Video Transcript: Session 2 The Call

Welcome back to this class called preacher preparation presentation. Class. I'm  making some preaching sermons I shared with you in the previous session, just  some of my passion for preaching. And some of my learning for preaching was  

started in seminary, where I was given a class, but it was really an enhanced.  When I was given an assignment to the seminary, I went to we had to go out  and serve in churches, it was called fieldwork. And I was assigned to work with a man who was six months from retirement, and a little tiny church in Tucson,  Arizona. And so I remember the first sermon I presented, it was one I presented  in class and gotten a very good grade on and so I was expecting some really  good response. And after I preached on that Sunday morning, Monday morning, I gathered with this pastor this, you know, older, experienced to preach in  various situations, man, and to evaluate my sermon and to make suggestions.  And his response to me was rather a knife to the heart. He said, You know, he  said, Everything you said was right. So but did you notice that people quit  listening after about four minutes? So So then, first of all, after crushing me said, let's look at the sermon again. And look at it from the, the attitude of the hearer,  what does the hearer need in order to stay engaged in a message? And so we  did that every week. For 12 weeks, every Monday, we'd gather and look at the  sermon I preached, and we'd take it apart, and we would talk about how will this  How will this be heard by those people to whom I'm preaching. And so it was, he was the first person who really began to teach me how to preach. And so I've,  I've been following his tradition, he's now with the Lord Long time ago, and in  heaven, but I'm trying to continue that legacy of showing people how to preach  with the people in mind. Now, that was session one last week and, or whenever  you listen to it, the session two today, I want to talk about, you'll notice the call  into ministry. When you look into scripture, you find that often preachers have a  sense of calling. In other words, they just don't decide to get up and start talking  and see if anybody will listen. But they have a calling to it. Now, when it comes  to a call, not everybody who's taking this class is going to have that sense of  call, maybe some of you are doing it just to get the credits. Maybe some of you  are checking it out to see if this is something you might want to do. Some have  that call and are living it out. And, you know, evangelistic meetings, Bible studies and church services. And maybe you're an itinerant preacher, and some may  serve in other capacities. In the last church, I served, we had a person on staff,  who went to seminary and graduated with a Master of Divinity degree, I'll share  something more about his call into ministry later, but he said, I'm not called to  preach. He was called to be a worship leader in our church, and he was  exceptional in that regard. And he was called to help develop the arts and, and  the senses, you were making worship, appropriate for all the senses. And so  that was his calling, but he had to go through a course on preaching. So maybe  that's you, you're called to be involved in some other area of ministry. But you  got to do this to get the credits and get the diploma. Whatever your reason, for 

