I was 14 when I had a call to ministry. It was not clear at first. I thought I wanted to be a teacher. Not because I wanted to teach, or even to help people to learn. I wanted to save young people from going through the frustration and struggles of the school system and culture, because I saw what it did to them. There were no youth workers then, but as I made it up through high school the idea and concept of a youth worker started to be imagined and dreamed of.
I started in a voluntary role for six months with Scripture Union setting up a centre to follow up young people who had made a faith response at the summer missions. It was such a useful time to test out my gifts and capacity. After I had helped run a mission in a regional town in South Australia a young minister took me for a drive and asked me what I was going to do with my life. I shared with him that I had been invited to the UK to work with Frontier Youth Trust, to the USA to work with Christian World Liberation Front and to Sydney to work with House of the New World (wonderful titles in those days) – but that my heart was with young people in regional towns. His jaw dropped and he shared that they had been looking and praying for someone for six months. I sensed a call!
What is a call?
A call is not about volunteering – it is about calling. In the NIV Bible, volunteer is used five times and call, as in naming and calling people, is mentioned 755 times – that’s a bit of an indicator! Calling is about discernment. It is about God. It comes from God and it occurs to help bring in God’s kingdom on earth. A call is learning to discern what God is trying to communicate.
When I was young I heard wonderful stories about God speaking to people in a still, small voice. It always seemed to be a still small voice. I prayed for it, yearned for it, listened for it. It did not come. I thought, ‘Oh no, I am so bad and so unspiritual that I am not good enough! God doesn’t want to speak to me!’ Yet all this time God was connecting to me through images and imagination. That is my personalitytype. I only wanted God to connect with me through a still small voice and then rejected any other way.
To discern means to sift through all the ideas, opportunities and possibilities until you find the nuggets of God’s gold
So how do we get to discern? Discernment is the activity of seeking God’s guidance amidst the context, events and action of life. To discern means to sift through all the ideas, opportunities and possibilities until you find the nuggets of God’s gold. It is like being a prospector. Or like listening to witnesses and the testimony like a judge, and then making a decision based on what has been heard and intuitively perceived.
When you discern something, it puts things in perspective. It is an illumination, an epiphany, an ‘aha!’ experience. We just get it. Different people get it in different ways.
What does it look like to be ‘called’ to something, and how do you know?
In our individualised, western thinking we have isolated calling to an individual task. This is a foreign concept in the Bible. We ask: what do you want to do? It is all up to us and what we want to do with our lives. Psychologist Martin Seligman says that the self has ‘expanded to such a point that individual helplessness is deemed something to remedy, rather than our expected and accepted lot in life’. He goes on to say that a life not committed to more than itself is a meagre life because: ‘Human beings require a context of meaning and hope… the erosion of belief in the nation coincided with a breakdown of the family and a decline of belief in God.’
It has left the individual making decisions without the safety nets of family, church, culture and community – and therefore the individual must take full responsibility for any consequences. The human psyche was never created to take such pressure and responsibility and neither was our faith. Christianity is not an individualistic faith – it is a corporate one – and so the need to work through a call is a corporate process.
Turning on your Bluetooth
Discernment is like turning on Bluetooth. Eriksson designed Bluetooth in 1997. It was developed to help a mobile phone connect with a computer. The devices beam out to the other waiting for a ‘pairing’ so a connection can be established. One partner can beam out all they like but communication can only occur if the other is turning on the receiving mode. It is the same with us and God. God is waiting to be ‘discoverable’, and we need to know how to go into receiving mode to discern and hear God’s call.
There are gifts that God gives to help take us into ‘receiving mode’.
These things include:
1. The Bible
The Bible is God’s great gift to help us understand God’s way of thinking. As you are entering the discernment process it is good to increase your Bible reading and study. It is like spending time with a friend. The more time you spend together the more you get to know them and how they think.
There is also another dimension to using the Bible. God can use it to give directions and insight into what you are being called to. You may have read a passage numerous times before but as you read it again the Holy Spirit comes, and it is like the words reach out and grabs us. It opens us to receiving.
2. Prayer
Prayer is a dialogue. In the discernment process it is us talking to God and also listening to God. The Catholic tradition can inform us here, as they teach us not to rush into prayer so that we don’t bring the mindset of the dominant culture into our time with God. It is good to stop and relax and centre yourself on God first. Spend time in listening, or focusing on a candle, an object, a picture or an icon. Then in this receiving mode we can start to sense the things to pray.
