Audience of One

The three-part call to set apart ministry

As mentioned before, I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea of “creation” and “new creation” work, and whether God is calling me to the latter. The whole idea of “calling” it seems isn’t really a Biblical category. When the Bible talks of calling, it’s talking about people responding to the gospel – the “call to faith”.

So how, then, to figure out whether to go into a “new creation” job – or, to use another term, “set apart ministry”? By “set apart”, I’m referring to those who are supported financially (and in prayer) by a group (usually a congregation) to spend their working week on new creation tasks. In other words, a full-time pastor, missionary, youth worker, or other person whom until recently have been referred to as “Christian workers”. Not wanting to use that term (all Christians who work are Christian workers!) as it implies working for a church is perhaps the more “Christian” thing to do, I’ve gone with set apart ministry. There’s probably something wrong with this term too, but it’ll do for now.

After all that introduction, now for what I actually want to say. Following on from a conversation with a friend, he talked of three things you should be sure of before going into this kind of ministry. (He credited Don Carson with the ideas, though I’m pretty sure Carson would credit Scripture if indeed it was him my friend heard this off.)

Firstly, desire. You’ve got to want to do it! If you don’t, it’s probably not for you. (1 Timothy 3:1 seems to suggest this, and it makes sense: God gives us our desires as we submit to him – and if we didn’t feel like we might want to do it, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to us in the first place…)

Secondly, gifting and maturity. Can we do it? It’s all very well wanting to be a youth worker, but if you can’t engage with teenagers then don’t do it! On the other hand, if you’re interested in apologetics, great at explaining things to non-Christians and can give a pretty good talk for an evangelistic barbecue, maybe you should consider becoming an itinerant evangelist. However you might still feel you need to grow up a bit, or get more experience. Maturity (or good character, to say it another way) is also necessary.

Thirdly, other people. Does your pastor think you could do it? Do your friends? Do your parents? Do others in the church?

All that’s left now is figuring out if you want to do it, and whether you have the gifts to do it, whether you feel you’re mature enough to do it, and find out if others think you should do it. How do you do that? Just get on and do it! If you want to be a youth worker, then get involved in youth work; if music’s your thing, then start playing music in church; if opportunities in universities excite you, then get involved with a CU or do Relay. If you’re becoming even more certain, then maybe do an apprenticeship. Doing something like that gives you an opportunity to test out your gifts, your desires, and have older Christians mentor you and tell you if they think you should do it long-term. In other words, they give you a perfect way of seeing if you fit the three points above.

I wrote back in April:

So what constitutes a calling? Does it mean a pastor or other leader taking you aside and saying “you should consider this work”? Does it mean you feel like you could do it and would quite like to do it? Does it mean trying it out in an apprenticeship scheme and seeing by doing whether it’s for you?

To answer my own question, I think the answer to the above questions is “yes”, though perhaps “calling” isn’t the right term.

Matthew @ 13:54, July 28, 2008 to Miscellaneous | Comments (2)