Church Leadership: The “Call” to Ministry (1)

In dealing with Biblical Church leadership, facing another issue is unavoidable, namely, the call to ministry, that is, God’s call to “full-time ministry” as one’s vocation. This is something that has increasingly been questioned in the last three decades. More and more church leaders deny the distinct “call” of God. Many say this is “too subjective;” they insist that ministry is more by personal choice or by the choice of the church.

To that we say first, of course it’s subjective, because it’s what God is doing in a man’s heart and mind to compel him to the ministry. This is the precedent we wee throughout Scripture. Second, and more important, it most certainly is not by personal choice or the choice of a church. It is God’s choice alone. Yes, a local church is to train and ordain men to the ministry and thereby show that it recognizes their call and qualifications. But the actual call is God’s and He works it out between Himself and His servants.

As we noted in Ephesians 4:8—[Christ] ascended up on high, he . . . gave gifts unto men—the words He gave literally mean “He Himself gave,” that is, He, and no one else, gave, and gives, these gifts. In short, it is Christ alone Who calls to ministry.

A pivotal verse here is I Timothy 3:1: This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. While context (vs. 2-7) lists the absolutely specific qualifications for leadership, verse 1 deals with the divine call. This verse has been terribly abused! Desire has been twisted to say that anyone can preach or teach as a “side‑line” just because he “wants to.” But the Greek words behind desire and desireth say something quite different. Desire is orego, which means “to stretch.” One Greek authority tells us: “to stretch one’s self out in order to grasp something; to reach after or desire something.” Another adds that metaphorically the idea is to “long after, try to gain, be ambitious (in a benign manner).” So, this means far more than what we usually mean by desire. It speaks of a deep longing, a complete disregard for all else. This is exactly what the call to the ministry is: a desire to preach that disregards all else one could do. There is in this a sense of restraint; one can do nothing else.

How well the great Charles Spurgeon said it in one of his lectures to pastoral students: “In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others what God has done to our own souls . . . “Do not enter the ministry if you can help it,” was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or lawyer, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way; he is not the man in whom dwells the Spirit of God in its fulness, for a man so filled with God would utterly weary of any pursuit but that for which his inmost soul pants.” Put another way: If a man can do anything else and be satisfied with it, and have peace in it, then he is not called to preach.

Desireth (epithumeo), then, means “to long after, to have a passionate compulsion.” This word often speaks of something bad and lustful, but the word good and the surrounding context make it clear that this is for good rather than for evil. In contrast to orego, (which doesn’t imply inner motive only outward pursuit) this verb refers to the inward feeling of desire. So, taken together, the two terms describe the man who outwardly pursues the ministry because of a driving compulsion on the inside. THAT is the call to ministry.

All this was true of the Apostle Paul. All of II Corinthians 5 is about the compulsion of the ministry. In verse 14 Paul says, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Even more pointed is I Corinthians 9:16 where Paul writes, “Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” This kind of desire transcends mere human desire; it is placed by God; it is given according to His grace. This is not any man’s idea, not something that he desires before the call, not something he chooses to do because it’s as good as anything else. Rather, it is something God does in a man’s life, and that man can do nothing else. A mere human de­sire will fade, as we see more and more today, if a man does what the Scriptures demand of one in the ministry. We’ll conclude these thoughts next time.