|
Home > Isaiah Project > Call Stories
Call Stories
Call StoriesEver wondered what a call to ministry can look like? They are rarely ever the same but sometimes it helps to know how other people have answered the call to ordained ministry as you discern what ministry God is calling you to embark on. Perhaps you will recognize some similarities to your own life or maybe you can see where God might be working through your situation just as he did with some of these people. Whatever the case, enjoy reading the call stories of some of our pastors serving in Kentucky.
I was raised in a Christian home and had the benefit of growing up in the church, so becoming a Christian was a very natural decision for me. However, answering the call to ministry proved to be a bit more of a struggle. I first felt God calling me into ministry when I was sixteen years old. Our church had a revival and Rev. Sewell Woodward, who is a retired minister in our conference and still serving a church in retirement, gave a call to ministry at the end of one of his sermons and I responded. Over the next few years I went to college expecting to go to seminary but I was not sure what God was calling me to do.
I graduated from college in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War. Like so many young men of my age during that era I fully expected to be drafted into the Army upon graduation. The spring of my senior year I went for my induction physical and failed it. I was completely uncertain about what to do next. I applied to Duke Divinity School because I still was struggling with the notion of ministry. I attended Duke Divinity School for less than one semester and felt completely like a fish out of water. The experience had everything to do with me and my struggle with ministry and very little to do with Duke. I left there and went to the University of Kentucky where I completed a Master’s Degree in Higher Education Administration and went to work for the University of Kentucky, College of Medicine. Three years later I took a job at the University of Alabama working as Director of Medical Education for the Health Sciences Program in Tuscaloosa.
By this time I was married to Jennifer and we had two children but the sense of God calling never completely left me. In fact every Sunday when I went to church, there was that still small voice challenging me to think about doing something else with my life. Although we were very happy in Alabama and had been far more successful that I had any right to be, I still could not get away from God’s call upon my life. I shared with my wife what was going on within me and together we decided that I would give seminary one more chance. I went to Lexington Theological Seminary and the rest is history. It has been my privilege now to serve as a United Methodist minister for 31 years, 13 of then as a Bishop of the Church. I am one of the most unlikely persons to have been elected Bishop but it has given me a deep sense of joy to serve. I have been blessed beyond measure.
John Kalz, 24
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?
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2006 The Kentucky Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, all rights reserved.