Vocation
A Theology of Calling for Those Who Already Have One
Michael A. Milton, Ph.D.,
President and Professor of Practical Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary
When we say "Leaving a Career to Follow a Call" what do we mean and what are we implying? The Latin, vocare, from whence we get our English vocation, means to call, to summon. When we speak of vocation, then, in this book, we are speaking of one's calling in life. There are some wonderful books on calling. Edmund Clowney's Called to the Ministry is perhaps the best of the bunch.1 I will not go too deeply into that subject, but do want to make several general comments before moving to what I think is a much-needed Theology of Vocation for those already in a career.
The Biblical Understanding of Calling
In the Word of God, there is a General Call and an Effectual Call and what we might define as a Technical Call. God gives the General Call to every creature on earth. We are all called to turn from our sins and to turn to God and His Plan for our salvation. This is the "fundamental prerequisite for the performance of any Christian service.2 We are all called to live according to His Law; we are all called to a life of service to God and our fellow man. So, every Christian-indeed, every person on earth, has a calling of a sort – a General Call (Calvinists like myself believe there is also an effectual calling in which the Holy Spirit improves the General Call and makes it effective unto salvation). Then, we may also observe from the Bible a Technical Call. This is a calling related to one's life's work. John Calvin wrote that:
Finally, this point is to be noted: the Lord bids each one of us in all life's actions to look to his calling. For He knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsyturvy, he has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. and that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, he has named those various kinds of livings 'callings.' Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post, so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life.3
Calvin taught that all men and women have a calling in life and it is their duty to investigate the gifts and circumstances of their lives to discover and exercise that calling to the glory of God. Of course, this doctrine brought enormous joy to the humble workers of that day, as it should today. Yet, within that broader Technical Calling, there are those who are a part of His Kingdom (those who have received an Effectual Call) who are called to a certain peculiar work in the Kingdom. Some are called to go and journey to another land (like Abraham). Others receive a Technical Call to bear the Son of God (only one of those: Mary). Others, and this is our concern, having been called to repentance and faith, having been summoned by God Himself, then, to be a part of His Kingdom, receive a Technical Call to preach and minister in His Name. Among those we would include the Prophets and the Apostles.
A powerful example of one who knew he had this Technical Call was the Old Testament prophet Amos. Amos had been called by God to leave his humble rural life to journey to the Northern Kingdom with a Divine warning. At Bethel, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, Amaziah the Priest got wind of Amos' prophecies. He goes to the King, Jeroboam, and conspires to get rid of Amos. “The land is not able to bear all his words” (Amos 7.10). So Amos answers:
Then Amos answered, and said to Amaziah:
"I was no prophet, nor was I a son of a prophet, but I was a sheepbreeder and a tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, 'Go, prophesy to My people Israel.'
Now therefore, hear the word of the Lord...
(Amos 7:14-16)
Amos grounded his authority to preach to the resistant hearers solely on his Technical Call.
Once, an aging old Nazarene preacher asked me, "Son, are you called?" I said, "I think so." He asked again. "Son, I said, "Are you called?"' He grew somewhat agitated. So did I. I answered once more, "Yes, I think I am." He then drew closer to me and looked me right in the eye: "Son, you better know you are called. In the end, your call is all you got. When they spread rumors about you, when they reject you, when they betray you, when they run you out of town, the only thing that will stand you in good stead will be that you know that you know that you know... that you are called. Now go home and pray until you know!"
Those were good words. Amos knew. Amos could withstand the pressure of the Priest and the King because he knew that he knew that he knew... that he was called. So must you know that you are called.
Clarification of The Call: Inward and Outward
John Calvin is helpful to all of us when we come to this point. How do we know we are called? Not many of us will receive a blinding light on a road to Damascus like St. Paul. Not all of us will be in the field on one day and in the pulpit on the next and know we are called. Most of us will go through a process. Calvin tells us that we must have an "Inward Call" and an "Outward Call" working together. In fact, one without the other will invalidate what we might think is a call.
The Inward call is that stirring of God in our hearts, in our deepest persons. It is the Hound of Heaven of Francis Thompson's classic poem.4 It is a "secret call of which each minister is conscious before God, and which does not have the church as witness. But there is the good witness of our heart that we receive the proffered office not with ambition or avarice, not with any other selfish desire, but with a sincere fear of God and desire to build up the church. That is indeed necessary for each one of us if we would have our ministry approved by God.5
The Outward Call is the ordinary, "outward and solemn call which has to do with the public order of the church.6 It is interesting to me to note that the Outward Call sometimes appears at first in the most humble of means. Often, we who are in the ministry can recall a single comment by, say, an elderly lady in the Sunday School class who remarked, "Son that was wonderful. Have you ever thought about the ministry?" It may happen in another way, but most of us can point to a comment and a situation similar to that, which was a crystallizing event in clarifying our sense of call. Of course, it has to go further than that.
Most denominations are good at helping candidates with clarification of the Outward Call. It takes a great deal of prayer and earnest soul work, though, to clarify the Inward Call. If you are struggling through that as you read, don't give up! Seek the blessing of the Truth for your own life. You will have heard it said, surely, that "if you can do something else other than preach, then, do it. But, if after you have considered all, you say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 9.16, '… for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!' then come and join this ministry!'"
1 For a scholarly treatment of the minister's call, see "The Southern Presbyterian Review," No. II, September, 1848, "The Call to the Ministry-Its Nature and Evidence."
2 Samuel T. Logan, Jr., ed., "The Minister's Call" by Joel Nederhood, The Preacher and Preaching: Reviving the Art in the Twentieth Century (Philipsburg, N]: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1986),45.
3 See Institutes of the Christian Religion, III. 10.9, John T. McNeil, editor (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), and 724-725.
4 See The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson with an Introduction by GK Chesterton (Brandon Publishing, 1996)
5 Institutes, IV.3.10, page 1062-63.
6 Ibid.
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