THE CALL TO THE MINISTRY

Donald Macleod
(reprinted from The Monthly Record, 1981)

The myths which circulate with regard to the call to the
ministry are legion. The most common, probably, is that such a call is
a matter of special revelation. Men observe that prophets and apostles
were directly commissioned by God and expect the experience of
pastors to be similar. This is to forget, however, the uniqueness of the
prophetic and apostolic offices. These men were the organs of special
revelation, charged with laying the foundation of the church and
endowed with infallible authority and plenipotentiary power.
Ministers stand in a different succession and Charles Bridges is surely
correct when he writes, Having no extraordinary commission we do
not expect an immediate and extraordinary call. Basically, our
vocation comes through providential guidance, biblical teaching and
personal reflection and prayer.

Not if you can help it

Equally misleading is the familiar advice, Do not enter the
ministry if you can help it. Not even the fact that it is warmly
endorsed by Spurgeon can redeem this principle from the charge of
absurdity. This is probably why even its most ardent advocates do not
apply it consistently. We do not, for example, apply it to elders and
deacons. How many office-bearers would we have if every person
elected delayed acceptance until God made it impossible for him to
resist? Nor do we apply it to the problems of guidance in general,
arguing that the only way to be sure of Gods will is to resist it,
confident that if something really is His will He will eventually
simply force it on us. That, surely, would be to tempt the Lord our
God.

In actual fact, it is perfectly possible to disobey a call to the
ministry, due to fear or timidity or the pressure of other ambitions or
the constraints of relatives or a mistaken waiting for blinding,
visionary light or even a false modesty. Too much is made of the
reluctance of men like Moses and Jonah. Jonah was blatantly guilty
of fleeing from a divine vocation and the Bible explicitly records

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Gods disapproval of Moses excuses: The anger of the Lord was
kindled against Moses. That is a high price to pay for a reputation
for humility. There is a very real possibility of divine chastening for
those who, in the face of divine preparation and endowment refuse to
make themselves available for the ministry of the church. To intrude
into the pulpit without a call is doubtless a sin, wrote Robert Dabney:
But to stay out of the pulpit when called to enter it is also a sin, a sin
which can only proceed from evil motives and which must naturally
result in the damnation of souls which should have been saved
through the disobedient Christians preaching, but were not, and
which must bring him under the frown and chastisement of an
offended Saviour.

The leadings of providence

Another area where we can fall into serious misunderstanding is
in connection with the leadings of providence. Thee do, of course,
have their own importance. If a man has no opportunity for securing
basic education or suffers from chronic ill-health or has a serious
speech-impediment, then it is fairly obvious that God never intended
him for the Christian ministry.

Yet providence is a far from infallible guide. When Jonah was
fleeing from Gods will everything at first went splendidly and he
might easily have argued that doors opened in a remarkable way. It
may indeed often happen that those whom God never called have an
easy passage through the years of formal training and at the end of
these have no difficulty in finding a settlement. This is only to apply,
in the context of the ministry, what is often true of the ungodly in
other connections: They are not in trouble like other men (Ps. 73:
5). On the other hand, those who are truly called may have to face
many difficulties both during the years of training and in the actual
work itself. Remember, for example, Pauls experience as described
in 2 Cor. 11: 23ff: labour, stripes, imprisonments, rods, stonings,
shipwrecks, perils, robbers, false brethren, weariness, pain, hunger,
thirst, cold and nakedness besides that which cometh on me daily,
the cares of all the churches. Had Paul followed the leadings of
providence he would surely have concluded that he was never meant
to be a missionary.


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Other men in the later history of the church have faced similar
trials. Brainerd, Whitefield and McCheyne served through appalling
ill-health; Calvin, in Geneva, faced many years of internal friction and
opposition; Thomas Boston passed two years and three months in the
character of a probationer, waiting for a congregation to give him a
call. These years, he wrote afterwards, brought in continued
scenes of trial to me; being, through the mercy of God, generally
acceptable to the people; but could never fall into the good graces of
those who had the stroke in the settling of parishes. Even after his
ordination he had to be content with the relative obscurity of two very
small country parishes, Simprin and Ettrick; to say nothing of the
charges of doctrinal error brought against him during the Marrow
controversy. The case of John Brown of Haddington is equally
interesting. He had to overcome almost hopeless educational
disadvantages and then suffered the mortification of being accused of
witchcraft because his progress was so remarkable.

