Calling

Jason Byassee

Executive Director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

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March 10, 2010

A Laying On of Hands

When I meet new people and tell them I’m a minister, they tend to assume I was called to ministry in a sort of reprise of St. Paul’s conversion. There must have been a light, a voice, a wounding, a healing, a calling—something dramatic. Why else would one hitch one’s fortune to an institution as retrograde and medieval as the church? When I tell them there was none of that—no light, voice, wounding or healing—they look disappointed. There was a calling. But its difference from their imagination is not just that it was un-dramatic. It was more radical than the solo adventure with pyrotechnics they envision. A church called me into ministry, a congregation, a batch of ordinary people who met to worship weekly and befriended one another on the way. First one, then another, then the whole batch pointed their fingers at me and say, “Why, you should be a minister, and lead the rest of us.” Eventually I couldn’t ignore them any longer.

Perhaps this surprises people hearing my story because we’ve offered the world a version of Christianity that is little beyond individualistic: me and Jesus and my soul going to heaven. We’ve forgotten the bible’s grand story of God’s calling of a people, Israel and church, through which to save the world.

I remember a specific instance that, at least in retrospect, cemented that calling. It wasn’t when I was asked to speak to the youth group, important as that was. It wasn’t my first experiences with preaching or leading retreats or offering pastoral care. No, it was much more mundane. I was asked to lay my hands on someone.

I don’t remember who it was. Must’ve been someone headed off for a mission trip someplace. But I, alongside the senior pastor, some elders and my youth pastor, laid my hands on the person and offered a prayer in front of the congregation on a Sunday morning. Apparently, they thought, I had enough ability to offer Christ to others; I was enough of a conduit of the Holy Spirit, that they wanted my hands on our missionary. And then there was something to how ordinary it all was. I wasn’t slapped on the back or offered praise the way I was when I preached or whatever. I was just another leader; of course I’d been up there. Everyone wished me “Good morning” and traipsed off to lunch.

A friend and pastor I admire had a calling as communal and miracle-free as mine, but his was much more dramatic. William C. Turner was a campus leader at Duke University in the cauldron of 1960’s campus culture. He was a football player, an advocate for civil rights, and a brilliant engineering student. He was sure the latter of those three was the stuff of a career. But he was also a Christian. And for two years, he says, his congregation “waged war for my soul.” He’d tell them he wanted to be an engineer. They’d say no, he was going to be a pastor. Their pastor. He was too talented to make the money and contribution of a literal bridge builder. He would make the money and contribution of a spiritual bridge builder—between God and them and them and their community. Eventually they won out.

How many congregations now are willing to wage war for their young people’s soul?

Not a few people have gone into ministry despite some terrible advice. For generations would-be ministers have been told, “Don’t do it if you can do anything else.” The intentions here are surely good: we ought to discourage people who slouch into ministry as easily as others become dentists or toothpaste salespeople. Those who see ministry as a possible career, rather than a calling, should be treated as rabbis treat would-be converts: send them away and see if they come back. But the advice also suggests ministry is a sort of drudgery, without a dramatic call to which one will surely do more harm than good. And that’s simply not true.

By contrast, think of what Adam Hamilton says to the young people in his enormous congregation in Kansas City. When it comes time for confirmation, he tells the hundreds of kids (he has some 12,000 parishioners after all) how wonderful his job as a minister is. It’s so wonderful they should follow him into it. They won’t all, of course. But some might, including some who would never be tempted by the “if you can avoid it, do” sort of advice.

Notice all the communal elements of this story: it takes a congregation to design and implement a confirmation course. It takes a congregation to raise up an Adam Hamilton, and a whole bunch of congregations to support the seminaries that train him and the future ministers who follow. And it takes congregations to receive those future ministers Adam encourages. Even stories of particular callings, like Adam’s and Bill’s and mine, are never free of a congregation. In fact, without the congregation, they don’t happen. There is no minister without a church to call them.

And this is no surprise, if we remember that we serve a God who calls a people, and not just persons. The laying on of hands is, perhaps, the best image with which to remember this. It takes a bunch of us to pass a Spirit this wild on to another.

Jason Byassee writes and edits for www.faithandleadership.com. He is also the author of Praise Seeking Understanding: Readings the Psalms with Augustine (Eerdmans).