October 12, 2008: The Shake-Up

This was a landmark date for us. Our pastor, John Piper, interrupted his message with a last minute message God had impressed upon him just the day before.  His sermon focused on John the Baptist in John 1 and the implications of John’s ministry: (1) our calling is essential, (2) our calling involves the denial of ourselves. He broke from his notes to relay to certain people there who were wrestling with a sense of call from God that God had impressed the following message on him: “You can get off the fence. I’m calling you to this.” It rocked me.  This was the only time we have ever had a pastor interrupt a sermon with "a message from God" in our five years at Bethlehem Baptist.  That fact wouldn't have shocked me so much, except that I had been up till 3 A.M. just the night before, struggling in prayer with a strong sense that God wanted me to leave my job and begin training for pastoral ministry.

                                       Our artifact from the "Surprise Sermon."

This wasn’t the first time I had felt God moving me in this direction. During the summer, driving home from our families in Eastern Wisconsin, I prayed while everyone slept on highway 41 just outside of Oshkosh. A strong sense of need for more theologically deep, Christ-exalting churches in the leading cities of Wisconsin. I appealed to God to raise up more pastors to lead the church this way. Then to my surprise, a question popped clearly into my mind and stranger still it was addressed to me in the second person: “Have you considered whether you might be one of those pastors?” This happens to me on rare occasions, and usually includes insights that can only be attributed to God.  In this case, with the thought came a sense that I knew this is what God had been preparing me for over the years.

Over the following weeks, reasons to pursue pastoral ministry sprung to mind: Julie was interested, my missionary college and ministry experiences matched up well with pastoring, our family was doing well, and so on. By Labor Day weekend I thought I was ready to seriously explore this, so I set aside a morning to pray. The time came but in my enthusiasm to gain more confirmation from God I felt like I was only talking to myself. I asked God for grace to see what the problem was, and an awareness dawned in my mind.  Over the past two month I had begun to idealize the idea of church leadership. I wasn’t ready to think it through realistically. God’s message seemed to be:  "Don’t worry about it for a while… let go of your dreams and wait on Me.”

By God’s grace, I let it go and put it out of my mind for about six weeks. It was actually a relief as I started to consider more of what it would cost a family of four to pursue a mid-career call to ministry. I enjoyed many things about our situation. I loved leading the Life Coaches for Kids® ministry at church. Our finances were in good shape. And while I couldn’t say I loved my job in insurance, I knew there was still much to learn and co-workers who needed me to represent Christ in their lives. I happily put the whole idea of becoming a pastor on hold.

Then on Friday, October 10, I was praying the morning bus ride to work like usual. An idea popped into my mind that broke my focus: “This weekend would be a good time to pray about the pastoral ministry idea again.” It was a little unsettling, since I was starting to enjoy the status quo again. But it made sense. My romantic thoughts of ministry had been replaced by realism. It would probably be a good time to investigate the whole idea seriously. This might be God.

On Saturday at 10:30 PM, there was finally time to seek God.  When I started it seemed like a flood of affirmative reasons came to mind encouraging me towards the ministry. Then there was a surge of strong objections:  I'm too timid, I struggle too much with sullenness, I still get nervous in conversations with most people.  Then reasons not to be discouraged countered the objections, including verses like 2 Cor 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The final outcome after four hours of wrestling in prayer was: God, I think you want me to do this, but if we go down this road and it’s a mistake, it’s going to be a big one. I need some strong confirmation whether the answer is yes or no. Please make it clear.

So the next day in church, October 12, I felt a bit groggy. I enjoyed putting aside all the thoughts about the future and resting in worship.  Let God confirm things in His own time.  I was happy to take a break from the internal debate.  You can imagine how it felt to hear our pastor interrupt the middle of that day’s sermon to say he had a special message to pass on to people in the congregation who were "wrestling with a sense of calling."  Julie and I were floored.  The next chapter of our lives had begun.