In Search of Wisdom

My husband works as a pastor and a decent portion of his work is in youth ministry. The results of youth ministry are often not very tangible. It is a rare occasion when a youth group member will thank him for something he’s done. But just this last week, he heard (secondhand) that one of his high school students thinks our youth group is the best youth group in the city. “I’ve been to a lot of youth groups,” he said. “And ours tops them all.” Only one superlative comment like that in nearly five years of faithful work.

Faithful ministry doesn’t necessarily yield abundant and obvious results. I was encouraged by this excerpt from a letter that Thomas Merton wrote to a social activist ( The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton):

“Do not depend on hope of results.
When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on,
essentially an apostolic work,
you may have to face the fact
that your work will be apparently worthless
and even achieve no results at all,
if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect…

“The big results are not in your hands or mine,
but they suddenly happen,
and we can share in them;
but there is no point in building our lives
on this personal satisfaction,
which may be denied us and
which after all is not that important…

”All the good that you do will not come from you
but from the fact that you have allowed yourself,
in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love…
If you can get free from the domination of causes
and just serve Christ’s truth,
you will be able to do more
and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments.

“The real hope then is not in something we think we can do,
but in God who is making something good out of it
In some way we cannot see.”

Whatever God is calling you to, I pray that your service to Christ’s truth rest at the center of your work and the center of your heart.

And I wonder: What role does the ‘hope of results’ play in your work and life?

Tags: Books, Ministry by Heidi
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At a transforming moment in her life, Ruth Haley Barton was told: “You are like a jar of river water all shaken up. What you need is to sit still long enough that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear” (Invitation to Solitude and Silence, p. 29). Ruth is now a spiritual director, teacher and author who invites others into the presence of God.

In some ways, I am not a noise-needing person. I don’t have a stream of music entering my ears while I read; I don’t need the television on in the background of the rest of life. Even so, there is a noise inside me – present even on my early morning walks and as I’m falling asleep at night – a noise that is not unlike stirred up river water. Time and again, I need to hear the call, the invitation, to silence… so that the sediment can settle and I can see more clearly and hear more clearly the love and the voice of the Shepherd.

This past Saturday, several discerners gathered at Calvin Seminary for a Discerning Your Calling conversation. I included 30 minutes of silence in the five hour event. As I read through the evaluations of the event, it became clear that the silence was a very important part of the retreat – and that the participants wanted even more. More silence. More solitude. Even if we don’t take the initiative to carve out a time of silence in our daily spiritual walk, we crave it! And when we get a taste, we want more.

How has silence played a role in your search for truth and for God?

Tags: Books, Spiritual Disciplines by Heidi
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I started seminary when I was 23 years old. Newly married, kid-less, and with a husband bringing in a Christian school teacher’s salary, we had just enough to make it month to month. Taking on a seminary education did not involve huge personal or financial sacrifice for me.

I am now 31 years old – and in the last eight years, I’ve met so many people who have given up a host of family, friend, and church connections and a financially padded standard of living in order to train for the ministry. They’ve made difficult decisions and sacrifices that have left them lonely and poor and have taxed their spouses and children.

The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing tells us that

God will never disappoint those who truly abandon worldly concerns to dedicate themselves to him. You can be certain of this: he will provide one of two things for his friends. Either they will receive an abundance of all they need or he will give them the physical stamina and a patient heart to endure it. (Chapter 23)

I have seen one of these two things happen for many of God’s friends. Their stories are encouragements – testimonies to God’s faithfulness.

But I have also encountered many who have decided not to make the sacrifices. I honor their decisions. Who am I to say, from personal experience, that these sacrifices can or should be made? How difficult it must be to uproot, to let go of the paycheck, to tear children away from their schools, to take a spouse away from their work. These are legitimate connections - many of which don’t necessarily fall into the category of ‘worldly concerns’ – that keep people from entering the path to a new calling.

And yet, perhaps some of you who are weighing the sacrifice may find hope in these words from The Cloud. ‘Practical’ concerns are very much a part of the discernment process – they’re part of the spiritual journey – God cares about them. Your heavenly Father knows what you need… “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

Can I get a witness?

Tags: Books, Call to Ministry, Decisions by Heidi
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As Doug so helpfully pointed it out in his comment on the last post, mentors are an invaluable source in the discernment process.

I am constantly blessed by the presence of mentors in my life. I have a vocational mentor, a spiritual director, and several spiritual companions who keep asking the deeper questions and who keep listening to the deeper tones of my life. And of course there are the mentors who come to us from across the years and miles in the form of their writing.

