CALLED TO PASTOR — CALLED TO PREPARE

By Johnnie C. Godwin

Contributing columnist, B&R

Johnnie Godwin

Billy Graham began his message to my seminary chapel with a disclaimer. He said that he had been so pressed for time and travel that he hadn’t had time to prepare his message. He added that he had asked the Holy Spirit to just fill him. He was fully aware that seminary students had jobs, pastored or worked in the church and had full-time class loads.

Then, Graham changed his caveat about lack of time. “No, if I had prayed that prayer, God’s Spirit would fill me — with hot air,” he said. Graham then preached a God-inspired message that was well-prepared. He preached that a call to pastor is a call to prepare.

Called to ministry. Every type of ministry God calls a person to includes a call to prepare. In II Corinthians 5:18-19, “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

In other words, every Christian is called to be a minister in sharing the Word or ministry of reconciliation. We see this same calling in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8. To be a disciple means both to be a follower of God in Christ and to always be a learner.

Called to special ministry. Those called to be pastors have a gifted calling of a special ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12). This is the only time in the King James Version of the New Testament that the Greek word for “shepherd” is translated “pastor.”

But in John 21:15-17, Jesus told Peter that if he loved Jesus, he would feed His lambs, shepherd His sheep and tend to His sheep (NASB). These shepherding roles are the roles of a pastor. And how does a pastor feed, tend and shepherd the sheep if he doesn’t prepare?

Timothy is an example. In II Timothy 1:5-6, Paul encouraged Timothy to, “Study and be eager to do your utmost to present yourself to God approved … as a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching the word of Truth]” (Amplified Bible).

What Paul said to Timothy was what Billy Graham told us young pastors to do — prepare to be faithful to our calling from God. A call to special ministry involves God’s gift and pastoring a flock fully. A pastor’s preparation depends upon study, prayer and the Holy Spirit.

God’s calling is an amazing maze of grace. When I felt called to ministry at age 15, it was in the era when that was mostly understood as serving as a pastor, evangelist or missionary. But over my 75 years of ministerial calling, forms of ministry have grown into a great variety of expressions.

But whatever the specific calling’s expression of ministry, it still calls for preparation — just as Billy Graham preached to us in seminary.

From age 6 to 27, I never knew what it was not to be in full-time formal schooling. And even after that, I meshed more formal schooling with my pastoral calling.

In all of that preparation, I didn’t have a clue that beyond my calling to be a pastor or missionary that those senses of calling would get new direction from God in His “amazing maze of grace.”

When the missionary appointment didn’t work out because of temporary medical reasons, I was studying communication and writing.

God then used a friend to recommend me to become a writer of Bible study materials for the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville (now Lifeway Christian Resources). That led to promotions to editing and management at the Sunday School Board. God’s amazing grace still amazes me.

Checklists to consider in pastoral training. If I were to come up with a checklist of skills a pastor would do well to train for, I would consider this list — to go along with conversion, calling, integrity, faithfulness and an undying commitment to his sense of calling, a called pastor should be able to feed the sheep, shepherd them and disciple them as a flock in being God’s church on earth.

Conclusion. I’ve belonged to the same Southern Baptist church for 52 years, and it is too rich for me to feel a need to look for another church. On the other hand, I have faithful relatives who are not church-hoppers yet some of them have felt led of God to move to another church when they consistently didn’t get fed from the Word and the flock didn’t get shepherding as Jesus commanded.

A call to pastor and minister also includes a call to prepare (see Ephesians 4:1-3). And as others have said, churches are called to keep “the main thing the main thing” and not to get diluted by secondary matters and negative issues. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. We are to do that too.