Now That I'm Called: A Guide for Women Discerning a Call to Ministry

INTRODUCTION

GETTING STARTED ON THE JOURNEY OF MINISTRY

I wish I could tell you the day or the hour that God called me to ministry, but I cannot. The call didn’t come to me like it did to Jeremiah, whose mouth God touched and said, ‘I have put my words in your mouth’ (Jer. 1:9). Nor did it come to me like it did Paul, who encountered Jesus on a road and was commissioned by him to be an apostle (Acts 9:1–9; 22:6–11). My calling didn’t come in a bright vision or by audible words booming from heaven. It was rather a call that intensified over the years of God pursuing me, aligning my desires to his, revealing to me the gifts of the Holy Spirit he had given me, calling me through Scripture, like 2 Timothy 3:14–5:5 and Ephesians 4:10–16, through other believers who affirmed the work of God they saw in me, and through prayer. Simply put, I could not shake an increasing desire from God to serve him in the ministry of his Word within the context of the church. This is my calling story.

SENSING GOD AT WORK

I remember crying to my mother, shortly after I became a Christian, Why didn’t God make me a boy so I could be a preacher? Even at a young age, all I wanted to do was to proclaim the gospel the best way a seven-year-old preacher’s daughter knew how: by preaching. My cry was the result of a clash between my God-given desire to proclaim the gospel and what I saw in my reality. The only people I encountered who had a formal ministry of the Word were men, and the only place I saw them exercise that ministry was in the pulpit. The two women I knew who had done any type of ministry—Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon—were long dead, and they were missionaries.

At the first church my dad served as pastor, a small church in rural East Texas, he was the only full-time staff member. It wasn’t until we moved to the city when I was in fifth grade, to a slightly larger church in Texarkana, Texas, that I became part of a church that had a full-time music and youth minister. My dad was now one of two ministers on staff. From time to time we would welcome a visiting missionary or evangelist, but for the most part, if you were in full-time ministry, you were either a senior pastor or music/youth pastor.

Being female in my denomination excluded me from at least the first ministry option and most likely the second, and even if the church had accepted women in those roles, God was not leading me to those ministries. So I considered whether God was calling me to become a missionary, and if he was, whether he was calling me to be a foreign missionary. I was afraid of going overseas or starting a church in a remote village. (As you can see, even my understanding of missions and being a missionary was limited.) I didn’t know what to do, but even though I could not figure out a specific role or ministry God was calling me to do, I could not shake my increasing desire to serve God full-time in some way.

So for two years, from ages thirteen to fifteen, I struggled with whether God was calling me to serve him as something other than a lay person. I allowed fear, the voices of others, and what I saw in my little piece of the world to be deterrents to my pursuit of gospel ministry. I had no books to read about being a young woman called to ministry. There was no one in my life—no woman doing full-time ministry—who could mentor me. I felt like I was traveling down a road where no one had ventured before. It was unfamiliar territory, and I had no one to guide me.

Even though I felt alone, God was still pursuing me. In the summer between my ninth and tenth grade years, at a weeklong discipleship camp targeted for Christian leaders of youth groups, I finally surrendered to the call to commit my life to a ministry of the Word for the church. The specific direction was unclear, but I knew God was at work.

I had been reflecting on something my mother told me about obedience: Kristen, she’d say, if Jesus is the Lord of your life, then you obey and trust him whether or not you can see the complete picture or the final outcome. You will not be at peace until you release your future, your ambitions, and your fears to the Lord and surrender to his call. One night at camp, I simply surrendered. My prayer went something like this: Here I am, God. Use me. I am yours. I am yours to use in your church, for your people. I don’t know what that will look like, but I will trust you.

Naively, I believed that because I had surrendered, God would reveal what ministry would look like for the rest of my life. He didn’t. I believed life would be easier since I had been chosen for ministry. It wasn’t. (In fact, I struggled with sin, temptation, and doubt more during my last two years of high school than I had in my entire life!) I also believed God would not abandon me and that he would carry out his purposes in my life. And those two things, he did.

After I graduated from high school, I attended Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I chose the school because it had a reputable Christian studies degree geared toward preparing future ministers of the gospel. I had a great experience during my time at Ouachita, but I still did not have clarity about what my specific ministry should be. Rather, keeping with the way he had been working in my life for so many years, God was slowly, in small, quiet ways, affirming my gifts and revealing his plan. During my time in college, God opened doors for me to communicate his Word through writing, mentoring, teaching, and speaking. Professors and fellow students continued to affirm my gifts. I was even asked to give my testimony during Ouachita’s weekly chapel service during my senior year. God used moments such as these, along with my professors and peers, to further affirm my call.

