Call to Ministry
What is a “call to the ministry” ? by Ken Temple
Regional Representative
Southeast USA
Frontiers
(770) 277-6399 ( office ) kentemple@juno.com What is a “call to ministry” ? Is it more subjective or objective? It is just for preachers and pastors and missionaries, or is it also for the Christian businessman and plumber, the housewife and mother? Is it only one’s vocation, or does it also refer to salvation and relationship with Christ ?
Os Guinness, in his book, The Call, writes: “Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service”.[1] Calling is primarily a calling into relationship with Jesus, and it includes all of our life, not only our job or vocation. Mark 3:13-14 says that Jesus called His disciples that they would first and foremost be with Him, and then to go out and preach and cast out demons. Drawing on the writings of Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, Guinness elaborates further: “For Luther, the peasant and the merchant - for us, the business person, the teacher, the factory worker, and the television anchor – can do God’s work ( or fail to do it) just as much as the minister and missionary. For Martin Luther and subsequent reformers, the recovery of the holistic understanding of calling was dramatic. Writing about the “Estate of Marriage” in 1522, Luther declared that God and the angels smile when a man changes a diaper. William Tyndale wrote that, if our desire is to please God, pouring water, washing dishes, cobbling shoes, and preaching the word “is all one”. William Perkins claimed that polishing shoes was a sanctified and holy act.”[2]
This is very helpful for those who want to serve God in “creative access” fields such as the Muslim world or Hindu countries or communist countries where they do not give “missionary visas”. The
Regional Representative
Southeast USA
Frontiers
(770) 277-6399 ( office ) kentemple@juno.com What is a “call to ministry” ? Is it more subjective or objective? It is just for preachers and pastors and missionaries, or is it also for the Christian businessman and plumber, the housewife and mother? Is it only one’s vocation, or does it also refer to salvation and relationship with Christ ?
Os Guinness, in his book, The Call, writes: “Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service”.[1] Calling is primarily a calling into relationship with Jesus, and it includes all of our life, not only our job or vocation. Mark 3:13-14 says that Jesus called His disciples that they would first and foremost be with Him, and then to go out and preach and cast out demons. Drawing on the writings of Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, Guinness elaborates further: “For Luther, the peasant and the merchant - for us, the business person, the teacher, the factory worker, and the television anchor – can do God’s work ( or fail to do it) just as much as the minister and missionary. For Martin Luther and subsequent reformers, the recovery of the holistic understanding of calling was dramatic. Writing about the “Estate of Marriage” in 1522, Luther declared that God and the angels smile when a man changes a diaper. William Tyndale wrote that, if our desire is to please God, pouring water, washing dishes, cobbling shoes, and preaching the word “is all one”. William Perkins claimed that polishing shoes was a sanctified and holy act.”[2]
This is very helpful for those who want to serve God in “creative access” fields such as the Muslim world or Hindu countries or communist countries where they do not give “missionary visas”. The