What is My Ministry Calling: Part Three

5. I Might Discover My calling At Any Stage of Life I have a friend that died several years ago. He was a two star general and he really found his calling after he served our country. Christians should not feel any pressure to be passionate about some particular ministry. Rather, we should assume that when the time is right God will bring the circumstances into our lives that will light the fire. When church leaders are creating a calling friendly environment they need to be careful that they don’t create an environment of passion pressure. Passion pressure can come in a couple of different forms. (1) Someone feels that since they have discovered their calling everybody else should have discovered their call as well. (2) Or someone may feel that other people ought to share their passion for a particular ministry. Either type of passion pressure is to be avoided. What a church wants is an environment where people are both relaxed and concerned, i.e. they practice relaxed-concern. In such an environment there is a concern that everyone eventually finds and pursues their calling, but until both they and God are ready, we all relax. 6. My calling May or May Not be Tied to My Occupation or Natural Abilities. Often we assume that one’s Special Calling will be similar to their occupation. If someone is a doctor we might think that their calling will have to do with medicine, or a mechanic will find the calling working on cars. Of course it is a mistake to confuse one’s job with their calling. A few decades ago Studs Terkel wrote Working, a book that spent several weeks on the New York Times best seller list. We say that Terkel wrote the book, but in fact he carried a tape recorder across the country and interviewed a huge number of people doing different kinds of jobs and he printed their responses. His conclusion was, “Most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.” Some Christians will find their calling in their occupation, but most won’t. A man in Sacramento launched a ministry to rehabilitate houses for single moms and others who cannot afford to do it on their own. The ministry has been a huge success. But when you hear Ken speak you are amazed that he has very little handyman ability. He says his tool box contains a screw driver and a roll of duct tape. But he is the one that God called to launch a great ministry that depends on people who have better skills and better tool boxes than he has. On the other hand we also know a divorce lawyer who has started a ministry to those having trouble in their marriages. God can work his calling either way, it might make sense in light of one’s abilities and occupation, or it might not. That is the scary thing, only God knows, each of us has to get our marching orders from Him.