A Minority Report on the Call to Ministry

Charles Spurgeon

Since most of the authors mentioned below quote and follow Charles Spurgeon’s articulation of the call to ministry on nearly every point, his theology of pastoral calling warrants initial examination. He first asserted that though all believers were called to preach the gospel and many were endowed with gifts for public proclamation, not all were called to the ministry. Therefore, prospective pastors must be sure that they were specifically called to the ministry and have received their ministry directly from the Lord. ³ Next, Spurgeon argued that the calls of the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles were exemplary for the calls to pastoral ministry in the present age in that the call to pastoral ministry must involve an analogical (if not audible or visible) direct calling from God. ⁴ Spurgeon’s words on the first step to discerning one’s call to ministry represent the modern sentiment about the most important aspect of the call:

the first sign of the heavenly call is an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work. In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others what God has done to our own souls. . . ‘Do not enter the ministry if you can help it,’ was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgement. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way; he is not the man in whom dwells the Spirit of God in its fulness, for a man so filled with God would utterly weary of any pursuit but that for which his inmost soul pants. ⁵

An all-consuming desire for ministry is the primary component of the call to pastoral ministry and comes ‘first.’ Without this, even the gifted and capable should not pursue ministry. In fact, if gifted ministerial candidates could be satisfied in any other vocation, they should flee the ministry at once—because someone ‘in whom dwells the Spirit of God in its fulness’ could desire nothing else than vocational ministry. After this compelling and thoroughly godly desire is consistently detected, Spurgeon listed two other components by which candidates may test their calling: (1) giftedness to teach and preach, confirmed by the approbation of godly people and (2) converts under one’s preaching efforts. ⁶ While Spurgeon did not neglect the outward qualifications for ministry, in his view they take a decidedly second place.

The Call to Ministry Today

Isolated modern authors push back against Spurgeon’s pronounced focus on the inward desire for ministry but most embrace it and follow his argumentation thoroughly. ⁷ Since the amount of literature written on pastoral ministry in American evangelicalism is immense, I will summarize and interact primarily with the more recent, scholarly, and widely-read conservative evangelical books on pastoral theology and identity. ⁸ The features of the call to pastoral ministry in this literature are as follows: first, not everyone is called, and even those gifted to preach and encouraged by the church toward ministry may not be truly called. Second, the true calling must be discerned through inward certainty that God has called one to pastoral ministry or through one’s compelling desire for ministry. Third, a discernment of one’s giftedness and the affirmation of the church is subsequent to the certainty of one’s personal calling from God. Finally, the calling stories of the prophets and apostles are the typical biblical proofs offered for these assertions about the call to ministry.

Like Spurgeon, modern pastoral theologians distinguish giftedness for pastoral ministry from the call to ministry. Daniel Akin and R. Scott Pace argue that those who pursue vocational ministry based on their giftedness to build up the church and their willingness to do so are ‘pragmatic…mistaken,’ and end up occupying a place God never intended for them. ⁹ On the contrary, they argue from Ephesians 4:11, God gives specific callings to individuals that they must personally discern in their walks with God. ¹⁰ Tellingly, Akin and Pace argue for specific callings from a passage where neither the word or concept of ‘calling’ is used; in fact, Ephesians 4:11 focuses on tangible gifts given by the Holy Spirit. But Akin and Pace are not alone in substituting calling for gifting. The New Guidebook for Pastors, a text designed for introductory seminary courses on pastoral ministry, does not even mention giftedness or character qualifications for ministry in its chapter on calling. Instead, what is paramount for a prospective pastor is a ‘firm conviction that God has called him to preach’ and ‘an overwhelming experience with God’ that is datable and without which someone should have the personal integrity to leave the ministry. ¹¹

