I Was Jaded Then: Discerning a Call

"Christ of Saint John of the Cross" – Salvador Dali – (1951)

Many people are currently looking for calls in the ministry. They are looking to hear God's voice in the midst of the world's multivariate dimensions of noise that often make discerning and responding to a call to the ministry difficult. This is why the process is never something in which anyone should engage by their self. Unfortunately, I felt quite alone.

There are others as well who are coming to the end of their penultimate term in seminary and perhaps more confused about their vocation than when they started. Some of these people have the benefit of having very robust relational support structures including their home congregations, presbyteries, dioceses, etc. For many, their confusion will be limited and end with clarity. For others, the confusion will only increase raising questions about what they have done during the last three years of their life since it is now clear that ministry is not what they want to do any longer.

Sadly, many good prospects to the ministry will feel crushed under pressures to conform to specific dogma, specific political systems, and to speak in a certain way – none of which are authentically based in that person's sense of self-actualization at the time. Some may capitulate to the desire to conform in order to be what they think they ought to be in spite of their realization that there is a fundamental mismatch between who they think they actually are, and who they think they are expected to be. Others will steadfastly reject the urge to conform and be the best person they feel they are at that moment in time. They will comfort in their own skin resisting the urge to strap on the clothing of someone else whether they are real or completely imagined.

For the latter, it is a hard decision because they will feel like a failure, a loser, someone who is lost all over again. It is a harsh irony that in finding one's self, one can actually lose one's own self all over again. They will ask, if not this life, what then? I know this, because I was exactly this person. Nine years ago this January, I was writing my Personal Information Form (PIF) – the form that candidates in the Presbyterian Church (USA) send out to churches and other ministry positions. It is a personal narrative along with other information so that pastoral search committees can vet out prospectives for ministry positions.

Rather than exist as a benchmark that for many is the beginning of moving into positions of professional ministry, my very first attempt at drafting a PIF was the beginning of the end. It was the very moment I realized that I did not want to be a minister anymore. It came at the end of a process that drained my energy, left me feeling rather stranded by my own presbytery, and a non-entity at my home congregation. I was invited to read scripture at my home congregation – once. This was for a "college homecoming" Sunday. I never preached for them, I was never asked.

Feeling alone is about the most difficult position for any prospective minister to be, especially when the process of discernment is to be a function of the community. It is not as if I did not try to communicate my sense of confusion and angst. I know, because I saved the letters I sent to various persons in the Presbytery. I finally met with Dr. Tom Gillespie, then President of Princeton Seminary, for guidance. I had mentors outside of the presbytery as well that I sought out. But from my own home, I received nothing in return and that was what hurt the most. The only thing worse than outright rejection is going through the motions in the midst of apathy. This all came to a head in a fit of anger, irony, and sarcasm when I stopped writing my personal information form. I have never opened it again until tonight. Here are the last two paragraphs verbatim:

1)     My Work
My time as a youth leader has trained me to live within a younger generation and I feel that I have a good barometer for who they are and how to relate to them.  My passion for ministering to this generation coupled with my ease at relating to them and my relatively close age to theirs enable me to minister to college students with the knowledge of who they are and what they are all about.  Well that was B.S.!!!!
I have no hopes about the future.
You will never know me committee.

2)     Viewpoints
I am a fire-breathing fundamentalist and I hit people with bibles.  You will be in hell if you do not obey me.  I am a lone stranger in the world and I will burn you with holiness.  Come and join my cult.  I will heal you only as far as I can spit on the evil inside of you.  Everyone is in a sex-cult driven to rape me and my holiness.  The government controls our minds.  I see people staring at me in the shadows.  I want to kill them.  I like lasagna.  I eat red meat.  Everyone is filled with maggots.  Join with me in liberty and truth.  I will impeach your immorality.  Vile green limb that you are.

Soon thereafter my wife and I stopped going to church finding the only peace God can provide on Sunday morning – hikes with our dogs in the woods just north and west of Princeton. We did not go back to church for six years. We are in a good place now, but this demonstrates the spiritual damage that people can exert on you, even when they do not intend to. Be open, be honest, be clear with each other. Without these, relationships cannot stand.

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