What is your calling? How did you receive your calling? If you look in the Hebrew Bible, more often than not, when God called, the people at first said -- send someone else. Moses said -- I can't speak well, so God said -- take along Aaron, he can talk for you. Jonah receives the call and runs the other way. Jeremiah said -- I'm but a boy. In every case God seems to have an answer to the attempt to put off the call.
But how does a call come? I didn't hear an audible voice, but I think I knew from early on a direction (though I framed it differently than time would reveal). I can say with some surety that when I decided to pursue the M.Div. and ordination I didn't have parish ministry in mind. I was going to be a theological educator. That was my calling! And yet, here I am, in my 26th year of ordination and in my 13th year as pastor of a congregation.
All of this leads to my sharing of a video of Martin Marty sharing his sense of what it means to receive a call to ministry in the Christian community. He notes that traditionally it has been assumed that God calls through the community (the church), but in his conversations with people entering ministry, it would be better to say that God calls "through billions of particulars." I think he may be right. I invite you to watch, consider, and add your own sense of what it means to be called. The video comes from the What's Your Calling? -- a movement/organization inspired by a PBS miniseries -- The Calling.