Theologians with this view of the call also insist that at least one of three things is essential to the call to ministry: emotional assurance that one is called by God to vocational ministry, an irresistible desire for vocational ministry, or the impossibility of satisfaction in any other vocation. Begg and Prime’s classic On Being a Pastor insists that ‘God always gives a clear call to those whom He has chosen to the ministry, so that when that call comes they can do nothing other than respond to it.’ In other words, God’s call on a pastor must result in the kind of assurance that necessitates vocational action. With a similar but nuanced emphasis, Akin and Pace aver, ‘The authentic pastoral calling will be expressed as, “I have to be a pastor.” If other vocations are legitimate alternatives for true fulfillment, then it is not a pastoral calling.’ ¹² God’s call necessarily eliminates every other vocational option for personal satisfaction for pastors. Jason K. Allen, while more reserved in his language than the previous authors, affirms the idea that the call to ministry begins inwardly through a compelling desire experienced by the prospective pastor. ¹³ Whatever the particular outworking of their picture of pastoral calling, each of these authors centralizes the inward emotional experience of the one called to ministry, whether that is in certainty, an unquenchable desire for ministry, or the impossibility of satisfaction in any other vocation.

In light of these truths, the counsel of most pastoral theologians is to pursue inward certainty before taking steps towards vocational ministry or outwardly testing one’s fitness for ministry. Begg and Prime put it succinctly: ‘we must proceed [in pursuing a call to ministry] only when we can do so with certainty.’ ¹⁴ Bryant and Bunson are also clear about certainty as a requirement for ministry: ‘You should not be a pastor unless you know for certain that God has called you to preach.’ ¹⁵ Akin and Pace are more balanced in their assessment, saying that the exercise of one’s gifts and the affirmation of other Christians are important parts of pursuing clarity in a call to ministry; however, they also identify an individual’s inward experience and certainty as the key and beginning factor to any pursuit of confirmation in a call. ¹⁶

The biblical proof most consistently offered for this conception of the call to ministry is the examples of the prophets and apostles. Almost every one of the works mentioned cites the examples of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Paul as its biblical basis for this picture of the call. ¹⁷ The main line of argument from these biblical examples is that if the prophets and apostles were called in direct, compelling and incontrovertible ways for their ministries, today’s pastors must be called that way as well.

Problems with the Prevailing Conception of Pastoral Calling

While inward certainty is not the only feature of the call to ministry emphasized in these writings, ¹⁸ there is a remarkable lack of awareness that the biblical arguments offered for such strong articulations of inward certainty as a prerequisite for ministry need to be defended. Theologians use the examples of the prophets and apostles as normative for all pastors today as if applying God’s dealings with these special offices directly to pastors today is straightforward and self-evident; many likewise attribute the work of emotional certainty in a pastor’s heart to the Holy Spirit without any theological hand-wringing or even explanation of how this impacts our understanding of the Spirit’s work. ¹⁹ However, closer examination shows that both the biblical basis and theological implications of this view of the call to ministry are far from self-evident and in fact carry with them significant problems.

The first problem is the interpretive posture toward the calling narratives of the prophets and apostles. The assumption that a pastor’s calling will parallel a prophet or apostle’s calling is just that: an interpretive assumption which neglects the special nature of the prophetic and apostolic offices, these figures’ places in salvation history, and the differences between their offices and the offices of pastors today. Evangelicals believe that the prophets recorded, spoke and wrote God’s uniquely authoritative revelation; the apostles’ unique calling is likewise almost universally affirmed in non-Pentecostal evangelicalism and was attended with signs and wonders that most agree ceased to operate (at least in frequency and power) after the deaths of the apostles. ²⁰ Unless one desires to grant today’s pastors the kind of authority the prophets and apostles have in the biblical story, it is profoundly inconsistent to argue that the call to pastoral ministry corresponds to the calls of the prophets and apostles if the pastoral office does not correspond to those offices. Secondly, the callings of the prophets and apostles were objective and seated outside of their emotions: they were either audible (divine speech), visual (a tangible vision) or both (the calling of the apostles by the Incarnate Christ). Anyone who advocates for a similar experience of certainty for pastors today moves from an objective reality like audible divine speech to the subjective reality of emotions and desire. To strongly insist on subjective experiences of emotional certainty today based on objective calls from God in the Scriptures is therefore in need of a justification which is not present in modern pastoral literature.