thinking about preaching today, I want to talk to you about the call, and how  important that is. Now, when we look in Scripture, we find that there are a variety of people who have experienced a call. Jeremiah is one of those people. This is  chapter one, verse five of Jeremiah, before I formed you, God speaks to him.  Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and the word there is the same  one that in Genesis says, Adam knew his wife, and she became pregnant, and  bore a son. Now, it's not just the word for sexual intercourse, it's the word for I  know you, I love you. I'm connected to you before you were formed in the womb. I was connected to you, I loved you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I  appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Now, it's saying is, Jeremiah is you  got a calling on your life. Now if you go on you in that passage, first chapter of  Jeremiah, you'll find that Jeremiah says wait a minute. No, I'm too young. I'm too young. I don't want to do this. But God keeps coming back to No, I'm giving you  my word, and I want you to share it with his people. Now, Jeremiah has  experience in that call was not a real positive one. In fact, he's called the  weeping prophet. And you'll notice the subtitle standing for God in post Christian times. Jeremiah prophesied to a people who were going to be taken away into  captivity to Babylon because they've been disobedient to the Word of God  because they ignored God because they were worshipping other gods. And as a result, you know, he's an appropriate prophet for today in the United States,  where we have become a post Christian nation. But I can imagine Jeremiah,  you know, he was rejected, he was arrested at one point, he's thrown into a  cistern to sit there and maybe die if the city is actually conquered the way he  prophesied. He's mistreated. I imagine that there were many, many times in his  ministry, of prophesying of preaching the Word of God to people who weren't  listening and weren't changing. I imagine there were many times he went back  to say, but I'm called to do this, I can do no other. I have a good friend in  ministry, my best friend, we've been friends since we were in middle school  together years and years and years ago. And he became a pastor as well. We  went through college and seminary together, often tracking same classes. And  one time I was in a Bible study group with him, and was all pastors of large  churches. And we were talking about this book, which suggested that, you know, God created you to serve. Gave you the personality and gave you the gift that  you need to serve where you are. And let's talk about that. And so we talked  about it, but one of the things he said was, I think this is a bunch of hooey. He  said, he was a severe introvert is he was pastoring, a church of 1600 people.  But he was a severe introvert. He said, God had made me had given me the job  that fits my personality. So I would be in a greenhouse, planting plants and  growing flowers. But he said, I have a Master, I have a lord, I have a Savior,  whom I love. And he said, Go and so I go. I sense that somewhat how Jeremiah  responded to his call. I, sometimes it's difficult if you're in a preaching ministry,  you know, it's not always wonderful, it isn't always that people bend over 

backward and expressing gratitude for your deep thoughts or the way you  present them. Sometimes you can get people who don't like you and treat you  as an enemy. Then it's time to go back to my calling. I'm called to do this. So  Jeremiah, second person I want to look at is Samuel. Now you all know the  story from I Samuel 3, where Samuel is this boy who has been given to the  temple by his, grateful mother, because she was barren, she prayed for a child  and had Samuel so he is put into the service of the tabernacle, in the Old  Testament. And then he's asleep one night, and he hears a calling. And the  calling is Samuel. And he thinks it's Eli, the priest. And so he runs to say, here,  why, what do you need, and said, I didn't say anything. Eli says, he goes back to sleep and happens again. Third time, Eli says, that happens again. Then you  say here am I Lord. And so that's the same. And he listens to God, and he  experiences a call to ministry and he's to deliver a message particularly to Eli,  the priest, and it's not a positive lesson. But here we're here to learn something  about Samuel's call into ministry, The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh. And  there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word, I Samuel 3:21. And so his calling was as a young boy. And later it says in one of the translations, English  translations later in the book of Samuel, that none of his words fell to the  ground. In other words, God made him effective because of his call into this  ministry of preaching. So third person is Isaiah. Isaiah had another different kind  of call into ministry. With Samuel, maybe you experienced a call as a child. I've  got friends who experienced that they grew up expecting to be pastors,  preachers, because that's such the call early on. For Isaiah. He was different.  He was a prophet of God, but his main calling came is recorded in Isaiah 6..  There you will remember, we're told that in the year King Uzziah died. I had this  vision, and it was the vision of God in heaven on his throne now. He hears the  angels, singing Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. He sees elders bowing down, he hears, He hears the music of Heaven going, and then these words,  then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go  for us? And I said, Here am I send me. Send me. Isaiah 6:8. Now He was  responding in a call to what he had seen. He had seen something of the  greatness and the power and the love of God. He had seen His power, but he'd  seen his mercy. He had seen his Grace. And so he was ready to respond. And  then response. Remember, an angel takes a cinder from from the altar before  God and brings it in, touches his lips and says, your clean. And then Isaiah says, here I am, here I am, send me send me. Now some of you may have gotten a  call that way. A person right near me is about 35 miles away, became a pastor  because his life was messed up. He was involved with gangs in the city of  Holland, Michigan, and he was married and he's getting older, and he had a  child and his wife finally said, you know, I'm done with you, if you don't change  your life, you gotta go talk to somebody. And so he decided to go talk to a  pastor, and he went to a pastor, and the spirit was alive and working in that 