The professors at Ouachita did an outstanding job of teaching Scripture and giving students tools to be competent biblical interpreters, but this only whetted my appetite for more theological education. It was around this time that I sensed God directing me to go to seminary. I wanted to pursue further studies because I believed my calling was a high calling. It meant I would speak about the living God, and I needed the best training possible to do it well.

In August 2005, I made the seven-hour journey from my home in Sheridan, Arkansas, to Birmingham, Alabama, to attend Beeson Divinity School for a master of divinity (MDiv) degree. During my season of study at Beeson, other people continued to affirm my gifts in writing and speaking, and God also continued to kindle the desire to teach his Word. In particular, as I worked with young women at my local church, God put a desire in my heart to help them process what it means to be called by God for ministry.

WHERE I AM TODAY

When I graduated from seminary in 2008 with my MDiv, no work seemed to be available for me in ministry. The economy was in very poor shape. People were losing jobs, and churches were under hiring freezes. I started a blog as a place to write about God’s Word, took an internship at a Baptist newspaper, got married, and had a son. For four years I was a stay-at-home mom learning what it meant to worship God through the mundane tasks of household chores as well as the awesome responsibility of raising a child in the fear of the Lord. During that time, I wrote a couple of Bible studies for publication. God gave me opportunities to lead retreats, preach his Word at women’s events, teach adult Sunday school classes, and mentor women who felt called to ministry. Today I am realizing my calling in writing this book. God gave me the initial vision for this book ten years ago, and I am eager for it to be in the hands of young women like you who feel called to ministry.

In May 2015, almost seven years after I graduated from seminary, I went to work at Beeson Divinity School. While the job itself is not what I would consider gospel ministry, it does allow me to do some ministry of the Word for the church. How? Each semester I am tasked with taking the theme of our semester-long chapel series and translating that theme into a devotional booklet that is sent to around three thousand people. I give vision to, create, write for, and edit a new devotional booklet twice a year. I also mentor young women in seminary.

Around the same time I took the job at Beeson, my husband and I changed denominations, moving from a Southern Baptist church to an evangelical Episcopal church in the Anglican tradition. At the time of the writing of this book, I am in conversations with the clergy about the possibility of formal ministry within my new denomination.

You would think that in the eighteen years since I surrendered to ministry at camp, I would have figured it all out and that God would have revealed to me all there is to know about my calling and what he plans to do with me. But that’s not so. I have had to learn, like many people in the Bible did, to trust God even though I cannot see the end result or exactly where he is taking me. I have learned that the call is a journey.

I am sharing my calling story with you so you can see that calling is fluid. It takes different shapes and sizes along the way. However, I also want you to see that while my life and work have evolved, God and his call to deliver his Word has been sure and steady. He who has called me is faithful. God isn’t asking us to be in control of our callings or to make them look like what we want them to look like. Rather, he is asking us to be obedient and trust him every step of the way, knowing that he is always faithful. Besides, it is not about us, is it? It is about God receiving all the glory (2 Cor. 4:7).

I am still on the journey. I have had to learn what it means to trust and depend on God. Although there have certainly been times of confusion and disappointment, I have never regretted the journey nor looked back. This is my calling story. What is yours?

INITIAL THOUGHTS ON CALLING

Before we go any further, I’d like to suggest that you take a moment to write out a few thoughts about your own calling story. How do you sense God calling you to ministry? How are others affirming you in this call? What are some of your struggles with your calling? Where are you right now in your journey?

[Your Response Here]

WHAT IS VOCATIONAL MINISTRY?

Whenever I speak to women about the question of calling, several questions frequently come up:

• What do you mean by the words calling and ministry?

• Isn’t everyone called to ministry? Are you saying that some people are called to a ministry of the gospel that is somehow different from the call God has placed on every Christian?

These are great questions. I’ll start by defining for you what I mean by calling and ministry. This is important because whenever I refer to ministry in this book, I’m not using the term in the broad sense that all Christians are called to engage in service. Instead, I’m using the term in the colloquial sense—calling as vocational ministry, typically involving some form of teaching or preaching role. So whenever I speak about a call to ministry I’m referring to vocational ministry. A call to vocational ministry can best be understood as God setting someone apart to serve him, for the good of his people, by delivering the Word of God (in some way) to them. Keep this in mind. It’s important!