Keith Anderson and Randy Reese in their book, Spiritual Mentoring, cite Richard Baxter:

Writing to … Puritans in 1656, [Baxter] listed four groups of people who needed special attention: the immature, those with particular corruption, declining Christians and the strong. The last group, he declared, needed the greatest care. (p. 25)

Who among us has not benefited from the wisdom of others as we’ve discerned our callings in life? Sometimes it takes humility for us to receive this kind of care – and when we are feeling particularly strong, perhaps this is when we are the most weak, and the most in need of the deeper question from a mentor – the longer silence in the presence of a spiritual companion – so that our life may speak, so that the Spirit may speak.

And for those of us who are called to be mentors, Anderson and Reese offer these centering principles:

There will be three primary themes or empowerments you will watch for in order to develop the ever-unfolding story of your friend’s life: intimacy with God, ultimate identity as a beloved child of God and a unique voice for kingdom responsibility. (p. 29)

How has the ministry of a mentor impacted your life? Or as someone who also mentors, what have you found to be the greatest joys and challenges of this glad task?

Tags: Books, Mentors by Heidi
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The first book I ever read on discernment was The Will of God as a Way of Life: How to Make Every Decision with Peace and Confidence by Jerry Sittser. He said this about God’s will: “If we truly seek God above all, then we will always be doing the will of God, no matter where our particular choices lead us, because seeking God’s kingdom first is God’s will” (p. 39). He wrote this in a chapter appropriately titled, Our Astonishing Freedom.

There is astonishing freedom in what he says. It’s liberating to let go of the unnecessary anxiety surrounding decisions about our future. And I agree with what Sittser writes: “As it turns out, the weightiest choice we make is never between two future options –say, taking a job in California or staying in Iowa—but between two ways of life, one for God, the other against God” (p. 39).

Not long ago, a dear friend of mine was trying to decide between two good possibilities for her future. Most of her friends were assuring her in a Sittser-like way that she really couldn’t make a bad decision – that no matter what, God would bless her in her decision and so she should just make one and go with it.

I asked if this brought her comfort at all. And she said that on one level it did, but it some ways, that kind of encouragement was just frustrating and unhelpful. The fact remained: she still had a weighty decision to make.

Enter: Dallas Willard and his book, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. He writes, “If you wish to know what God would have you do, it is no help at all to be told that whatever comes is his will. For you are, precisely, in the position of having to decide in some measure what is to come. Does it mean that whatever you do will be God’s will? I certainly hope not” (p. 61).

Who do you agree with? What kind of commentary on God’s will has been helpful to you in your decision making?

Tags: Advice, Books, Decisions by Heidi
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Have you ever done it? Have you ever flipped your Bible open to a random verse hoping that God might meet you in the flipping and the pointing and spill a word for your life?

Dallas Willard, in his book Hearing God comments on this practice of picking random verses. In this practice…

…we see both the desperate urgency and the superstitious character of human efforts to get a word from God, especially a word on what is going to happen and what we should do about it. If necessary some people are prepared to force such a word from him or someone else. Like King Saul many of us have our own versions of a witch of Endor. (p. 33)

I had an embarrassing experience several weeks ago in which I attempted to demonstrate the inappropriateness of Bible Roulette in a high school chapel. Right in the middle of the chapel, I randomly opened my Bible to a verse (Jeremiah 2:3) and read it out loud. Relatively unbeknownst to the 500 high schoolers, the verse was all too appropriate to the context in which I’d set it. I had been telling the students how the Spirit doesn’t speak. And the Spirit spoke. To me, if not to them. Through Bible Roulette.

I told this story to a colleague. After explaining Bible roulette, she said, “Some people have come to seminary using that method.”

So, what do you think? What do you think about Bible Roulette and Saul’s witch of Endor? What do you think about looking for signs and words from God in these ways? Was Gideon’s setting out of the fleece a better way of getting a word from God? Was his methodology simply descriptive, or prescriptive for our own discernment?

Tags: Books, Decisions by Heidi
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“God doesn’t call the equipped; God equips the called.”

Can we reflect on this axiom together? From a quick perusal of blogs, it seems that this statement has been a source of great encouragement to a lot of people. There is a truth here – obviously. Scripture gives us two called-and-unequipped examples. Moses and Paul – both adverse to public speaking – were called through a bush and on a road and then equipped by God to be prophet and apostle.

I also believe that those of us who face our ministry or our vocation with an appropriate dose of fear or a sense of inadequacy are actually healthier than those who are convinced they’ve got it all together.

On the other hand, I think we can take this too far. This statement is sometimes used to filter out a much-needed assessment of one’s gifts and talents. One might say, “God is calling me to this task, so it doesn’t matter what my gifts are or what I like to do. It’s not about me.”

Friends, your vocation does happen to be about you. God designed you in such a way that your gifts and talents do matter. Who you are matters and discerning who you are is part of the vocational journey some of you are in the midst of.