conversation. And he came out of that congregation to changed man. And he  was so grateful for seeing the power of God at work in his life, to take away the  desire for drugs. And I'm not saying those always that way, and those kinds of  things, but just healed him, restored him created in him a new person. And as a  result, he said, I want to tell people about this God. So sometimes our call  comes that way. Here's an artist's rendition of what he might have seen, it's  unbelievably hard to even imagine. The next person is Ezekiel. When you read  the book of Ezekiel you'll find that he gets a call. And it comes in chapter two, as he describes it. And again, it's a different kind of call. It's not the same thing as  anybody who's been before. But we read these words, Son of man, I don't know  how God appeared to him. But speaking to him, Son of man, I am sending you  to the Israelites to a Rebellious Nation that has rebelled against me, the people  to whom I'm sending your obstinate and stubborn say to them, This is what the  Sovereign Lord says. And so he's given this commission, to preach the Word, to  speak the word to these people who were obstinate, who had been rebelling  against God. And so he goes, and he's got a calling. And in fact, when you read  through the book of Ezekiel, you'll find it's a unique kind of thing, because he  has a series of visions. And a describes himself as a watchman on the walls,  you know, in that in that culture, you would have a walled in city, and the  watchman would stand on the top. In fact, they have several of them who would  paced back and forth. So we do cover a certain area, looking out to see if an  enemy was coming, or looking out to be able to forewarn people of disaster. And Ezekiel had that roll. He's saying, and the people, for the people of Israel says,  I'm watching, and I'm seeing disaster coming. In fact, God predicts it coming  from the north. And it does come and says so I'm the watchman and it gives  these wonderful visions, like the vision of the valley of dry bones that's  represented in the picture there, where he has this vision and, and a person  asks him, a person from Heaven asks him can these dry bones live and he  says, I don't know. And then they proceed to have life because God breathes life into it. So it's a it's a unique kind of call. But it was a call saying, I'm giving you  the words. You go. You bring testimony, you you tell my words to this obstinate  and Rebellious Nation. Another interesting call to ministry is the prophet Hosea.  As you look to Him, you find these words as hard as call chapter one, verse one, the word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri during the reigns of  Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz and Hezekiah kings of Judah, the word of the Lord that  came Hosea, we're not told how that happened. You know, I, I wish I knew, you  know, someday when I get to heaven, I want to watch the recordings of some of  these things that I hope exist in heaven. How did that happen? How did all of a  sudden Hosea know that he was getting a word from the Lord. But his calling  was very unique in preaching, in that his life was going to be a metaphor for  God's relationship to his people. And so he is told to marry a prostitute. And as  he marries the prostitute, he has children, and God tells them to give these 