Additionally, this understanding of the call to ministry neglects the New Testament’s emphasis on tangible giftedness, godliness, and ordination by elders as the central elements of the call to ministry. Of all the directives for identifying, installing, and defrocking the regular office of pastor there is not a single mention of insatiable desire or emotional certainty as a prerequisite for ministry. Paul exhorts Titus and Timothy to actively look for and appoint elders who were qualified by godly lives and aptness to teach. Notably, the certainty of prospective elders about God’s call is not a factor in their fitness for ministry (Titus 1:5-9, 1 Tim 3:1-7). ²¹ In the pastoral epistles the qualifications for ministry are consistently outward character qualities and ministry abilities; the process of identifying and ordaining prospective pastors is likewise centered on a congregation and its leadership, presumably the only ones who could objectively evaluate these qualities.

First Timothy 3:1 and 1 Peter 5:2 are often cited as explicit New Testament evidence that subjective experience is central to the call to ministry because of the use of the language of desire and willingness. ²² However, neither of these texts place desire for the ministry as the most essential feature of the call to ministry or even make it a prerequisite for ministry. Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 3:1 asserts that aspiring to the ministry is desiring a good work—in other words, that the desire for the office itself is not a bad thing and does not disqualify one for the office. ²³ Philip Towner’s commentary on 1 Timothy argues that while this verse does not exclude the idea of divine guidance, the main idea ‘encourages the desire to serve as a leader on the basis that the task is worthy’ and possibly addresses potential leaders who were reluctant to serve because of the difficulties of heretics in the congregation. ²⁴ Significantly, Towner nowhere applies this text to suggest that a desire for ministry is an essential qualification. Additionally, Paul moves from the commendation of desire to the requirements of those who would be elders, focusing on godliness of character and aptness to teach. In other words, Paul nowhere says, ‘now an overseer must desire the ministry ardently’ but he does explicitly say they must have particular character qualities and gifting. Therefore, he doesn’t place inward desire as a prerequisite for ministry, though he states that it is commendable. Regarding 1 Peter 5:2, Peter’s encouragement to shepherd ‘willingly’ is to those who are presently elders. It is ‘the elders who are among you’ who are to cultivate willingness, not prospective elders who are to examine their willingness to ensure they are called by God to shepherd. This verse is best seen as an exhortation to present pastors whose willingness might be tested by difficult circumstances, not as a verse laying the requirement of willingness on any who would pursue the pastorate, especially not when willingness is defined in terms of a compelling inward desire. ²⁵

In addition to biblical problems, the prevailing conception of the call to ministry has significant theological problems, especially in regard to the work of the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is the one who is explicitly said to set overseers over the church (Acts 20:28) and gives the gifts of the offices of the church (Eph 4:11), claims about the call to ministry are claims about the Spirit’s work. In making the experience of the prospective pastor paramount in discerning the call to ministry, modern authors attribute to the Spirit special, if not actually audible, revelation to prospective pastors. When one articulates the call to ministry as beginning in a compelling inward desire or emotional certainty that is created by the Holy Spirit and insists that without this certainty no one should be a pastor, he or she makes an implicit claim that special, extra-scriptural revelation is foundational to the Spirit’s work in the call to ministry.

