Lecture

Introduction

It may feel like a nudge, or maybe it’s a burden you can’t shake, a burning, a whisper, a leading, a feeling of discontent, a prompting, an invitation, perhaps even a command. It’s hard to describe, but you’re sure of it. You’ve experienced something, that something has come from someone outside of yourself, yet at the same time, it resonates deep within your spirit. And it is asking, perhaps urgently, for a response. But you have so many questions, all cluttering your head and heart clamoring for attention. Did I hear correctly? Can I really do this? How will I make this work? What will this mean for my family? What if I fail? What if I succeed? You take a deep breath. There it is again. Will you join me? I know the feeling.

My name is Dr. Angie Ward, and I work at Denver Seminary as assistant director of the Doctor of Ministry Program. I recently started that position, I am actually a graduate of Denver Seminary twenty-five years ago, so I’m an alum. I met and married my husband Dave here when we were students, and from there, God took us to about twenty-five years of ministry around the country to Minnesota, to North Carolina, and then most recently to Indianapolis. My husband’s a pastor. I was doing camp ministry, I’ve worked at educational institutions, church ministry, done youth ministry, leadership development ministry. And now I’m a ministry and leadership teacher, author, and coach, and I am able to do a lot of that in my role with the Doctor of Ministry department at Denver Seminary. And then just a few months ago, God moved us back to Denver for this position as empty nesters. I wrote this book, “I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of Their Calling” earlier in 2020 and that’s going to be the foundation for this course: “Finding and Following Your God-Given Calling.”

About this journey, Frederick Buechner has a quote. He says, “Calling is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And I believe there’s a deep gladness, an unshakeable joy in knowing that you were created for a purpose and in finding and following that purpose. Who is this course for? It’s for men, women, for all ages, for all situations. The book is written for women, but the principles about calling apply across the board to men and women, a variety of situations, and it’s whatever stage you are on your calling journey, whether you are just figuring it out, you’re maybe wondering about what are your next steps to take, you’re trying to navigate some challenges as you obey God’s invitation, or even you’re wondering if there’s a fresh or a changed call in your future. I’ve wrestled through almost all of it in the course of my over thirty years of ministry. I’ve had questions, plenty of obstacles, seasons of doubt, dry spells, have navigated through seasons of life, marriage and ministry, wondering about the financial side; all the things that we’re going to talk about are things that I’ve lived through, and that’s actually what led me to write the book and to share this journey with you.

So, invite, I would encourage you to invite a friend or even a small group to join you. We’ll have these videos. There’ll be some other resources. There’ll some application questions to put it into practice in your own life and for you to reflect on what God might be saying to you.

A couple foundational assumptions I want to talk through, first of all, I believe, and this course assumes that the Bible is authoritative to everything that it speaks about, that it’s God’s written, breathing living, inspired Word of God, and so we’re going to be looking at scriptural principles, teachings, commands, examples about what the Bible says about calling and living it out.

Also, we humans are not perfect, and nor are we perfectly trustworthy. I say that because I know that about myself, and I know that about all the people that I live and work with. We are each shaped by our experiences and by our traditions, cultural traditions, our theological traditions, where we grew up, you know, the type of church context, our family. All those things play into our frame of reference and our framework for viewing and living life. So, we can agree to disagree on many things because we just know we have different perspectives. In fact, we can learn from each other. This course might make you a little uncomfortable, we might talk about ways that God speaks, or the Holy Spirit might challenge you on some things. So that’s good. My role as a teacher is actually to do that, to help you become a little uncomfortable, to introduce what’s called disequilibrium, that feeling of kind of unsettledness or a shakiness, because that’s what ultimately leads to growth. So, I’d like to welcome you to this course and to this journey together, and I look forward to this journey with you.

Definitions

Let’s start today by looking at some important definitions. The first one is what is ministry? For many, the ministry denotes full-time Christian service, often as either a pastor or a missionary. My husband and I say we have been in full-time “ministry.” At Denver Seminary we train people for “ministry.” And the original understanding of kind of the “ministry” when we talk about full-time Christian service, that originated in medieval times where you had a priest, or the sacred, set apart to represent a congregation, or the secular, in prayers to God, preaching, administering the sacraments, such as baptism and communion. But the Protestant Reformation brought an emphasis on what we call the priesthood of all believers. In other words, all of us have equal access to God and the ability to serve in His Kingdom mission.

But even though the Protestant Reformation brought this idea of priesthood of all believers, and even though we don’t . . . even if we don’t necessarily buy into this kind of sacred/secular divide, we still . . . it’s still easy to rank some forms of Kingdom work as more important or more spiritual. For example, a lot of times we rank full-time over part-time or somebody who’s paid versus somebody who’s a volunteer in some role, church ministry. Again, sacred over marketplace, or what we might think is secular, even overseas, you know, overseas foreign missions versus local ministry, but really whatever you do for Christ is ministry. That’s my understanding of it, that’s what I see in Scripture. So that could be mopping floors, that could be changing diapers, that could be sharing the Gospel verbally, that could be working at a church, it could be serving on the PTO at a school, it could be performing surgery, it could be balancing the books as an accountant. Paul in Colossians tells us, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” So anything that you do with an eye toward Christ and for the Kingdom is ministry. There’s not this sacred/secular divide. One type is not more important than another.

