Somerset, Kentucky

Probationary Elder, Kentucky Annual Conference

Student, Duke Divinity School

The Bible is full of the stories of the creative ways in which God calls people into ministry.   One of my favorites is the story of Nehemiah, because I can identify with his call.  Nehemiah does not set out to be a prophet or a leader, but rather he sees a need, prays, and spends himself in meeting the need. 

 

As the Holy Spirit infused my home church, and my own life, with new vitality during my high school years, I began to see how people and places needed Jesus.  In situations all around me, at church and at school, I saw the world’s need of God’s love and justice.  Seeing the needs led me to pray and to take action.  Seeing and meeting needs, doing all I could for God’s mission in the world, led me to one thing after another, one place after another.  Eventually, I began to see that this had been God’s way of calling me into ministry.

 I started began to understand that serving God was the best way, the only eternally meaningful way, to spend my life.  My young age meant that I had the opportunity to fully give my life through ordained ministry.  I am pursuing God’s calling on me to the ordained ministry because I see with hope the church’s need for passionate leadership and the opportunities through which the Spirit can use The United Methodist Church to transform the world.

 

My calling may not have come audibly from God, as some expect, but God has confirmed my calling time and time again.  In leading Vacation Bible School in Colorado, during a candle-lit worship service at Lindsey Wilson College, on a mission trip in rural Romania, and in hundreds other times and places, God has opened my eyes to see needs, the Spirit has drawn me to go and do, and Christ has assured me that this adventure is God’s will for me. 

 

How about you?  Have you seen the need the world has for God’s transformative grace?  Have you seen the church’s need for Spirit-empowered leaders?  Will you go and do, meet the need, realizing that this may turn out to be God’s way of calling you?