When pressed to its logical conclusion, the pneumatological issues of this conception of the call become apparent. First, it implies that the preeminent work of the Spirit is to influence the inward experience of an individual—particularly, to make someone feel emotionally compelled or irresistibly convinced of God’s leadership. Though the Holy Spirit works in the desires and experience of Christians (Acts 20:22, Rom 5:5), insisting on the kind of certain guidance and compelling inward desire as a normative work of the Spirit in pastoral calling goes too far, leading to unacceptable conclusions about the Spirit’s work in leading any Christian to obedience, disciple-making, or the exercise of spiritual gifts. If those gifted for pastoral ministry are to wait until they are emotionally certain before they exercise their gifts, should not believers gifted in other ways also wait for emotional certainty before exercise their gifts? Second, this conception of the call to ministry attributes to the Spirit a regular revealing of God’s secret will in limited but consistent acts of special revelation that border on a gnostic kind of secret knowledge. Unless one accepts some kind of doctrine of continuing revelation where God reveals his secret will to any truly called pastor, such a picture of the Spirit’s work is unacceptable. All of this being said, the way the call to ministry has been articulated by many evangelical authors at the very least goes well beyond what Scripture says about the normative way the Holy Spirit works in setting apart pastors for ministry.

The Spirit-Bearer: The Call to Ministry in the Ancient Church

The ancient church recognized spiritual authority as the special possession of the Holy Spirit by individuals, demonstrated in their exercise of the spiritual gifts or their manifest holiness. ²⁶ In her work on Christian leadership in patristic Christianity, Claudia Rapp argues that leaders were ‘singled out by their spiritual authority—the presence of the Holy Spirit…made manifest in special gifts.’ ²⁷ Called ‘Spirit-Bearers,’ these people most prominently exercised the gifts of teaching and preaching for the benefit of believers. ²⁸ As Rapp avers, in the early church ‘anyone whose teaching was believed to be invested with divine authority’ was considered a Spirit-Bearer and an authority for the church. ²⁹ Genuine spiritual authority was recognized through the perception of someone’s Spirit-empowered exercise of the gifts of teaching and preaching. So, genuine calling to office was not perceived first by the pastor, but by the congregation, who saw the Spirit’s work in the public exercise of the leader’s gifts or the public manifestation of one’s holiness. While, as I will show, this framework sometimes led to counterintuitive ordination practices, it reflects the main current of biblical teaching on the Spirit’s involvement in the call to ministry.

Because one’s fitness for ministry was publicly perceived in the divine authority of one’s teaching, the process of ordination and calling of ministers in the ancient church was profoundly social, even resulting in the practice of some being ordained for ministry against their will. ³⁰ For example, Gregory of Nazianzus opposed his ordination and spoke frequently at different stages of his ministry of how he did not desire the ministry. However, he was the fourth century’s most beloved preacher and arguably the fountainhead of pastoral theology in the Christian tradition. ³¹ Nazianzus himself is a powerful counter-example to the modern focus on inward experience and compelling desire as the basis for pastoral calling because, in spite of his lack of desire, he was an important, influential, and effective pastor-theologian. ³²

Nazianzus’ comments on his ordination against his will show how patristic practice identified the outward call to ministry from the congregation as the call to ministry. Gregory was ordained against his will for ministry in 361 by his father, with the approval of the congregation. ³³ In response to his ordination, he fled the city for several months; upon returning, he preached what is now Oration 2 defending his flight, ostensibly because the congregation was unhappy with him. ³⁴ In this sermon Gregory gave his reasons for flight, citing the difficulty of pastoral ministry, the extremely high standards for pastoral skill and character, and the threats of God on those who take the pastoral office unworthily. ³⁵ When came to why he returned, he gave two reasons relevant to this article. First, he returned out of affection and love for the congregation. ³⁶ Secondly, Gregory compared himself to Jonah, who also ran from a call from God. He cited the reasons why Jonah ran from his call and suggested that Jonah may have had good reason for doing so but was still disciplined by God. ³⁷ However, ‘what could be said, what defense could be made, if I longer remained restive, and rejected the yoke of ministry, which, though I know not whether to call it light or heavy, had at any rate been laid upon me.’ ³⁸ In Gregory’s comparison of himself to Jonah, he identifies his call to ministry as the ‘yoke of ministry’ that had been laid upon him by the outward ordination of the church. A true call to ministry, such as Jonah received from God directly, was not to be found in a pastor’s personal compulsion, certainty, or desire for ministry, but in the will of the local congregation. Pastors answered this call to ministry not primarily out of their unquenchable desire to do so, but out of love and affection for the people they served. Significantly, Gregory took a biblical story of a prophet’s call to ministry and made the opposite application of today’s pastoral theologians.

