God Calling

When we pick up the phone it's the first thing we want to know - who's there?

I suppose it's the same with the door bell, or an unrecognised voice around the corner. But with the door bell, and a corner, it's usually possible to take a few steps and identify the person visually.

Despite the long-awaited promise of the video-phone, caller images don't usually apppear along with the ringing tone. Although if we have a Caller ID phone, and have their number in our phone, then we might guess who it is from the number. Otherwise, we have to answer the phone and speak to the person to find out who is calling.

If it's someone we already know then we might recognise their voice, and not just depend on them telling us their name. For someone might tell us any name if they didn't want us to know their real name. We just have to trust them.

When it comes to hearing God then we start off in the same predicament. We can't see Him, and we don't know His voice well enough to recognise it. Maybe the hearing, or feeling, comes in response to us addressing God in prayer. We might be in the company of others in prayer and feel that God is also speaking to us.

Gradually, as with a human person, we come to recognise the voice. We learn how God speaks to us, sometimes by sensation, or feeling, or image, rather than always with an inaudible or even audible voice.

Sometimes we hear God calling to us from afar. It's not that God is not beside us. Rather God is calling us to serve Him at some distance from where we are currently. He wants us to move somewhere else, or to do something else, or to be something else. It's usually a very personal call because few others will be called to move, do, or be, the same as you are.

Others might need to hear the same Call because they are going to be involved in being with us in that new phase. Or we might need them to hear that Call so they can confirm to us that this really is what God wants us to be doing. But most people will not hear the Call because it does not concern them.

This is a problem for the institutional Church when it rightly seeks to validate the Calling of its leaders. It is right that 'others' within the Church should expect to sense another's Call to leadership. But which 'others'? Certainly not everybody.

The Church of Scotland allocates that task to ministers (local church), presbyteries (regional committees), and to its team of national assessors. And therein lies the problem. When some people sense another's Calling, and other people don't sense it at all.

If the process requires that all the local, regional, and national assessors, sense the Call, then if one of these people does not sense God's Calling on behalf of the other person, then that person's Calling may not be accepted as valid. Herein the Church becomes vulnerable to the weaknesses of its human members. If an assessor at whatever level is having an off-day, perhaps being distracted by some personal circumstance, or not quite as sensitive to God's Holy Spirit as they normally are, then the person who feels Called by God is rejected by Man. That's some awesome responsibility. I hope that the circumstance hardly ever happens, but I fear that it happens too often.

At best, the rejected applicant can return to their job and their existing service of God and his Church without becoming demoralised or even bitter. At best the applicant can try again in two years, and many rejected applicants are accepted on the second attempt, although not all. At best the church will only lose that person's services as a leader for two years, although sometimes it is many years before the person feels ready to try again. At worst, I'd rather not dwell on that.

The fact that the Church of Scotland currently has almost 200 approved vacancies for ministers, not counting those congregations earlier in the vacancy process, suggests that greater efforts are needed to encourage those who could serve as leaders and ministers in the Church to come forward and offer their services. Congregations feel that they need a minister. The waiting list is getting longer rather than growing shorter.

In this time of shortage I would argue that if we are uncertain about the Calling of an Applicant, or a Candidate in Training, then we should be increasing our efforts to resolve that uncertainty quickly, and preferably in favour of acceptance, rather than seeing uncertainty as a reason for turning a person away. One person, or even more than one, may be uncertain, but how many others are certain?