so what’s your call?
we had a couple over for smores and peppermint hot chocolate; and to talk about London. we had asked them to pray about supporting us financially, and they wanted to know more about what we were getting ourselves into. i know the woman a little better than her husband, and it was she who asked me about my call to London.
my initial response to the question was: calling is a load of crap. this of course was not an appropriate answer, and she told me so. but i was speaking out of personal dissatisfaction with the way the term “calling” is used in the church in the USA.
it seems like much that passes for “calling” is little more than a strong desire. a guy likes to speak, and wants to do it in a way that people will listen to him…so he starts to think he’s “called” to preach. those who are not “called” into leadership in the church use the fact of their non-calling to abdicate responsibility. i have actually heard people say that it’s the responsibility of the pastor to preach the gospel to the unsaved (because that’s what they’re called to do) and other people in the church should just bring their friends to get preached to.
i'd rather have people say “hey, i like to preach” or “i don’t feel like sharing the gospel with my neighbor…it’s too scary,” and be done with it.
Os Guinness in his book The Call says that we are first and foremost called to belong to God. anything else we do in life is in response to that first call. i love that! whatever i do, i do it in response to the fact that i belong to God. hence the title of this blog.
so maybe i'm ranting a little, but i wish we’d spend more time responding to our call to belong to God, and less time worrying about what we’re being “called” to in life. what was it St. Augustine said? love God and do as you please?
1 comment:
dude,
i hear you on that one. especially when it comes to missions, that word gets thrown around a lot. why is that people think that since london is a cool place to be that they are "called" there? i don't really see our western evangelical understanding of calling in the bible much. we've romanticize it. how about we face the fact that there are millions of lost people in london (and other cities for that matter) and we are called to be ambassadors of christ to them. london is as good a place as any and since you think it is a cool place to be, i guess you are called there.
a church planter in greeley, co recently put it this way...do you go some place because you love it? what happens when what you love about that place changes? do you find a new place that you love and go there? or do you love a place because there are people there who don't know jesus?
this is how we should be defining calling. i believe in god's sovereignty and that he puts us and prepares places for us, but i also think that humanly speaking, anywhere is as good as anywhere else as long as we are seeking christ and loving people in that place. i think Jesus summed up the whole bible by saying we are to love god and love others. this sounds like "calling" to me.
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