Am I Called?: The Summons To Pastoral Ministry

by Dave Harvey

Therefore we must determine from the outset that in whatever ministry direction we’re heading, we’re summoned to “spend and be spent” for the sake of the church.

Samuel was called, but he couldn’t hear. Most men wrestling through these issues can identify with him. We hear what seems like a calling—our circumstances speak, our desires speak, other people speak. But how do we know when a call is from God？ Samuel didn’t know. Eli didn’t know, at least not at first. How can we be sure？ The next section of this book is dedicated to exploring how you can be sure. We’ll explore six questions, the answers to which can reveal a genuine call to plant or lead a church. We’re going to spend a ton of time in the Pastoral Epistles, because that’s where called men should spend a lot of their time.

Okay, you back？ Good. Those passages outline Scripture’s qualifications for eldership. And it’s in these passages that we find the first question to ask when it comes to exploring a call to ministry: Are you godly？

So here are two things to consider. First, the majority of these qualities are actually commanded of all believers in some fashion. To be “sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable,” to be “not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money,” and to manage well one’s household, “with all dignity keeping his children submissive” (1 Tim. 3:2–4)—no Christian is sprung from those. It’s not like pastors and elders can’t get drunk while believers are free to chug beer like frat boys. No, most of these apply to all Christians. Still, I understand—it’s a little unsettling to see them assembled in one place staring you down like an offended cage fighter on game day.

that’s you, don’t miss the wonderful news contained in these passages. It’s the glorious discovery of prior grace. God’s call upon a man delivers the grace necessary for the godliness needed.

This point can deliver some serious “aha,” so let me unpack it a bit more. In 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 we see extraordinary evidences of God’s activity that precedes any clear sense of calling.

Keep in mind, we’ll never see these qualities perfected in anyone. But while not perfected, they should be evident, and will be in any man who’s called to ministry. My friend Jeff Purswell, the dean of the Sovereign Grace Ministries’ Pastors College, puts it simply: “God’s work in a man demonstrates God’s call of a man.”5 This also means that to appoint pastors with the hope that before too long they’ll somehow rise to Scripture’s eldership standards is both shortsighted and extremely dangerous. It’s like asking somebody to land a fighter jet because they’ve flown one in a video game. Men don’t become pastors because of potential. They become pastors because God’s grace is already at work in them.

But implicit in this requirement is that the man has been road tested. His maturity and humility have weathered some miles and are proven reliable. That’s why those words are followed with “or he may become puffed up with conceit.” Paul wanted Timothy to understand that appointing immature men to ministry becomes a dangerous journey.

The new birth, as John Piper says, “is Jesus’ root remedy for our depravity. Personal and social and global renewal will not be possible without this most fundamental of all changes. It’s the root of all true and lasting change.”6

For a group of new believers, a four-year-old Christian may be the statured sage. And this is often what happens in areas where the gospel is breaking out in fresh ways. But the more mature a congregation becomes, the more maturity it needs from its leaders.

In his excellent book Biblical Eldership, Alexander Strauch makes the following insightful comment: “God provides objective, observable qualifications to test the subjective desire of all who seek the office of overseer. Desire alone is not enough; it must be matched by good character and spiritual capability.”

Another reason for these character qualifications is that the temptations of indwelling sin, particularly selfish ambition and pride, can be a particularly strong and consistent challenge for leaders. The call to godliness protects pastors and moves them toward humility. Pastors don’t have handlers. They don’t have PR staffs. But, reputation matters. To be a pastor is to be a self-acknowledged sinner representing a holy God. A pastor makes it his aim to pursue godliness because his life is a vessel of the message he is called to preach. And if you realize the value and glory of the message—and the One whom the message is about—you’ll realize that humility is the only appropriate approach to a life called to proclaim it.

And there’s a flip side. Qualifications for ministry imply that a man can be disqualified. As one writer aptly notes, the Bible “says more about what a leader is to be than it does about what he is to do.... If he does not meet qualifications of biblical morality, he is unfit to be a leader in God’s church.”

Among all the biblical requirements for the called man, gospel-empowered character seems to be most prominent.

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45) We tend to look at this as instruction for all Christians, which it is. But it’s instruction specifically for the leaders of God’s church.