These experiences should remind us of the need to keep a sense
of proportion with regard to difficulties, discouragements, closed
doors and impossibilities. Sometimes, maybe, these things are
meant for our guidance. But just as often, they are trials of our faith
or messengers of Satan to buffet us or part of our ministerial
preparation, equipping us to comfort others with the comfort God
gives to ourselves. Doors will often open for the false prophet and
just as often appear to close for the true one.

An irrepressible conviction

But there is a fourth myth at the opposite extreme: that an
irrepressible conviction of our own vocation is tantamount to a divine
call. Usually, such a conviction is traced to a mystical or
transcendental experience, a voice or a vision giving a compelling
inner certainty.

The trouble with this is that such experiences are authoritative
only for the person who has them. They have no value for others and
they certainly do not warrant the church ordaining a man without
carefully enquiring whether he possesses the spiritual gifts and the
personal character which the Bible says are essential in a pastor.
Sometimes, a very cursory examination will make plain that the

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applicant is deluded. He turns out to be feeble-minded or physically
disabled or spiritually proud or censorious and autocratic or even
heretical. None of these defects, apparently, is sufficient to prevent a
man feeling convinced he is called to the ministry. But all of them,
individually or in any possible combination, are quite sufficient to
entitle the church to disagree with him.

In some other instances, applications from such a source are
purely tentative and exploratory. The applicant regards his own view
of his calling as final and he feels no need to submit it to the church
for ratification. If one denomination does not recognize him, he will
cheerfully go to another; and should none recognize him, he is quite
prepared to found his own, happy so long as he can hear the sound of
his own voice and unperturbed by the fact that he has
excommunicated Christendom. All interviews with candidates for the
ministry should therefore contain the question: What will you do if we
refuse your application? and if they are not prepared to listen to the
judgment of the church we should treat them as heathens and
publicans (Mt. 18: 17).

Not a call to evangelism

One further point deserves a brief mention: Men are constantly
confusing the call to the ministry with the call to evangelism. It is
assumed that the aim of the office is the conversion of sinners, that the
basic requirement is the ability to preach to the unsaved and the un-
churched and that the final seal of divine approval will be souls for
our hire.

In the New Testament, however, the work of the pastor is
basically quite distinct from that of the evangelist. The pastor is the
overseer and teacher of a settled congregation, ministering primarily
to people who know the Lord. This does not mean that he has no
evangelistic function. He knows that among his regular hearers there
are some who are not Christians. He is also concerned for the
children of believers; and he is always conscious of the possibility of
strangers dropping in to the services. But his basic ministry is to feed
the flock and if he spends his life trying to convert the converted and
to drum the most elementary doctrines into his people as if they never
could move on to solid food the result will be zero growth in the life

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of his congregation. Conversely, anyone who can really evangelise is
wasting his time in the pastorate. He should be in the spiritual
wastelands bringing Christ to the ignorant and uninitiated.

Is it not possible that much of the neurosis in the ministry is due
to this confusion? Men are being judged and are judging themselves
by the wrong criteria. The pastor is not expected to be a Whitefield
through whom multitudes are added to the church daily. He is the
shepherd of a gathered and settled flock, concerned with the spiritual,
qualitative growth of individuals and congregations. The criterion by
which he should be judged is not the annual rate of conversions but
the progress of his congregation in doctrine, in holiness, in brotherly
love and in missionary and evangelistic zeal. The gifts that constitute
his calling are not those indispensable to an itinerant, frontier
evangelism but those that will enable him, week after inexorable
week, to feed the church over which God has made him an overseer.

Myths aside

Myths aside, then what does constitute a call to the Christian
ministry? Basically, three things: a God-given desire to engage in the
work; Gods bestowal of the necessary gifts; and Gods leading the
church to ordain the individual to a particular congregation.

Desire

Normally, when God calls to the ministry he implants a desire
for the work. Paul refers to this in 1 Tim. 3: 1, If a man desires the
office of a bishop he desires a good work. Each of the verbs used
indicates strong desire. In fact, the second one (epithumei) is used in
Gal. 5: 17 to indicate the urgency with which the flesh lusts against
the Spirit. Spurgeon is justified, therefore, in saying that the first
sign of the heavenly call is an intense, all-absorbing desire for the
work. In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an
irresistible, over-whelming craving and raging thirst for telling to
others what God has done to our own souls.