The idea of the ‘Spirit-bearer’ and the example of Gregory of Nazianzus reveal a picture of the call to ministry centered on the Spirit’s gifting for ministry and the church’s recognition and initiative in the outward call to ministry. Those whom the Spirit has called to the office, he gifted to teach and preach with God’s authority. Local congregations of Christians perceived these gifts as from the Spirit as they experienced God ministering to them through these gifted people. Those who were deemed fit were ordained and those who received ordination, desiring the ministry or not, perceived this outward call to ministry as the call to ministry. Put together, these two elements made a call to ministry that was almost exclusively outward. While one could rightly argue that there were excesses in the social nature of the call to ministry (with Gregory himself the unwilling and fleeing pastor a primary example of this excess), the profound difference of ancient practice sheds light on the individualistic and emotive excesses of today’s practice. Furthermore, the ancient church’s focus on the tangible giftedness of potential ministers and the will of the congregation and its leaders appears closer to the implications of the New Testament texts regarding pastoral qualifications that I have examined above (Eph 4:11, 1 Tim 4:14, 2 Tim 1:6).

Calvin and the Call to Ministry

An ironic and influential source from the tradition is John Calvin. While Calvin is the primary historical source for the idea of a ‘secret call’ to ministry (what is now meant when modern authors write of ‘the call to ministry’), a close examination of his theology of the call shows it to be very close to patristic thought and practice. ³⁹ While Calvin did write of a ‘secret call’ and noted that ‘each minister is conscious before God’ of it, he did not make this call of foremost importance, he never made it a requirement for ministry, and he balanced it with a prevalent insistence on the centrality of the outward call to ministry from the church. ⁴⁰ In fact, Calvin’s reference to the ‘secret call’ was passing and so vague that authors who have followed Calvin have interpreted it in a variety of ways. ⁴¹ He gave no characteristics of the inward call nor any criteria by which it may be tested. ⁴² In the context of the previously quoted passage, it appears that Calvin associated the ‘secret call’ with what immediately follows: ‘the good witness of our heart that we receive the proffered office not with ambition or avarice…but with a sincere fear of God and desire to build up the church.’ ⁴³ Even this secret call, in Calvin’s view, was receiving the outward call (‘the proffered office’) with a right heart.

In contrast to his passing reference to the secret call, Calvin articulated a high view of the outward call and gave detailed instructions for evaluating a candidate’s fitness for ministry. This demonstrates that Calvin followed the patristic tradition in perceiving the tangible qualifications of a potential minister and the approbation of the church as the key evidence that the Spirit had called someone to ministry. Calvin said that candidates should be tested for: (1) giftedness, (2) possession of sound doctrine, (3) a holy life, and (4) the skills necessary for their office. ⁴⁴ For his reasoning on insisting that a candidate have proven ministry gifts and skills, he argued that Christ, when he ‘was about to send out the apostles, equipped them with the arms and tools which they had to have.’ ⁴⁵ In support of this statement Calvin cited several passages, three of which refer to the gifts of the Spirit for proclamation of the gospel (Luke 21:15, Luke 24:49, and Acts 1:8). For Calvin, the best and only reliable evidence that Christ had called someone to ministry were spiritual gifts and godly qualifications—this is how one recognized the Spirit’s work in pastoral calling. Though Calvin articulated an inward call, he practiced as if the primary evidence that the Spirit had called someone to ministry was tested giftedness and qualifications.