How pathetic. I know pagans who find satisfaction and fulfillment by teaching nuclear physics. In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is “How can I be most useful？” not “How can I feel most useful？”

There’s a final implication to all these qualifications listed by Paul: the pastor is called to model his message. His leadership is authenticated through character. The pastor leads through his life as well as his lips.

As John MacArthur observed, “Whatever the leaders are, the people will become.”

I can’t think of a better way to end this chapter than to give Robert Murray McCheyne’s perspective. His words inspire and convict me at the same time; they summarize what the character qualifications of ministry are all about: “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.”

Helping men sort through their calling is best done over Chinese food. It’s hardly a Pauline principle, but I discovered years ago that men talk more openly about their dreams when stuffed to the rafters with beef and broccoli. (Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it!)

But here’s something else you don’t want to miss. I want you to see this chapter not as a call to rush out and get married, but as a call to live under a biblical leadership principle that should inform the rest of your life: you will lead from who you are in private. Right now that may be living with roommates or with parents. In the future it will be with a wife and probably kids. But you must learn to live and lead from the inside out. As John Kitchen says, “The life you live in private determines the ministry you can have in public.”

know the military has its unique challenges, the political life offers untold temptations, and corporate careers carry daily trials for Christians. But I’m sticking with this proposition: the home is the hardest place to live the Christian life. It’s one of a kind.

Just think about it. There’s no other place where high expectations (love your wife as Christ loved the church) meet a desire to be unplugged. There’s no other setting where a strategic role (father) meets distraction from that role (entertainment). There’s no other venue where the human heart is unscreened—people encounter the real you. Show me another place where all this stuff happens 24/7, and I’ll make sure I never move there.

John MacArthur knows the Bible, and pastors, and he knows this issue: If you want to know whether a man lives an exemplary life, whether he’s consistent, whether he can teach and model the truth, and whether he can lead people to salvation, to holiness, and to serve God, then look at the most intimate relationships in this life and see if he can do it there. Look at his family and you’ll find the people who know him best, who scrutinize him most closely. Ask them about the kind of man he is.2

There’s a certain street-smart quality to the logic here. If it ain’t working at home, why take it on the road？ As the ESV Study Bible notes put it, “The home is the proving ground of Christian character and therefore the preparation field for ministry.”3 Or to put it another way, the home is a laboratory for the called man; it’s where his skill in applying the gospel to others’ lives can be measured.

Brothers, let me give you a tip. If you’re going to minister the gospel faithfully in the church, you’ve got to minister it at home. And that means it needs to penetrate your heart and life most of all. If you’re able to help your wife and kids understand and appropriate the gospel, God may indeed be calling you to care for the church.

“Husband of one wife” means more than just “no concubines.” Some commentators have translated the Greek phrase mias gynaikos andra as literally “one-woman man.” I

Let’s face it. It’s almost impossible to succeed in ministry with a wife who isn’t invested. Remember, ministry isn’t just a career track to something else. It’s a call to see the gospel connected to people and problems. For it to work well, your wife must be convinced that you’re called to ministry and she’s called to follow you there.

What I’m saying is that if these qualities apply to wives of deacons, it’s no stretch to see them applying as well to the church planter’s wife or pastor’s wife. The man may be summoned, but that summons touches both husband and wife. And it can be a little unnerving for a wife to discover that a thorough ministry assessment moves beyond her husband to her.

And if you’re single, but hear the summons, I have two words of counsel: Choose wisely! I don’t think one can improve upon the way Charles Bridges punctuates this point in his classic work, The Christian Ministry: “How momentous therefore is the responsibility of the Minister’s married choice.”6 Momentous indeed. So choose a woman who loves God, loves the gospel, and loves the church. A lady like that will follow a man like you, even to the ends of the earth.

The lists are given primarily as “What to look for in selecting a pastor,” and not as “Pastors must be all these things at all times or they’re immediately disqualified.”

you a lot about how a man will manage a church. “The requirement concerning ‘managing his own family well’ is particularly important,” says Vern Poythress, “because the same wisdom and skills necessary for good family management apply also to the management of God’s church.”12

Spoken with the impeccable logic of a doctor. Spoken with the impassioned burden of a preacher! DMLJ left medicine at the age of twenty-seven, and spent the next thirty years as pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. He preached for the last time in 1980, entering into glory the following year, after decades of faithfully proclaiming the gospel. His sermons and instruction for preachers are still feeding God’s church today.

