My call to ministry

When I was growing up, I was never very interested in doing anything unless I already knew I was good at it.

When I was in junior high, I wanted to be a theater star, I wanted to be a famous singer. You see, I had auditioned for our junior high school musical and the director ranted and raved about my audition. "Where have you been? Why didn't you audition for the middle school production of Annie??" (I had planned to, but I wrote down the wrong date for the auditions. Whoops.) Side note: I was running for the cross country team at the time and I was super terrible at it. I immediately quit upon being cast in the musical. I thought I was brilliant. It turned out that I was mostly just good at being type-cast as the singing-but-not-dancing lead role, who was generally blonde, stupid, and had an annoying screechy voice. But I thought I could be a star. And I was for a little while in junior high. Eventually I realized that I wasn't brilliant and found something else to obsess over.

In high school, I took a TV production-type class. We went "on-air" to make announcements to the school every day, we storyboarded, wrote, filmed, and edited PSAs, commercials, and music videos. And I was pretty good at it. I loved dreaming up concepts and watching them come to life on our old school editing TVs. So I was obviously going to be a TV talking head when I grew up. I'd go to school for broadcasting or journalism and really find my stride.

After that class, I took the newspaper class and a speech-writing class. And I was pretty good at both. I guess to be more precise, I was decent at writing articles, I was a harsh editor, and I was great about inserting myself into the right place at the right time for great photos. My photo even made the front page of our monthly newspaper. In the speech-writing class, I always got great grades, and felt wonderful giving speeches or debating, no matter the topic. I knew I would either be a journalist or a speech writer for someone important.

This delusion continued into college where I was accepted into the Media, Marketing, and Communications Scholars program at Ohio State (thank you, writers of recommendation letters). But suddenly I was a tiny fish in a big huge pond. I wasn't that good at any of these things I'd tried. I could hold my own, but there was no way I was going to excel the way my classmates did. So, with speech-writing still in my heart, I moved on to something that I thought I would be good at-- American Political Science.

And I did excel in most of my political science classes. I was good at writing exactly how the professor wanted, I loved reading Leviathan and treatises, I could remember theories and arguments thoroughly. I had written so many research papers (my favorite kind-- I'm sick, I know) in high school, that I could knock one out in a day by college. So when I talked to my advisor about taking more classes and graduating early, I knew that I didn't need to try to do anything more than political science. I was good at it, so there was no need to add a second major or a minor even. Just political science.

All this, my history with only wanting to do things I'm already good at, is why I knew I was called to ministry. Not by people, not by my own ego, not by society, but by God.

You see, I'm not that good at most of the things involved in ministry. Relationships have always been really hard for me. Small talk is excruciating. I'm an okay preacher, but only because of hard work and a lot of focus throughout seminary. I have a deep and abiding love for God's people, but I'm sometimes harsh and abrasive, impatient with imperfection and the slow laboring coming-of-the-Kin-dom. Teaching is fun for me, but I usually get way too nerdy and don't realize when I've lost people. Honestly, I would probably be a much better church administrative assistant than a pastor.

So the only way I can explain my call to ministry is in these terms: God put it in my heart. To humble me. To stretch me. To mold me. To kill and resurrect me. To prune me. My whole life, I only ever tried things that I already knew I was good at. It was never really my idea to enter seminary or ministry. After all, I spent most of the first year sitting across from Daniel in the dorm hallway, sobbing that I was no good at any of it and that I didn't belong there. (Did I mention that I'm pretty good at being dramatic?) That's how I know my call is legit. That's how I know this is where I am supposed to be. Not because I am good at it (I'm totally not), but because God has put it in my heart so obviously and fully that I honestly can't imagine doing anything else.