children special names, special names that that refer to the relationship between God and His people and how it's been broken down by their disobedience. And  then his wife decides to leave him and she runs away and Hosea gets some  back, gets her back. He even pays the cost of a slave to get her back one time  but she runs away and he goes for deep love and commitment and calling from  God to go get her back over and over again. And that becomes a message to  the people about God. So it's a different kind of calling Not only was he  proclaiming the Word of God, but he was living it out in a particular way that was going to be going to become the model that would hopefully tweak the  consciences of people and draw them back to God. So we've looked at a lot of  one more prophet here, and that is two more prophets, but one of them Jonah,  you know the story of Jonah, right where God says, I want you to go to Ninevah, in fact here it is the word of the Lord came to Jonah, now again, one verse one,  how that happened, we don't know. But it said, go to that great city of Nineveh,  and preach against it, because it's wickedness has come up before me. So he's  kind of calling and you know, the story, he decided he didn't want to do it, and  decided he was going to rebel. And so he gets on a ship going the other way.  And you know, the story, there's this big storm. And finally, by a lot of the side of  the Jonah is the problem. And so he tells the sailors, you know, throw me  overboard, and that'll take care of it and great fish. So damn artist's rendering,  swallows him, spits them up on the shore, and he goes to Nineveh and  preaches repentance, and they repent. It's a powerful book. But it says  something about the call of God that maybe you are one of those who's been  ignoring the call of God, you've gotten it to preach. But you're not sure that this  is what you want to do. And so you go another direction. And the last church, I  served as a partner in ministry, you hadn't gone to seminary, you found a, what  we call a non traditional route into ministry, he'd been in education, he'd been a  teacher, he'd been a principal, in a church, or in school, excuse me, and, and  then finally decided that this call was something he couldn't ignore anymore. So  began preparing for three years through this non traditional education formation  system. And I was happy to have him as a partner. And when I retired from that  church, I he took over as the leadership pastor, It happened because for years,  he was able to or he was somebody who was ignoring God's calling in his life.  But now he's saying, This is what I'm called to do. Again, a different kind of  calling. And then the last Old Testament one is Elijah. Again, a unique kind of  call into ministry to be somebody who's presenting the Word of God to people.  You can read about it. In I Kings 19:19. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him, that's his call to ministry. Remember that Elisha was plowing the  field with 10 oxen and at that point 10 pairs of oxen, and so he had his big  businesses and big business in his day. And he's, he's driving one of them.  Apparently, there's nine others who are driving the other one. So this is a guy  who owns a business, he owns a farm. And yet, Elijah comes Elijah, who's just 

defeated the prophets of Baal and Asherah, on Mount Carmel, Elijah, who's  been to the mountain and met God, and God said, I'm getting a replacement  ready, go find Elisha, and goes and throws his cloak around him. And it's simply  a symbol of, I want you to join me. And Elisha burns his bridges. In other words,  he breaks up the yoke and oxen, that is the yoke that he's driving him with. He  killed the oxen, he makes a great big feast for people, and then he's off. But it all starts with that simple act of throwing a cloak around him. I know some people  who were called into ministry that way. Recently, we were in the church I last  served, we were looking for somebody to fill a key position, new position. And it  was full time. And we were looking for somebody who's going to expand our  outreach into the world in a meaningful way, and our outreach in our community  in a significant way. And one of the people who applied for it, and we interviewed him was somebody who had been in the business world for years and years and years. And so we asked him, How did you get into ministry, he'd been a very  effective in a very effective ministry in a large church in Indiana, not too far from  us here in Michigan. And he said it was simple. So this pastor came to him one  time, put his arm around him and said, I need you. I need you. The church had  grown in various ways. And this man had talents in administration and thinking  in a way of business, so that he was able to say Come join me, and the man did  and it changed his life. So these are writing Old Testament kinds of situations.  The New Testament we find people like John the Baptist, sorry, that slipped  down to the next line in the PowerPoint there. But John the Baptist is a New  Testament person. And he's rather unique too because he received his calling  into ministry before he was born. You remember the story about his father who's  a priest and he's in the temple and the angel of God appears to him and says,  You know what, you're gonna have a son. You're going to call him John, he's  going to go before the Lord. In fact. These are the words that are used, he would go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the  parents to their children and disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make  ready of people prepared the Lord Luke 1:17. That's his calling. But it wasn't  given to John, it was given to his parents. And then they had to make that  decision to bring this child up the way they were directed. And it's a beautiful  passage, when you read about how, you know, John's father is a deaf and mute, he can't talk until the day the baby's born. And he writes on this slate, his name  will be John when people are asking what the name will be. And he breaks forth  in a glorious moment of praise. And John the Baptist lives out that ministry. Now  the disciples had a calling, but theirs was very, very different. There was simply  Jesus saying, Come and follow me. And I'll make you fishers of men. These  fishermen who are on the shores of Galilee. And so they were with Jesus, and  they learn how to preach by being with Jesus. Now, the last person I want to  consider in the calling is Paul. Paul had a really unique calling in the ministry,  you remember, he is on the way to Damascus, he's a persecutor of the church. 