As I soon discovered, there was one big problem with my dream: I had no rhythm. And I was in denial. When the band teacher was kind enough to be honest, I answered him with my knowledge of Motown and my willingness to work hard. He was patient, but he was also clear that vision was not enough. “It’s about drum talent,” he would say. “You haven’t got any.” I spent the next two years fighting for something I never possessed. What I lacked in talent, I made up for in aggressively bad drumming.

“Gentlemen,” said Charles Spurgeon, “if you cannot preach, God did not call you to preach.”1 Which returns us to the question in this chapter’s title.

The stakes are too high, as D. A. Carson illustrates: One generation of Mennonites cherished the gospel and believed that the entailment of the gospel lay in certain social and political commitments. The next generation assumed the gospel and emphasized the social and political commitments. The present generation identifies itself with the social and political commitments, while the gospel is variously confessed or disowned; it no longer lies at the heart of the belief system of some who call themselves Mennonites.5

Bishop William A. Quayle, in 1910, was asked if preaching is “the art of making a sermon and delivering it.” And he answered, “Why, no, that is not preaching. Preaching is the art of making a preacher and delivering that.”7

Choose your library carefully, leaning heaviest on those who have stood the test of time. Consult it regularly, not just collecting books, but reading them. Any pastor who thinks he has all he needs to handle the Bible will find himself eventually in that “ashamed” category that Paul warns Timothy about. That’s why I’ve always told aspiring pastors that you must read to lead.

Luther said three things make the theologian: oratio(prayer),meditatio (meditation), and tentatio tribulation). 8

Here’s the take away: comfort comes through the preaching of an afflicted man. So God will ordain trials to help you pastor and preach. Hardly a strong sales pitch for ministry, I know. After all, where in the engineer’s job description does it say, “Job Objective: to suffer in order to enhance engineering skills” ？ But that’s the way God arranged things for pastors. Still want to be in ministry？

Here’s my suggestion. If you’re wrestling over your call, start asking yourself some heart-scanning questions. Invite others into your life and ask them to watch as well. Ask your pastor for opportunities to share the Word and then solicit evaluation. Find a way for others to help you “watch your teaching.”

If you don’t have many opportunities to preach, maybe explore how this type of tool might apply to the way you lead a Bible study or prayer meeting. Do you lead worship？ How do your comments between songs preach？ You can even think through this if you do a lot of personal ministry or counseling.

James Montgomery Boice was a shepherd called to the city. Born in Pittsburgh in 1938, Boice was thirty when he came to his first pastorate at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Though a scholar by training, he wanted to invest his life in pastoral ministry. He viewed his calling to Tenth Presbyterian not as a launching pad for other ministry, but as a commitment to the people he was called to serve.

To be a shepherd, you must commit yourself to the sheep. Your doctrine will be their doctrine when you live it out before them. And with that, who knows what God will do？

The Fellow Elder and You One must wonder whether that memory was washing over Peter, thirty years later. With the clouds of persecution gathering under the storm of Nero’s insanity, the dispersed Christians in Asia needed hope. They would suffer. They needed shepherds. Compelled by the Spirit, Peter wrote to them: So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Pet. 5:1–4)

For some people the word “shepherd” brings to mind watercolor paintings in church nurseries. The shepherd is cradling a lamb while the sun sets behind him in splashes of splendor. Or he’s leaning on his shepherd staff looking out over a Crayola-green field. He’s got blue eyes and long wavy hair, his gaze is solemn, his robe spotless. But when Peter said “shepherd,” his readers back then would picture a ruddy livestock worker. This guy is on the clock 24/7, scouting out pastures, corralling strays, dispensing first aid, fixing broken bones, making sure the sheep are safe and well fed.

What does it mean to care for the flock of God？ It means willing and eager oversight.

It means love. Practically speaking, shepherding means loving people. You can’t love ministry and be annoyed by people. The summons is a call to love sheep.

And this love must be sturdy. USA Today did a front-page story two days before Christmas on today’s shepherd. The article described how hundreds of Peruvian shepherds are brought to America each year. These are some seriously rough dudes. They know how to fight off a mountain lion to rescue a sheep, and they castrate a lamb the old-fashioned way—with their teeth. Fortunately, pastors are spared such delicate tasks, but the love they display often demands a similar toughness.

In those despairing moments, who is appointed to guide God’s people through the inexplicable valleys to drink in the streams of God’s providence and goodness？