Lee Hardy, Calvin College’s 2007 recipient of the Presidential Award for Exemplary Teaching, says the following in his book on the theology of vocation, The Fabric of this World:

That I am who I am is not a result of chance, a mere cosmic accident. Rather it is the result of God’s intention. There is a reason why I am who I am, although that reason may not be immediately apparent to me. I was placed here for a purpose, and that purpose is one which I am, in part, to discover, not invent. (p. 83)

He goes on to say that there are times when God calls particular people to things that they are not gifted for and to things that they are not inclined to do. But these kinds of calls, Hardy says, are the exception to the rule. If you are called in this way, it will be very clear. Crystal clear. Burning bush clear. Damascus road clear. Without this clarity, we are blessed with the task of discovering God’s intention in making us into the kinds of people we are. Who you are matters. To God. To the world.

And what you think matters to me. What do you think?

Tags: Books, Call to Ministry by Heidi
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Thomas Merton collected several sayings from the desert fathers. Here is a saying/story I came across last week. As you read it, I ask you the question: How are insults a path to wisdom?

Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over, the Master said to him: “Now you can go to Athens and learn wisdom.” When the disciple was entering Athens he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple who immediately burst out laughing. “Why do you laugh when I insult you?” said the wise man. “Because,” said the disciple, “for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing.” “Enter the city,” said the wise man, “it is all yours.” Abbot John used to tell the above story saying: “This is the door of God by which our fathers rejoicing in many tribulations enter into the City of Heaven.”

So… how are insults a path to wisdom? Are they? So often we think of God speaking to us through people – and usually, I think , it is in their words of encouragement that we hear God’s voice. I don’t believe that God is in the insult-business, but might God shape us through insult and criticism? Or is it only in spite of these things that we grow in wisdom?

Tags: Advice, Books by Heidi
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First, I invite you to the discussion about pastoral authority and youth that sprung up in the comments on the last post. Follow the discussion, if you’d like!

And next: I learned a new term in a book I read recently on the subject of discernment. The term is liminal space: “that anxious space of ‘not knowing,’ that in-between time when the known and familiar have passed and the new has not yet come into being.” (Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon Au, The Discerning Heart. New York: Paulist Press, 2006, p. 205.)

Are you there in that in-between space? Perhaps you’re between jobs or relationships. Maybe you are graduating this year from a school and you’re looking ahead to that liminal space. Like nature, we abhor vacuums. We don’t like unfilled space. We want to get to the next thing or the next person as soon as possible. When someone asks us what we do for a living, we want to have an immediate answer. It’s hard to say, “I’m not really sure what’s next.”

The authors of A Discerning Heart encourage us to think positively about ‘liminal space’: “liminal space is psychologically and spiritually significant because it is where real transformation can take place” (p. 208). They go on to quote Jesuit Anthony de Mello:

Some people will never learn anything because they grasp too soon. Wisdom, after all, is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling…. To know exactly where you’re headed may be the best way to go astray. Not all who loiter are lost. (p. 209)

This is kind of a different way to think about being unsure. Maybe not being somewhere is exactly where you need to be.

Tags: Books, Decisions by Heidi
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Chelsey wrote this in her comment on “Tattoos on the Soul”:

Most of the time, “tattoos” (both in the real, ink on the body, and in the experiential, things that have marked me in life, sense) are extremely personal; but their messages are extremely public. How do we balance these two extremes that seem to represent so many aspects of the ministry?

I’ve heard several variations on the theme of this question. Often, people are concerned about the pressure that comes with the calling to ministry. When you live a life of ministry, you lead. When you lead, people look at you. When people look at you, they critique and measure. They call it like they see it – inflating your head with praise or popping your spirit with criticism.

In a sermon that she delivered to young people contemplating their calling to ministry, Barbara Brown Taylor shared a conversation that she’d had with a respected pastor and professor:

One day I told him that my biggest fear about ordination was the perfection thing—impersonating Jesus in front of a whole lot of people who would see right through me—and he said, “Oh lovey, that’s not your job. If you decide to do this, then you’re not promising to be perfect. You’re just consenting to be visible—to let other people watch you while you try to figure out what real life is all about.”

“On This Rock” in Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry. Nashville: Abingdon. 2005, pp. 55-56.

This is the reality. The public eye is a part of ministry. If you are sensing a call to ministry – or are acting on this call, ask yourself, are you attracted to this spotlight? Are you afraid of it? Is there a clash between your private and public selves? Are you ready to submit your life to Christ and to lead others in this submission?

What are your thoughts on this call to the public life? What is the place of the private self in ministry? I’m eager to hear your thoughts… your wisdom.

Tags: Books, Call to Ministry by Heidi
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