So another definition then is, what is leadership? We often think of leadership as tied to a particular role or position within an organization. So we think of it as usually top of the org chart within an organization, but at its heart, leadership is influence in relationship. I define leadership as influence on people to movement toward a vision. And so, it’s at the core, again, it’s influence, it’s working with people, it’s moving them towards some core vision, but that doesn’t have to be an organizational context or a corporate context. If you have influence, you are a leader. And let me say that again, let that sink in. If you have influence, you are a leader.

So, think about where do you have that influence, and that influence can be gained or given from a number of sources. It could come from a title or a position within an organization. It could come from financial or emotional or physical or spiritual power. It could come from personal relationship and trust and integrity. We just give someone influence over our lives because we trust them, and we believe in what they say, and where they’re going. It doesn’t have to be somebody, again, in a position or a title. So influence is also not restricted to a particular age, an ethnicity, a gender, it does not depend on socioeconomic status or a personality type. You don’t have to be an extrovert, you know, at the top of a big organization; you don’t have to be a big public figure. You can lead up and down and around and have influence in a variety of contexts no matter what your life stage, your age, your situation. So you are, yes, you’re a leader if you’re a senior pastor or a CEO or a director of something, but you’re also a leader if you are a volunteer, if you are a mentor, if you are a discipler, a teacher, a writer, a friend, a parent. The question is not whether you have influence but where you have influence, and how you are using it.

The Calling

The next question is, what is calling? Since this whole course is about finding and following your God-given calling, it’s important for us to understand what we’re even talking about. What do we mean by that? Calling is a theme that is woven throughout Scripture. We first see it for the word that’s translated “called.” There are two meanings to it. One of them is to catch someone’s attention, so it’s simply like Eli called for Samuel. You’re just calling for someone, and the other time the word is used it’s to change a name. So we see a lot of times that God changed somebody’s name, called them this, or the Israelites called the place Bethel, for example. But then there’s also the idea of someone being called out or set apart for a specific role or task. In the Old Testament, we see God speaking directly, for example, to Abraham, to Moses, to Gideon, to Jonah, and to many others, all the prophets. In the New Testament, we see this comes in the form of an invitation from Jesus. So He says, “Follow me.” So He calls them and then sends them out and says, “Then go” and then sets them apart for a specific role or task.

So how do we define calling? Let me read how some other people have tried to define or explain calling. Os Guinness writes, “The truth that God calls us to Himself”—the calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself—“so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to His summons and service.” There’s another one, it’s, “Individuals’ calling to partnership with God, in which particular gifts are evoked and developed in concert with their discernment of the particular role God has given them to play during a certain period of their lives.” Another definition, it’s “A conviction that steadily deepens.” It’s “A strong urge toward a particular way of life or career.” “Calling at its deepest level is ‘This is something I can’t not do.’”

So, you take some of those themes and you put those together, and I think you apply some algebraic equations, you know, and you move pieces over, and I define calling as it’s a God-given conviction about your life’s direction. Calling, again, it’s a God-given conviction about your life’s direction. A couple things to note about that, it comes from God, it’s God-given, and it involves a deep inner assurance, that’s this deep conviction and about your life’s direction. It has the potential to change your life.

Now, when we talk about calling, we also talk about some other kind of related terms, so I want to talk about those for just a minute and how calling is different. We talk a lot of times about purpose, and I think purpose and calling can be very similar, often they’re used interchangeably. Calling, though, comes from outside yourself, so it’s a God-given conviction. Purpose can sometimes be self-determined. Rick Warren wrote about the purpose-driven life, and so he’s definitely talking about God having a plan for your life. And it’s not just about you, a purpose-driven life just sounds better than calling-driven life, and it’s easier for people to understand. So, I think a lot of times they’re very interchangeable.

Another term that’s similar is responsibilities. And, you know, calling can involve your responsibilities. Responsibilities as the name suggests, are things in our life that require a response, and they are a part of our calling. So, for me, for example, I’m a mother and a wife, and as part of that, I have responsibilities. And so, part of my first calling is really to tend to those responsibilities. So they’re tied together.

Then there’s also dreams and passions. A lot of times those can be, though, our dreams and passions. God can certainly plant those in our hearts but they’re not automatically the same as calling, but as we get through this course, and start working through how do you find and discover and follow God’s invitation and calling for your life, we’ll talk a little bit more about how those dreams and passions might be related in that discovery process.