kept ringing in my head.

Yes, I would.

Did I Decide This Now or Earlier?

My high school in Pennsylvania required all 12^th graders to go through a life planning exercise where you projected at least the next ten years of your life.

In my plan, I affirmed I would attend college and seminary to prepare me for Christian ministry. I did not state it would be specifically to serve as a pastor, but that was in the back of my mind.

Beyond what the plan required, I felt I would follow my father’s footsteps and move after a decade in the pastorate into a denominational role.

I had seen my father functioning in both roles. I knew the denominational role is the one that gave him the greatest joy in ministry.

It made great sense to me, and I wanted to explore the opportunities denominational service might bring. Later I did.

As I reflected on it, the high school plan was linear and left-brained. When I went back to school for my second semester of college, God got hold of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Licensing and Ordination

Licensing by a local congregation for Christian ministry was the first step toward ordination in my denomination.

This took place with my church in Pennsylvania when I was home for Easter in 1968.

I preached my first sermon on Isaiah 6:1-8 on a Sunday night on “Here Am I. Send Me.” The church voted to license me for Christian ministry. I was still 17 years old at the time having graduated from high school a year early.

This step was only a beginning. It was, however, in direct response to my belief that God had called me forward into Christian ministry.

Five years later while I was in seminary and serving on the staff of a church, I was ordained to Christian ministry.