I was rather suddenly thrust into the deep waters of Full Time Ministry, something I had never previously sought after until it was offered to me. In some way, these elements were floating around in the background of my life but I didn’t yet have the language to articulate them to myself. The first pastor I worked for also must have picked up on something in me to invite me on this strange new adventure. I was building a new ministry, a ministry school, essentially from the ground up, without the conventional training or expertise one would assume to pull off such a thing.
Somehow I knew intuitively I needed some sort of guiding principle or mantra to help me focus on what was mine to do, and the potential blind spots I might have in an environment wherein I could easily make myself all things to all people. I spent the early months of this new role asking the Lord for a mission statement that might help me stay focused (which is not my strong suit), and after a time of discernment I settled on “to reconcile the heart and the mind for believers”.
During my time at my church in Nashville, and especially once I entered the ministry, I noticed a trend in Christians of my generation. Some of us were theologically astute, knew and said all the right things, but didn’t know how to convert that into action. Others were all heart, passionate and ready to go, but perhaps lacked a robust grounding for their beliefs that helped them to stay the course. I felt like my special gift was to be able to inject heart into intellectual faith, and to shore up passion with solid thinking.
Later, as I began to engage with the Enneagram, I realized that my personality type as a Peacemaker meant that I almost quite literally have one foot in the mind and one in the heart. Everything about how I perceive the world and the energy I put out into the world is about “peace” specifically as a “binding together”, reconciliation. It already bled into everything I put my hands to, but to name that motivation for me helped me to focus in on my calling in relation to the others on my team, and the guests I would bring in to teach my students. Even more wonderfully, I began to see how that little mantra transcended being a spiritual director or a ministry school operator, even a high school art teacher. It seems to carry more heft than any of these vocations might to define me and my best contributions.
When I made the move to pastor City Beautiful Church, my little mantra came with me. It set the trajectory for the specific type of pastor I am capable of being, and to reveal what kind of pastor I am not. It helped me build a team that could bless my strengths and compensate for my weaknesses.
I am made to save the Church. My gift is to teach people how to think like Christians, to feel fully, and to bring it all before Jesus for redemption. Even this project reflects to me my life’s calling, pulling together all these fantastic ideas and wisdom from across the ages to synthesize a unified path forward. The way I see the world enables me to peer beneath the surface of many modern assumptions about life and ask questions about what lies there, seeking common themes in disparate beliefs we take for granted in the modern church. I am an apocalyptic pastor, in the sense Eugene Peterson would intend:
“Reality is revealed for what it suddenly is. We had supposed our lives were so utterly ordinary. Sin-habits dull our free faith into stodgy moralism and respectable boredom; then crisis rips the veneer of cliche off everyday routines and reveals the side-by-side splendors of heaven and hell. Apocalypse is arson - it secretly sets a fire in the imagination that boils the fat out of an obese culture-religion and renders a clear gospel love, a pure gospel love, a purged gospel faith.”
Ten years on, and I feel like I’m still only scraping the surface of my Calling. I sense that is how it’s supposed to work, for if I had mastery over my Calling after a mere decade and two vocations, would it really be worth it? It must be something profound enough to contain an almost inexhaustible wealth of wisdom, a pearl of great price.
The first question my therapist asked me when I began sessions was, “do you find your identity in being a pastor?”, and it’s one I’ve often had to come back to periodically. To find my source of value in the title or role or even the work itself is the fast track to burnout. Differentiating between my calling and my vocation enables me to hold the task before me more open-handedly, as a gift instead of an obligation.
It’s not so different for you. Even if your calling is not working for a 501(c)3 nonprofit, or if your day job has anything to do with your calling, to name the invitation from God with specificity and care will help you discern what you are to do, without holding onto it so tightly you define yourself by your work and thus burn yourself out. There will always be opportunities from on high, God is like that. It’s a question of being present enough in your own stories to notice the moments you are given.
Ultimately, we must believe we were made for love. One of the bigger shifts in my theology of being a human being is the recognition that our most natural state is to be like God, something we consider too good to be true. If we think we are ultimately self-centered creatures by design, the prospect of becoming other-focused and outwardly-centered seems like a foreign land. However, if we believe we are intended to love freely, and to receive love freely, understanding our calling becomes the trajectory for working what is truest of us on the inside to the outside through action.
Pursuing our calling doesn’t always equate to warm fuzzy feelings, and it comes with some degree of suffering and discomfort, but over time we begin to see the fruit in how it shapes us to look more like King Jesus. We can find contentment, knowing our lives have purpose and direction. This is more than mere happiness, because the pursuit of happiness often leaves us wanting. We are willing to suffer for meaning.
I am drawn in by the words of Saint Augustine in the first autobiographical work in the West, written between 397 and 400AD. In it, he speaks of how everything in creation is striving to arrive at its most natural intended position in God’s good world. To drive is to find rest, which speaks to my heart as a Peacemaker. Augustine makes a powerful declaration of our true nature:
“My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever.” (Confessions IX)
While my calling does not define who I am, it helps me to find my place in the world around me. If approached with awe, the work I am called to will reinforce who I am created to be.
Essentially, we might say our Calling comes down to this:
Who are you best positioned to reach, what are you most passionate about conveying to them, and how are you equipped to do it?
Our stories tend to set in motion, at least partially, the development or manifestation of our personalities. Because of this, they also shape the kinds of people we are most equipped to reach out of that special authority of compassion.
What elements of your story do you think have shaped your personality?
What kind of people do you consider your story and personality to invite you to love especially well?
Our spiritual gifts seem less a random allocation of skills when we see how they radiate from who we naturally are at our core; they are almost an active extension of the way we perceive the world and what gives us energy.
What kinds of threads do you see woven between your personality and your gifts?
When you are healthy in your personality, how does that affect your approach to your spiritual gifts?
Our gifts also empower us to become the vessel for a God Who turns curses into blessings, if we steward them well and have a keen eye to the future coming of the Kingdom.
What do your personal gifts say about the character of God?
How might those gifts help others see curses turned into blessings?
If you could sum up your Calling in one phrase, what would it be?
How does it feel to see it in writing? Do you see the possibility of inexhaustible meaning in it?