In my third year at Bible college, I started taking pastoral classes. The first course is basically an overview of what does a pastor do but also most importantly are YOU called? Intense stuff. I hadn't really asked myself this question before and I wasn't sure of how to answer it.
Knowing that you are supposed to be a pastor is no greater than knowing that you are supposed to be a musician or an accountant. All careers are super important, in fact as a pastor one of my many jobs will be to help my congregants in "secular" jobs figure out how to be a Christian accountant or a Christian musician (and that does not always mean that they lead the songs in church). Unfortunately, people don’t investigate their calling as an accountant. But I am getting ahead of myself.
How do I know that I am called to be a pastor?
Let's go back to when I was smaller. As a kid I used to preach sermons to my stuffed animals (not the Barbies because they couldn't sit properly on the bed). I loved the Bible and often asked my dad all the tough questions I could think of about God and Jesus. As a teen I felt really pulled toward helping my generation, and I started a girl's bible study small group. I thought I was supposed to be a youth pastor and I went to all the right workshops and bought all the right books for youth ministry.
I came to bible college fully expecting to be a youth pastor, and then gradually realized that I do not have the right heart attitude toward teenagers like my classmates did. My passion came to fruition in my other classes. I noticed that when I was studying theology and the Bible, I was preparing sermons in my head. I became really unclear on what I wanted to with my life. So I did what any nerd would do in this situation. I made a pros and cons list and concluded with the following statement:Logical mind, logical decisions.I really want to do Pastoral because I feel like I would be able to do more with that degree...it makes the most sense to me.
So imagine my surprise when I must figure out if I am called to being a pastor. Before this moment, it had been a question of; here are my skills and gifts, here is the position which best suits them, done.
I have asked God many questions that have never been answered, but when I asked God this question of "Am I called to be a pastor?", I truly did get a reply - but in ways I did not expect.
- Books
The textbook for my pastoral skills class was "The Pastor" by Eugene Peterson. This book blew me away. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Peterson for his beautiful vision of what a pastor does. Through the parables of his life experiences, I started to embrace the imagination and creativity that happens in pastoral ministry. I started to get excited about working in the gaps between God and people.
Another book that was totally opposite Dr. Peterson's book was "Pastrix" by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Nadia is a Lutheran pastor who is incredibly quirky, honest, and swears quite a bit. Her description of pastoral ministry was absolutely not pretty. She explained how she really doesn't like needy people, but the church is full of them. She shared that she is just as broken as her congregants, and that it is a challenge to keep loving people every day. This gave me so much inspiration for church life. There will be messes and hopeless days, but the work we do is so important and so rewarding. As she says "The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane". - Experience
This year I have also led a team of two guys to preach in churches around the area. This is the first placement I have done at the school that was specific to my program. I got to prepare a sermon, preach, lead devotions, and be the "captain" of our team. I cannot state how deeply this experience impacted me. I got to see for the first time how much I loved working with people. I learned what a pastor's heart looked like in my own life. I became confident in my leadership and was challenged in the leadership areas that I needed to have worked through. After finishing this placement, I realized that there was nothing else that I would feel fulfilled in doing - pastoral work was the perfect match for my heart. - Words
I tend to shrug off at least 70% of the advice or compliments I hear. Other people's opinions don't matter as much to me as they probably should. However, after asking the question to God about my calling I paid closer attention to what people were saying about my future vocation. I listened to people say "WHEN you become a pastor" rather than "IF you become a pastor". I heard people say that I was a gifted speaker and that I handled conflict well. I even had people tell me that they wanted to come visit my church one day. God spoke through people to give me the affirmation that I needed.
I won't pretend that this was some big huge Road to Damascus explosion of WOW THIS IS WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO. Nope. It was simple, slow, and now I know this is where I'm going. I should be clear, I might end up somewhere completely different for a while, or maybe pastoral ministry might not look like a stereotypical church. It might be a prison, a rehab center, a hospital chaplaincy, a homeless shelter, I have no clue. But wherever I go, I know that I am supposed to be a pastor.
