Sense of Call

The other day one of my Dr.’s seemed a little disappointed that I had not felt quite able to return to work. Before the Cancer I worked part-time as an Associate Pastor in Mission. He said, "you do the Lord’s work and we are grateful." I appreciated the grateful part but his comment didn’t sit quite right with me. I tend to not blurt out my first response but in this instance wish I had.

"You do the Lord’s work too, and we thank you." Is what I would have liked to say. (Not to mention that I AM still trying to serve the Lord even when I am not on staff). One of the beliefs that Presbyterian’s hold dear is that we ARE ALL CALLED to serve God in our various ways. We believe strongly in Paul’s description in Romans that each one of us in the Body of Christ have distinct spiritual gifts but all those gifts are equal in value. Your call is indeed as valued, appreciated and important as my call is to "Feed and Nurture God’s Sheep." In fact, if all we did was huddle around together as Christians "at church" than my call really wouldn’t be worth much at all.

I got to attend the Ordination Service of Garrett Erickson last week. What a great time, watching he and Abbie take it all in, Worship the Lord, lay hands on him in prayer and know what God will do with and for him in the service of God’s Church. Plus, to hear that Saxaphone again!

I think it would be neat if we could all have Ordination services for our different careers. Doctors, teachers, parents, financial advisors, gardener’s, company executives - "would all elders come forward to pray for the installation of these fellow believer’s to their chosen fields." This might instill in us better our own sense of God’s call.

If you’ve read my previous entry called "More Grace," than you’ve read a lot of great examples of Christians living out their call to serve God within their daily lives and work.

So in short, you do the Lord’s work too, and I thank you!

Comments

[Steve Yamaguchi]

Hi Pati. I love your blog. Thanks for doing this. It's a gift.
I like your idea of a service for each Christian that sets them apart for WHATEVER ministry God calls them to. I'm thinking we don't need an ordination service to do this because Baptism is in theory to set people apart for service. Your idea triggered 3 thoughts. 1) The Book of Occasional Services has a service for "Commissioning to a Ministry Outside a Congregation" and in light of your idea, this could be a very cool thing to do regularly. I'd love to see some special marketplace ministry preparation stuff that leads to a service like this where a believer makes their public promise to live out their calling as Christ's disciple in their day job ministry outside the church. Maybe it should be called an "Ex-stallation" rather than an installation. I would think it should somehow have a communal or group aspect to mitigate against the "solo minister" pitfall, i.e. we should not commission lone rangers but rather ministers surrounded by covenant support. 2)Whereas the baptism service in the Book of Common Worship is "in theory" to be about setting aside for service, you made me notice that the questions to the one being baptized lack outward missional focus. We ask: "do you renounce sin" - "what do you believe" - and "will you be a faithful church member" - BUT we don't ask them if they will be a faithful minister in the world. Your question makes me think that we need to supplement the baptismal service questions to include a missional question that addresses your concerns. I'll bet that if ANYBODY can figure out how to do this well, you all at SCP could do this. 3)You ARE doing the Lord's work. Big time. You're ministering to me, and I thank you.
Peace to you. Love you. Steve