A Few Ideas

Any one who has spent any significant time in the church knows at least these two things: The church is a gift, and the church is a challenge. It heals and it hurts. It empowers and it diminishes. It is the true body of Christ, and sometimes it looks and acts more like Peter denying Jesus.

One of the values FAW has articulated through the years is that we are a ‘friend to the church’. Good friends say things like what is written above. Good friends also see the gifts in others, and encourage them to use those gifts.

It is in that spirit that this column is written. Faith At Work believes that the church has been gifted and called by Christ to be the community best able to help people live out their call. That is the assumption behind this regular column: That the church is a true ‘call center’, where people are helped to discover what they are called to do in daily life, and then supported as they seek to live into those calls for the good of God’s world. We believe it is why the church exists.

A Few Ideas

The structure of this ‘Church and Call’ column will be to simply offer a few ideas. A few possible ways that the church might support people as they seek to live out their calls in the world. Some will be relatively simple to implement; others will require major change. Some will be directed primarily to clergy; others to lay leaders. But all the ideas head towards one basic goal: That the church live into its primary mission to ‘equip the saints’ for their ministry in daily life.

1 Preaching and Teaching the Less Obvious Call Stories

As a preacher, I know how easy it is to focus on the ‘big’ call stories: Mary’s call to bear the Christ child; Abraham and Sarah’s call to a new land; Peter’s call to drop his nets and follow. Those are amazing call stories. And almost impossible for us to relate to.

How about some of the more hidden and complicated call stories. Esther waiting for ‘such a time as this’, or Nehemiah’s work as a building contractor. How about Zebedee–while everyone was dropping their nets to follow Jesus, was he equally called to stay at his nets? As Eugene Peterson states in the introduction to his translation of Nehemiah,

It is common for us to refer to the work of pastors, priests, and missionaries as ‘sacred’, and that of lawyers, farmers, and engineers as ‘secular’. It is also wrong. Work, by its very nature, is holy. The biblical story is dominated by people who have jobs in gardening, shepherding, the military, politics, carpentry, tent making, homemaking, fishing, and more.

The Bible is filled with hints and whispers of call that is less spectacular. How about preaching and teaching those call stories as well?

2 Celebrating the Daily Life Call Stories in Worship

Our church often brings people forward in worship when they are about to embark on some kind of mission trip or special event. I enjoy these moments, and often am inspired by the people’s commitment.

We never bring forward someone who sees what they do as call and ministry, and is simply going to head into work again on Monday. About these saints, the poet Marge Piercy writes:

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again.

 ‘To Be of Use’, from Circles on the Water

Call and ministry have to do with the everyday. People can be called and be in ministry in sacred and secular settings. How about using sending or commissioning rituals for those who understand their work as ministry, wherever that may be?

3 Recognizing the Ministry of All in Small Ways

Judith McWilliams Dickhart asks the question, ‘What might readers 100 years from now learn about your church’s mission from reading a newsletter? What does it say about where mission and ministry happen?’ One church I know has a simple little column in their newsletter called, ‘In the Trenches’. It is filled with one liners about students, workers, retirees, as they seek to be faithful in their daily life. Another has a ‘Thank You’ section, but the Thank You’s are not limited to work done within the church. It includes ministry that happens outside the building.

Bulletins, newsletters and announcements all make statements about who is in ministry and who is not. How about making sure that words like ‘call’ and ‘ministry’ aren’t reserved for pastors, missionaries and seminarians?

Send your comments to Doug Wysockey-Johnson @ DougWyJo@aol.com

Books Referenced:

Circles on the Water, by Marge Piercy
Church Going Insider or Gospel-Carrying Outsider?, by Judith McWilliams Dickhart
The Message, by Eugene Peterson

Doug Wysockey-Johnson is the Executive Director of Faith At Work. Doug co-leads FAW's Mutual Ministry Project with Dick Broholm. The MMP is a three year research effort to help the church support people for their ministry in daily life. It is called the Mutual Ministry Project out of the conviction that both pastors and laypeople are called to ministry, and that they need each other for support in the living out of our daily calls.