And all of a sudden, a bright light shows around shows around him and his  companions. And Paul was struck blind, and he's led back into the city of  Damascus, as Jesus has spoken to him and says, you know, you're kicking  against the goads. And he says, Who are you? And he says, I'm Jesus, the one  you're persecuting, because you're persecuting my church. And then Ananias is  told to go and heal this man, because he's seen you coming, he's praying, and  he seen a person coming. You go, and, you know, and Ananias said, Wait a  minute, I've heard about this man. I don't want to go. He's persecuting your  church. He said, no, I've shown him all that he's going to suffer for me, as he's  called to be the preacher to the Gentiles. So those are variety of kinds of  callings. What is your call, like? How do you experience a call into preaching?  Everyone is unique, I'll share mine. The first time I felt a calling in the ministry  was when I was in sixth grade. In fact here's the school that I attended, was then called Southwest Christian School. In the sixth grade, a woman who taught it  was Mrs. Friend, Ruth Friend, and I will never forget her. At that time in my life, I  wasn't thinking about what I was going to do with my life. Certainly, if it wasn't  going to be anything, I was planning it to be in music, because that's what I love. I have played a couple of different instruments I sang and I wanted to be  involved in music somewhere. But we went to Ruth Friend's class, day one, she  described everything we were going to cover for that year, and described it in  detail. And she says, you know, if you're in this class, you are not going to be  able to do this class without at least one hour of homework every night. And I'm  going to expect it of you, I'm going to send you home with homework, so that at  least one hour every night, you are learning beyond what I give you in this  classroom to learn and it was one of those Oh man, this is overwhelming all the  stuff we're going to learn this year. The tradition in her class was that every noon before we ate lunch, someone in the class would give a brief devotional or read  a passage of scripture and pray. And they decided to go alphabetically and  Ballast at that time, was the first name in the alphabet. So I get up on day one.  After we've heard this all morning, everything we're going to learn as a  homework we're going to have and I don't know how I knew it, but I was a pretty  snotty little kid. And this, this is the passage that I read from Ecclesiastes 12:11- 12. The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly  embedded nails given by one shepherd, be warned my son of anything in  addition to them, of making books, there is no end and much study. wearies the  body. Can you imagine? I went back to my desk. I prayed, went back to my  desk, sat down. And after a few minutes here came Mrs. Friend, I was near the  back of the room, my desk was and here comes Mrs. Friend, she was a big  woman, at least in my 11 or 12 year old mind, she certainly was at that point.  And I'm thinking, Oh, no, here we go. I'm in trouble. First day of school, I'm in  trouble. I'm going to end up in the principal's office. This is gonna be a tough  year. And so she comes, she leans down next to me so she can speak quietly 

so that only I hear and nobody else hears. And her words were, she said, Have  you ever thought of becoming a preacher? I thought at that moment, that you're  crazy. I said to her, no, I hadn't thought of that. My image of preachers was not  