Two cautions are necessary, however.


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First, the absence of desire is not in itself decisive. Some men
are truly called who, to begin with, shrink back with horror from the
very idea. Sometimes, in fact, the call of the church has come to men
like a bolt out of the blue. The classic instance of this is John Knox,
who at first resisted all exhortations to preach in public, arguing that
he did not consider himself to have a call. Without his knowledge,
however, the garrison at St. Andrews resolved that a call should be
given to him publicly. A day was fixed for this purpose and after a
sermon on the election of ministers, John Rough, chaplain to the
garrison, suddenly turned to Knox and addressed him as follows: In
the name of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the name of all
that presently call upon you by my mouth, I charge you that you
refuse not this holy vocation, but as you tender the glory of God, the
increase of Christs kingdom, the edification of your brethren and the
comfort of me, whom you understand well enough to be oppressed by
the multitude of labours, that you take the public office and charge of
preaching even as you look to avoid Gods heavy displeasure, and
desire that he shall multiply His graces unto you. The congregation
there and then publicly endorsed Roughs charge. Knox, says
McCrie, made an ineffectual attempt to address the assembly but
found the whole situation overwhelming, rushed out and shut himself
in his room, his countenance and behaviour, from that day till the day
that he was compelled to present himself in the public place of
preaching sufficiently declaring the grief and trouble of his heart.

The second and opposite caution is that the presence of the
desire, however ardent, is not in itself an infallible sign of a call to the
ministry. The desire itself must be scrutinised.

For example, what motive lies behind it? Why does a man
desire to be a minister? It may be because he desires the prestige that
goes along with it; or because it affords a high measure of security
and abundant opportunity for seclusion and study; or because it gives
us something to be lords over; or even because it affords a wide and
attractive variety of job-experiences pubic speaking, counseling,
administration, politicking. These are very real dangers and even the
best-intentioned can hardly give a confident answer to the question:
Are not zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ and desire of
saving souls, your great motives and chief inducements to enter into

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the function of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs and
interests?

It is also important to be sure that the desire is realistic.
Sometimes a yearning for the ministry is nave and visionary. Where
there is a true vocation the desire is directed to the work as defined in
Scripture a labour (1 Tim. 5: 7) and a hardship (2 Tim. 2: 3). The
problems are legion: the sheer number of services, the mental burden
of incessant sermon preparation, the unending routine of visits, the
encroachment of ones work into family life, the loneliness of pastors
in isolated situations and the humiliations incidental to living in a tied
house. Added to this is the problem of constant opposition: the
disaffected in ones own congregation, the schemers in ecclesiastical
politics and, above all, the ceaseless activities of false teachers. One
learns that protestations of love and loyalty cannot be taken at face-
value; one faces the heart-break of backsliding among ones own
people; and, occasionally, the tragedy of apostasy on the part of those
from whom much was expected.

Any realistic desire for the ministry must be aware of these
aspects of the work; and yet be prepared in Gods strength to face
them and even to count it a privilege to endure them.

Gifts

Where God gives the desire He will also confer the necessary
gifts. The reference, of course, is to charismata to spiritual gifts
not to educational attainments or business acumen or professional
experience. These may have their own value. But from a theological
point of view the indispensable pre-requisite for the ministry is the
possession of God-given and God-sustained charismata.

God confers these gifts at three different levels.

First, at the level of leadership. Pastors (including what we call
ruling elders) are over the church of God (1 Thess. 5:12). They must,
therefore, have the gift of government (1 Cor. 12: 28), including such
qualities as initiative, courage, vigour, independence of spirit,
dynamism, imagination and wisdom. It is absurd to move a man from
the back seat of a church to the pulpit and expect the transition to

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work wonders. The proper candidates for ordination are those who
have been active in bringing outsiders to church, distributing tracts,
volunteering for mundane and menial tasks, offering their homes for
fellowship and generating interest in Bible-study and evangelism.