One of the reasons I’m writing this book is because I want people, especially women, to understand that receiving this kind of call does not mean that they must hold a church office—the role of a pastor, elder, or deacon, for example. The Holy Spirit gives gifts to the people of God, and these gifts can be exercised outside of a particular office in the church. Ministering God’s Word in this way is a valid, biblical calling. The Bible frequently speaks about gifts of prophecy, teaching, and exhortation, and as I will argue later, these terms are best understood as referring to the teaching and preaching of the Word. God does not restrict these gifts to people who hold ordained offices in the church, and as we will see in later chapters, nowhere in the context of biblical teaching on these gifts nowhere is this limitation required (Rom. 12:3–8; 1 Cor. 12:4–11, 27–31).

In addition to clarifying what I mean by ministry, I want to unpack what we mean when we talk about a calling. Many people are confused by the word calling. One reason is that the term is used in several different ways in the Bible. One way it is used is in reference to a divine directive we receive from God—God is calling us to do something. But many different kinds of calls exist within this broad understanding of what God is asking us to do. Scripture even uses different words and phrases to express a call from God, words like set apart, send, appoint, or commission. In addition, the Bible most often uses the word calling to speak of God calling men and women into relationship with himself (Rom. 1:6–7; Eph. 4:1; 2 Tim. 1:8–9; 1 Pet. 1:1–2, 15–16). We all share in this broader sense of being called by God. All those who place their faith in Jesus and respond to the good news of salvation are called to be God’s children. All of us are called to some type of ministry—called to serve God in some way.

With this in mind, I want to clarify that the type of call I’m addressing in this book is more specific: the call some receive to a ministry of delivering God’s Word for the benefit of the people of God. This kind of calling will necessarily involve communicating God’s Word—whether that is through preaching, teaching, speaking, or writing—for the building up, equipping, and edifying of the church of Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:11–13). We’ll talk more about this in chapter 6.

So how do you know if you are called to this kind of ministry? That’s a good question! As we will see in the first four chapters of this book, the Bible reveals that throughout history, God has called a wide variety of people in many different ways. Some people have been called through direct speech, or through dreams and visions, or God has sovereignly used other people to make his call known to them. In the church today, God commonly calls his people through the personal reading of Scripture, in the context of a worshipping community where the Word is preached, and through prayer. God makes his call known through other believers as well, through people who see and recognize God’s work in our lives. God also works internally within us, inclining our hearts and desires to respond to his call, and he works through the specific gifts he gives to us to serve others within the body of Christ. Finally, though I won’t be addressing this, it’s important to recognize that in many parts of the world today, God still calls people through dreams and visions.

More often than not, God uses a variety of means to call us to a ministry of the Word. However, a true call from God never originates from within ourselves. God’s call comes from outside us and then reorients our hearts and desires in such a way that, like Paul (1 Cor. 9:16), we are then compelled to serve in a specific type of ministry. Speaking about the call of the Old Testament prophets, theologian Brevard Childs writes, "A strong sense of divine compulsion lay at the heart of the call" (emphasis mine).¹ What Childs means is that when we sense God’s call, we cannot think of doing anything else! God’s call is so convicting and convincing that it takes over our hearts and minds.

Theologian Thomas Oden, writing about how to discern a call to vocational ministry, said the following: Let an initial impression grow quietly in a community of prayer until it becomes a sustained conviction.² God speaks to us in many ways, but over time a sense of calling will grow into a certain conviction. We need a process of discernment, a way of testing a call to see if it is really from God. We should start by comparing what we think God is calling us to against the truth God has revealed in Scripture. We should listen to what other believers are telling us, and we should think about our sense of calling in consideration of our spiritual gifts. Ask those around you: What do you see God doing in my life? What do you see as my spiritual gifts? How do people react when you tell them that you sense God is calling you to gospel ministry? We’ll take a closer look at some of these questions throughout the book.

A MAP OF THIS BOOK

As you can see, I’ll be trying to answer many questions for you! I want to be up-front with you as we get started, though. Two beliefs have guided me in writing this book. First, I believe that God calls women to ministry, and more specifically, to the type of ministry I described earlier—the ministry of communicating God’s Word to God’s people. Second, I believe that the church of Jesus Christ needs God-called women who are prepared and trained for this ministry. The specifics of what this type of gospel ministry looks like for you will largely depend on your tradition, your reading of Scripture, and where you sense God is leading you. But regardless of your church or tradition, I believe you have a place in ministry if God is calling you to serve.

Individualism and self-sufficiency make up the fabric of our culture. Today it doesn’t really matter what your parents or grandparents did; we each blaze our own trail. As we begin considering a call to ministry, we need to be aware that this individualism may be infused in our thinking. For example, you might be inclined to see your calling as an isolated event, thinking to yourself, God called me, and I will pursue this on my own.