Send Me! Your Journal to the Nations
Getting Ready - Step 1
Thoughts on the Missionary “Call”
Bill Taylor
Dear Kirk and Sarah,
Your great letter just arrived, and it’s good to hear from you again. How we praise God for the deep conviction the two of you have to serve Christ in long-term cross-cultural ministry in Central Europe. You have asked a tough question: “How do we know we are called?” I’m not sure I can fully answer it. You’re touching on deep-fiber stuff! It involves critical issues that relate to who we are, how God has made us, our understanding of who God is, and how He directs us today.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusing and sometimes contradictory talk going out about the “missionary call.” Beware of the extremes! Some require you to have had your own mystical “call” or voice from God. I don’t deny this happens, but don’t let others over-spiritualize the process, then force it on you as normative. Other Christians approach it from an overly rational, dry, mathematical model that gathers the facts, prays, and then makes a logical decision.
I’ve concluded that the Spirit uses various routes to thrust us into missions. Whether our hearts’ desires are to be inner-city youth ministers, tentmakers in “restricted access” countries, long-term church planters, whatever, we all relate to a God who loves us and knows us intimately, and who wants to work with us according to our uniqueness.
In a sense, we’re all “called” of God. Called to Christ, called to worship and serve Him, called to walk worthy of our calling in Him, called to obey the biblical creation mandates, called to share Christ with others.
So, why make a big deal of the “missionary call”? Well, it’s partly to clarify matters. We want to eliminate unbiblical teaching that tries to dichotomize vocations and life into secular and sacred. We seek a balance here as we consider the biblical theology of creation and vocation alongside the overarching challenges of using our vocations in cross-cultural service. And this applies to “tentmakers” and “home missionaries” as well as “regular” missionaries!
What Are Some of the Ways That God Leads People Into Missions?
Path 1: A few people really will have some kind of personalized call, vision, powerful encounter, or voice from the Lord. They feel a deep sense of having received a mandate from God. It’s incontrovertible. They step out in straightforward obedience to the Spirit. Some of these folks may quote Paul’s Macedonian call to back up their experience. But the fact is, Paul was already functioning as a field missionary when this “call” came to him. The Macedonian call served to reroute Paul in a different geographic direction than he had been headed. Frankly, I don’t use this passage much in terms of the missionary “call.” Missionaries who had a strong “personalized call” report that this experience helps sustain them when the going gets really rough. Note that a “personal call” is not a built-in guarantee that one will be a successful missionary.
Path 2: Other friends tell me theirs is not a matter of a “personalized call” to missions. It’s more a matter of obedience to God. In some cases the wife saw that her primary call of God was to marry this man, knowing that he was (and therefore, they were) going into missions. God’s will thus becomes clear through a combination of circumstances and relationships. Some have called this the “Ruth/Naomi” model. (You may want to reread that story in the book of Ruth.) This route isn’t easy. One missionary wife told me that perhaps had she felt her own kind of calling to missions, it would have made her less susceptible to doubt and questioning during the difficult times on the field. But she hung in there long-term, and I really respect her for it.
Path 3: Still others find that they end up in missions after a serious evaluation of prime factors: deep commitment and obedience to Christ, plus a personal assessment of interests, gifts, experience, and dreams, combined with a heart of compassion for the lost and the poor, and an opportunity to serve and to make a difference in the world. These all converge to form a path into missions. In this example, it’s more a case of the best job fit, with conclusions made after much prayer and evaluation.
Path 4: Some report that the prime factors leading them into missions were rather simple: a radical obedience to Christ that meant a willingness to do anything, go anywhere, pay any price, plus an identification of their gifts and others’ needs. Discovering this great need provided the final indicator of where and what would constitute a strategic investment of their life and gifts.
Common Factors
in the Four Paths
In all
four paths, certain common components are crucial. In all there is a passion
to serve Christ in a risky venture larger than one’s own life. All call
for radical obedience to God. All involve an overall process of wise evaluation
and of confirmation and guidance from trusted colleagues and spiritual leaders.
And in all there is a final, profound, unshaking conviction from the Spirit
of God that “this is what God truly has for me.” It may be short-term
or long-term, far away or just on the other side of town, but “this is
what I’ve got to do with my life.”
These are some of my musings after 32 years of being involved in missions. I’ve seen effective missionaries and poor missionaries from all four “calling” categories. As you have further questions come up, be sure to pop a note off to me. You have my snail-mail and e-mail addresses, so let’s keep talking.
In the Lamb,
Bill Taylor
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Excerpt from Send Me! Your Journey to the Nations Copyright 1999, World Evangelical Alliance, all rights reserved, reprinted by permission. The entire Send Me! workbook may be purchased online at www.wearesources.org.
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