Secondly, the pastor requires counselling gifts. For much of his
time he will be dealing not with large audiences but with individuals
looking for guidance on a vast variety of problems personal, marital,
social and professional. As stress within our society increases and
neuroses multiply this side of the ministers work will become more
and more important. To handle it hopefully he must be sympathetic
and sensitive, human and approachable, firm in his convictions and
yet open to the lessons of experience, able to assess men and
situations rapidly, unimpeachable in the matter of confidences and
able to rebuke without infuriating and to condemn without driving to
despair.

Thirdly, the pastor must have preaching gifts. To this end he
must have a competent grasp of the Christian message in all its
aspects, doctrinal, ethical and experiential. But he must also possess
the ability to communicate the message the quality which Paul
defines as apt to teach. This is not the same as being, in todays
terms, a good communicator. There is a tension between the art of
the rhetorician the enticing words of mens wisdom and
preaching in the Spirit. Nor does it mean mere fluency. An unceasing
verbal torrent can often be aimless, empty and unstructured, serving
only to hide from the speaker the poverty of his own thought. The
teaching charisma, by contrast, is the ability to express and illustrate
gospel lucidly and cogently.

Paul also insists that the preacher should be able to refute
objections to the Christian message (Titus 1: 9). Outside the church,
believers face an incessant assault on their most basic convictions and
although it would be unrealistic (and unbiblical) to expect every
pastor to be conversant with the thought of Darwin and Marx, Freud
and Heidegger, the pulpit must do all in its power to protect the flock
from the chill winds of anti-Christian thought and even to enable the
church to carry the battle to the enemy.


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Even this brief analysis of the necessary gifts is sufficient to
give rise to serious heart-searching on the part of those contemplating
the holy ministry. Clearly, no one is adequate to the work. Even John
Knox, as we saw, felt himself utterly unprepared and David Brainerd
was frequently depressed considering my great unfitness for the
work of the ministry, my present deadness and total inability to do
anything to the glory of God. In the last analysis, of course, we
gladly recognize that it is not for us to evaluate ourselves and leave it
to the church to decide whether it can use us and if so where. But two
things we can do. We can stir up fan into flame the gifts God has
given us; and we can pray to God to increase our gifts, taking courage
again from the example of Brainerd, who notes at one point in his
diary, Was enabled to cry to God with fervency for ministerial
qualifications.

The call of the church

The third step in a vocation to the ministry is the call of the
church. This is something we have tended to seriously underestimate
quite inconsistently. In the case of Elders and Deacons we have
regarded it as decisive and left little to individual initiative. It would
be unthinkable for a man to suddenly announce that he was called to
be a Deacon and expected the church to take the necessary steps to
ordination. Admittedly, the problem is complicated today by two
factors: the long years of training for the ministry and the expectation
that the church will provide for a ministers maintenance. But neither
of these can alter the theological fact that ultimately a man is called to
the ministry only by the church electing and ordaining him. The
individuals preliminary agonizing as to his fitness for the work is
painful enough. But at the end of it he is still not a minister. He is
only a candidate offering himself to the service of the church and
professing a willingness to acquiesce in its judgment. If unfit men
finally enter the ministry, the mistake is the churchs, not the
individuals.

In the practice of the Free Church, the notion of the churchs
calling must be extended to include not only the final step but all
those that lead up to it: preliminary recognition by the Kirk Session,
the Presbytery and the General Assembly (through one of its
committees); continuous assessment through all the years of training;

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licensing trials; and, at last, the call from a particular church and
ordination to its pastoral oversight.

In these various assessments, the church is bound to look
closely at the issues already mentioned: Why does the candidate
desire to enter the ministry? And does he possess the gifts necessary
for counselling, preaching and leading? But the church must also look
at wider issues.

For example, we have no right to ordain a novice. Care must be
taken, of course, not to define the concept too narrowly. Paul
ordained to the eldership in Galatia men who had been Christians for
only a few months (Acts 14: 23). Furthermore, by the time a man
comes to be ordained he has invariably been under the scrutiny of the
church for several years. It still remains questionable, however,
whether it is wise to encourage young men to declare themselves
publicly as candidates for the ministry within a few months of their
conversion. The same is true of men newly admitted to a particular
denomination. There may be much misunderstanding on both sides
and it seems only appropriate to delay ordination until the individual
and the church are firmly bonded together.