A great way to pray for discernment is to look for God’s company in your life. More than 400 years ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits) encouraged prayer-filled mindfulness by proposing what has been called the Daily Examen. The Examen is a method of prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and to discern his direction for us. There are five steps:
Become aware of God’s presence. Ask God to bring clarity and understanding.
Review the day with gratitude. Gratitude is the foundation of our relationship with God. Walk through your day in the presence of God and note its joys and delights. Focus on the day’s gifts. Look at the work you did, the people you interacted with. What did you receive from these people? What did you give them? Pay attention to small things: the tastes you encountered, what you remember seeing, and other small likings. God is in the details.
Pay attention to your feelings. We can detect the presence of the Holy Spirit in our emotions. Reflect on the feelings you experienced during the day. What is God saying through these feelings, emotions, yearnings and responses?
Choose one element of youth ministry and pray from it. Ask the Holy Spirit to direct you to something that God thinks is particularly important. It may involve feelings that are positive or negative. Look at it. Pray about it. Allow the prayer to arise spontaneously from your heart and spirit.
If we still have a passion for young people and a desire to see them love God, the call is there
Look towards the future. Ask God to give you discernment and insights for the call. Are you doubtful? Hopeful? Scared? Full of joy and anticipation? Allow these feelings to go into prayer. Seek God’s guidance. Ask him for help and understanding. Pray for hope. St. Ignatius encouraged people to talk to Jesus like a friend who is sitting next to you. End the Daily Examen with a conversation with Jesus. Ask for his wisdom about the questions you have and the struggles you face. You might like to journal these things and review them weekly or with a discernment group.
3. Opportunity
• What are possibilities and what are not?
• Which doors are open and which ones are closed? Focus on the open door opportunities.
4. Advice of the spiritually wise
The Holy Spirit rarely works with us alone. She can work with many people to help discern a call. Those who are spiritually wise are not only those who are older, experienced or mature. I have known younger people who have a clear and wise connection with God.
However it is not always just with one person. A discernment group can be a great help, to travel with and work with. In the Quaker tradition there is the use of a clarity group. This is a group of three to five people who prayerfully prepare themselves and meet with the discernee to ask questions. They don’t give advice or opinions, but simply ask questions to help clarify what is going on, perceived and discerned. It can be a rich experience.
5. Passions
• What do you get passionate about?
• Who do you get passionate about?
• What are the things you just can’t wait to do, to tackle or to prevent?
At the end of this receiving time there is a need to move into decision mode. Decision implies the end of discernment and deliberation and the beginning of action. Action is the great test. If at the end of the discernment process something or things are coming through in a call – then go for it! If there is more than one opportunity it might well be that God is saying: ‘What would you love to do? Choose it and I will bless it’.
If nothing has come through clearly there may not be a call - or you may not be ready yet - there is more work to do before you try the discernment process again.
Called to youth ministry
As I have worked through a call to youth ministry with so many people, four things have become obvious:
• God calls people to youth ministry– sometimes for life and sometimes for a season of their life.
• God often processes this calling through people’s personality preferences.
• When people have a calling to youth ministry, and it is processed and affirmed with a church or community of faith, it brings confidence for that ministry - until it is time to shift to the next phase of ministry.
• A calling to youth ministry does not always mean being full-time employed or paid; it may mean you are called to youth ministry as a volunteer or to work alongside a youth worker.
Is a call to youth ministry for life? For some it is, and for others it is not. How can we tell if it is? If you are being called out of youth work it always means you are being called on to another ministry. Age is not a reason! Just because you are no longer young, it doesn’t mean you are called out of youth ministry - it may mean your role is changing. We do not expect children’s workers to be children or aged care workers to be aged – neither should we expect youth workers to all be young. If we still have our passion for young people and a deep desire to see them love God and love others – the call is there. If not, then it might not be there anymore. You stay in it until you are called to something else.
A calling comes from God and we are called to discern if and what God is calling us to. We do not do this alone as it is also the call to a church or organisation to help individuals to find their gifts, strengths and callings – and to call people into positions of leadership and ministry. God gives us the tools to turn on the spiritual Bluetooth to discover God and to be discovered by God. God wants us to know God’s call. As Jesus taught: ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you’.