good at that point. They, you know, they talked Like they had steeples stuck in  their throat. And they were irrelevant. And I learned to not pay attention in  church because I didn't think they were very effective. I couldn't listen. And I  thought about doing. No, but those words .never left me. It was a sense of  maybe, maybe, maybe. And later on a few years later, when I was in high  school, we had kind of a revival in the school that I attended, where there was  an altar call, given one day by a group of kids who came from another school to  talk about how their lives changed. When they quit asking what do I want to do  with my life and began asking what does God want me to do with my life, and  they challenged us to do the same. And they invited us forward for prayer. And I  went along with about 150 people, kids, high school kids. And as a result of that  day, we started a Thursday night worship time, we called it the happening, the  school was gracious, they opened up the school. So we could we could use the  facility. And we would worship together, we break up into small Bible study  groups, and then we would gather back together and close the time with singing  and prayer. And that experience, I found it in several different groups that I lead  small groups, you know, it wasn't the same group every week? But several  people said, Have you ever thought of going into ministry of preaching because  when you talk about the Word of God, it becomes clear to me? No, I haven't  found that. But I began thinking I made a, unfortunately, I thought I can make a  deal with God. And I made the deal by saying, Okay, God, if this is the direction  you want me to go, I want to go to music. But if you want me to go that direction, I will go, I will be obedient. But you got to provide the means to do that  financially. Because this means a lot of schooling. If I'm gonna go all the way  through seminary at that point, it means a lot of money. So God, I'll go, but you  have to make it possible. By His grace. He did. And seven, eight years later, I  graduated from seminary and began ministry. So what what is your call, like? Is  it that of a child to see a someone preaching. And you think, I want to do that.  And a friend who experienced a call that way ever since he was a child, another  friend that I know of, as a child had his mother kept, his mother kept telling him  he was going to be a preacher, and encourage people ask him, tell him when he thinks he's going to be. He said, Boy, I'm so manipulative and all that stuff. But  when he got a little older, into his high school and college years, he began to  think about that. And it was that child's sense of this is what I'm supposed to do.  Maybe you received an invitation to preach, and you've done it. And you didn't  think it was your gift, but it felt right. And so you're feeling a calling to engage in  that more deeply. Do it. I told you about the young man on our staff who is called to worship leadership and, and took a course in preaching. So we had to  arrange for him to preach at least one time during that period of time, that he 

was in that class. And he preached, it was fantastic. I went to him the next day,  and I said, Really, you don't feel a calling to preach. It was a powerful message.  And it was well done. It was well written, it was culturally relevant. It was, it was  

good. Now, he's preaching regularly, once to twice a month, as part of the  rotation of preacher team that exists in the church that I just left. Maybe it's a  burden for you, that you just see someone that's going the wrong way. You  know, maybe you're like an Ezekiel, as I got to give this message to these  people who are wandering, or maybe just said, somebody said to you try it, and  see, what is your call, like? In my tradition, we talked about an inner Call and an  outer call as you get the inner call. But that doesn't mean you're called to be the  preacher unless you get an outer call somebody else in the church, the church  recognizes that you're getting an outer inner call right now pray that God makes  it an outer one, too. It makes that clear. Or look, as we look, anytime for God's  will, the three words that are very important, you know, how do you find God's  Will? Well you search the Bible, and you'll find that God will make his word come alive for you in certain ways. And sometimes you will experience the call of God  that way. When I left the my first church to go to California, a long way away  from parents and kids, grandparents and that sort of thing. It was with a sense of the Bible speaking to me because I was spiritual father to many in that little  church I pastored, but I had the sense of it was time. And that came through  studying the Bible and hearing in in the book of Acts are Paul saying and who  am I, I, somebody planted somebody else watered somebody said that to the  church in Corinth. And who am I? I'm just one of the workers. And so I felt free to leave and I felt the adventure of going to California. And what about a burden?  And maybe you could he'll give you the burden if those three are lined up. That's God's call in your life. So the bearings mean the circumstances? Is there a call  to preach somewhere? What are the circumstances that you are facing? And  then the burden is, what is God calling you to say and do if you do these things,  if you're seeking the call of God, it will make your preaching more effective,  because it won't be coming from you. It will be coming from the one who gives  the word of the Lord came to, as we read so many times in this session. So I  urge you to explore your call. In fact, if I can give you an assignment, I want you  to take just a few moments to sit down and say what did I first think about  preaching the word of God? How is that lived out of my life? How has God  continued to give me the opportunities to do that, where, where have I seen this  call confirmed that God is and use what I have said to the power of the Spirit, to  bring change in life and change in people's circumstances. And then spend a  moment thanking God for the calling because it is truly an honorable and  delightful one. And we'll talk next time about beginning that process of preparing  to preach. So see you next time.