As you discern the heart confirmation of God's call in your life, consider the following questions:I would add, "What does the Body of Christ affirm in you?"
- Is God's call in my life internally audible? Do I sense his voice bidding me to serve him vocationally?
- Do I strongly desire pastoral ministry? Is the thought of doing something else with my life unimaginable?
- Do I want to go into ministry in order to make a name for myself, to prove that I am somebody, or to atone for past failures? Am I testing my motives for ministry and asking God to refine my desires and thoughts?
- Do I love people? Do I want to help people? Is my desire to go into ministry mainly about me, or mainly about helping other people by pointing them towards Christ?
Many pastors head off to seminary without ever asking anyone at their local church, "should I do this?"
In a sense, full time ministry should be something that should be "by invitation only". What I mean by that is this: Guys should only go off to seminary when the church around them sees their gifts and strongly encourages them to pursue vocationally what they have already been doing for free as a volunteer in the local church. The local church does a great disservice to the church at large if we fail to communicate to our young leaders about their strengths and weaknesses and a young man shows the height of arrogance if he runs off to seminary without ever asking anyone in leadership at his church if they think this is a good choice. The point here is loving relationships are the foundation for good leadership development of new young pastors.
Again we see that churches that have strong structures of community will be a blessing.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing these questions. I have been feeling the call to go to seminary for a while now. I fell in love the Word and love to talk about it with others! I have always felt great being able to teach others things (more one on one like guitar lessons) so I went to my pastor who talked to me for quite a while and afterward asked me if I wanted to teach one of his classes once (under his guidance) to get a feel of it. I asked to pray about it, but in my heart I felt that the answer was already "Yes!"
I taught the class and felt different that I have ever felt before. Any other time in my life I have been scared out of my wits end to speak in front of people.
Because I have not found my calling or true profession (I'm now 30 yrs old) I am afraid that I might be hoping to "be someone" through this calling, but I do know that it is something bigger, much bigger than myself.
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