Furthermore, Calvin used the examples of the calls of prophets and apostles in the opposite way that modern authors do by identifying the audible call of these figures with the outward call of the church. ⁴⁶ For Calvin, the calling stories of the prophets were recorded so that the readers of Scripture would know the words of the prophets had divine authority. ⁴⁷ Since their purpose was to verify the divine authority of the speaker, they corresponded not to the inward call, but to the outward call, which verified a pastor was truly God’s representative. ⁴⁸ Indeed, in Calvin’s thought ‘the parallel is between the audible call of God to the prophet and the audible call of the church to the minister in the outward call.’ ⁴⁹ He treated the calls of the apostles in a similar fashion. ⁵⁰ Calvin’s logic is convincing: the calls of the prophets and apostles were indeed tangible calls rooted in objective, testable reality (audible, visible, or incarnate in the person of Christ); therefore, if these calls correspond to an element of a pastor’s call today, they must correspond to the tangible, divinely authorized call of the church.

Summary and Implications from the Tradition

So far I have shown a consensus between the ancient church and one of the most influential Protestant theologians in three related themes: First, God’s call on someone to be a pastor was chiefly evidenced by tangible giftedness for edifying the body of Christ through spiritual gifts and character qualifications for leadership. Second, the church perceived and initiated the sole call to ministry—the church alone was qualified to perceive and initiate the call and did not merely affirm an inward call which a minister had already received from God. Third, while parts of the tradition allowed for an inward call and a sense of God’s leadership toward ministry, this inward call was not prominent, was not articulated in the strongly emotive ways it is today, and was not a prerequisite to pursue vocational ministry. This consensus in the tradition raises the issue of the ahistorical nature of present articulations. A call to ministry seated in the experience of a prospective pastor has no basis in the patristic or early Protestant tradition of the church. The tradition also brings to light the fact that only recently have Christians centered the Spirit’s work in the experiences of individuals and trusted the subjective experience of prospective pastors as God’s revelation of their calling. So where did this present understanding of the call to ministry come from?

Several elements of Carl Trueman’s recent Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self have significant explanatory power for potential reasons behind the emotive nature of the call to ministry as it is articulated today. First, Trueman argues that a primary characteristic of modernity that has been developing over the last few centuries is an inward turn: what is now considered most true and trustworthy for a person is their inner psychological self, defined by desires and emotions. ⁵¹ Additionally, culture, history and authority are not positive sources of wisdom and truth, they can even be morally detrimental; therefore, one must look to one’s feelings for true and authoritative guidance. ⁵² A third relevant feature of Trueman’s thesis is that the modern focus on vocational satisfaction is novel; previous generations would not have even understood the concept of job satisfaction. ⁵³ Fourth, most of the above ideas exist in the ‘social imaginary’ of modern culture: they are more implicit assumptions and practices rather than stated and defended philosophies. ⁵⁴

Consider features of the modern picture of the call to ministry in light of Trueman’s thesis. The historical exchange of an outward call to ministry by the church based on a someone’s spiritual gifts for ‘a powerful experience with God’ that happens in someone’s emotions appears to be rooted in a modern social imaginary that trusts inward experience as the best gauge of truth. The modern intuition that subjective experience is authoritative and the modern rejection of institutional authority seem to have led to a view of the call that seats the Spirit’s work in the emotions and for all practical purposes ignores the church. Furthermore, consider the advice by pastoral theologians that one must avoid ministry unless one can be happy and satisfied in no other vocation—that advice would not merely have been rejected, but incomprehensible to generations of Christians living over hundreds of years! Trueman also shows that this inward turn has been progressively unfolding through years which line up closely to the development of this conception of the call to ministry, which is not stated so strongly before Spurgeon. A full examination that demonstrates the historical connection of modern conceptions of the self to the modern articulation of the call to pastoral ministry is not possible here, but even this brief sketch suggests a significant influence of modern culture on the present way the call to ministry is articulated.