The church must also look carefully at simple questions of
general character, on which the New Testament lays a quite
astonishing stress. A man must be blameless as far as outsiders are
concerned (1 Tim. 3: 7). His life must be free from scandal. He must
not be self-willed, obstinate or autocratic. He must not be covetous,
irascible or violent. On the contrary, he must be vigilant, disciplined,
patient and magnanimous.

Naturally, questions of spiritual character are equally important.
It goes without saying that the applicant should be genuinely
converted. Yet the question should always be put by the interviewing
committee, both because the answer cannot be taken for granted and
because if a man cannot tell what God has done for his soul he
probably cannot tell anything else. Beyond that, it is clear from Acts
6: 3-5 that candidates for the ministry should be full of the Holy
Spirit and of faith. Not only believers and not only spiritual but full.
They should be eminent in personal piety, fully and habitually under

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the control of the Spirit. Holy Spirit baptism and Holy Spirit filling
are indispensable pre-requisites to biblical ordination.

Again, the church must look at the applicants reputation as a
family man. Specifically: Does he have proper control of his
children? Does he bring them up in the knowledge of the Lord? Does
he counsel them in the Lord? Or has he by easy-going indifference
turned them into sons of Belial, apostate from the church? Or by
harsh and inconsistent discipline provoked and estranged them? Does
he nourish and cherish his wife and deny himself for her, as Christ did
for the church? Does he command her loyalty and respect? And with
regard to the extended family: Does he honour his (and his wifes)
father and mother? Does he provide for aged and needy relatives (1
Tim. 5: 16)? Pauls reasons for asking such questions are
devastatingly simple: If a man does not know how to run his own
house, how can he attend to the church of God? (1 Tim. 3: 5).

Equally important is the question of a mans ability to handle
personal relationships. To a large extent, the ministry consists of
man-management, and this makes it a potential disaster area for those
who are painfully shy, carelessly extrovert or tactless and insensitive.
No one who finds it difficult to relate to other human beings can hope
to motivate, discipline and inspire so that every talent in a
congregation is fully used and individuals of diverse gifts and
temperaments are moulded into a harmonious and effective whole.

Finally, the church must be satisfied with the temperament of
the candidate. Not that ministers should be expected to have ideal
temperaments. One of the assets they bring to their work is sympathy
and that is only possible if they share the susceptibilities of their
people. Moreover, some men with fairly serious temperamental
problems for example, the depressive David Brainerd have been
very useful ministers. But the Bible does lay down some very firm
guide-lines. Those who are short-tempered are ruled out by Pauls
insistence that Bishops must not be soon angry (Tit. 1: 7). Those
who are over-bearing and arrogant are ruled out by Peters warning
against behaving as if we were lords over Gods heritage (1 Pet. 5:
3). More broadly, we must surely have serious misgivings about
admitting applicants with histories of psychiatric disorders or
tendencies that way. There is indeed a place in the ordinary

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membership of the church for the victims of nervous breakdowns,
clinical depression, neurotic anxiety, paranoia and other forms of
mental illness. One may even hope that in the Christian fellowship
such people will find a comfort and support unavailable elsewhere.
But to impose upon them the burdens of ministry is unfair both to
themselves and to the church. The stresses of the pastorate are
considerable and may easily induce irretrievable breakdown in those
of fragile personality. There is nothing sadder than to see men who
might have led perfectly satisfying lives in secular careers broken by
pastoral burdens and frustrations they were never equipped to bear.
The church, on the other hand, has the right to look to its leaders for
strength. If, instead, the pastors themselves are weak, nervous and
neurotic, where is the flock to go? A situation can develop all too
easily in which the church exhausts itself trying to heal its healers and
comfort its comforters.

The Free Church at the moment has good reason to thank God
for the quality of those training for its ministry. But our vigilance
must be unceasing. Whatever a mans potential to disrupt or deaden
the church, so long as he remains an ordinary member, it is increased
a hundred-fold by ordaining him to the Eldership or the Ministry. For
ourself, we are prepared to give every applicant for membership the
benefit of the doubt. With regard to the ministry we are more and
more inclined to act on the opposite principle to seek not merely an
uncontradicted but an accredited profession of a call. If hes
doubtful hes out. To spare the flock.



Further reading:

C H Spurgeon, The Call to the Ministry in Lectures To My Students

R L Dabney, What is a Call to the Ministry? in
Discussions: Evangelical and Theological, Vol. 2