Pastor Mike’s Meditations

JULY 2021

Recently, our Summer Youth Intern, Morgan Rumpler, preached a message in our summer series entitled Off Road Disciplines: Calling. Reflecting on Paul’s conversion and call to ministry, he shared how Paul was called to Christ, called to community, and called to ministry. I love the way Morgan shared his own story & awareness of his growing sense of call to ministry.
It caused me to pause and process the fact that there is a unique call to ministry for each one of us. Paul makes it clear in Ephesians 4 that some people are called to be pastors (as well as evangelist, prophets, teachers, and apostles,) but it is always to build other people up, helping them to identify and engage in their ministry. Do you feel called? Better yet, do you know that you are called. In his chapter on The Calling of Voices in the Hungering Dark, Fredrick Buechner says it this way, “Vocare, (means) to call, of course, and a man’s (or woman’s) vocation is a man’s (or woman's) calling. It is the work that he (or she) is called to in this world, the thing that he (or she) is summoned to spend his (or her) life doing. We can speak of a man’s (or woman’s) choosing his (or her) vocation, but perhaps it is at least as accurate to speak of a vocation’s choosing the man (or woman), of a call’s being given and a man (or woman) hearing it, or not hearing it. And maybe this is the place to start: the business of listening and hearing. A man’s (or woman’s) life is full of all sorts of voices calling him (or her) in all sorts of directions. Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from outside. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are. Which do we listen to? What kind of voice do we listen for?” Later in the chapter, Buechner answers his own question, To Isaiah, the voice said, ‘Go’, and for each of us there are many voices that say it, but the question is which one will we obey with our lives, which of the voices that call is to be the one we answer. No one can say, of course, except each for himself, but I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us: we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.” So, we do you most need go? Where are you most needed? How are you discerning the voice of God and his calling amidst the competing voices and callings?
While you are on the road this summer or “off road,” that may just be the place where you find your calling where you come back differently. Often it is when we are out of our usual routine that we find the most significant things about where we are to invest our lives. For instance, I remember a cross country flight where I read a book about Spiritual Autobiography. While processing the highs and lows of my own life, the joys and the grief, good times and bad, I entered into a prayerful process of “re-choosing my life.” This meant embracing those things that have been hard or difficult as part of God’s pathway for me, in order to mature and comfort me so that could comfort others with the comfort I myself had received from God (2 Corinthians 1). It is also in those off-road times that I come to places of gratitude, where a fork in the road makes me contemplate a choice that I made and how God guided me or directed me in it. Other times, when I am on a hike or run with a steep incline, I am able to contemplate the metaphorical mountains God has enabled me to climb, and it gives me courage to continue to climb.
Recently, while visiting with a member of our church who had go on Hospice care, I became keenly aware of how at peace this person was. It was clear that she had come to terms with her past brokenness, her present calling, as well as her future hope of an eternal home. And I found myself longing for the same peace in my own life and calling that I may continue to follow in Jesus’ steps. Similarly, my prayer is that you may know God’s calling and may you be encouraged to continue to follow Jesus wherever he may lead.


Sola Deo gloria,

Pastor Mike