Hello, Goodbye: How Do You Know?, Part 2

In yesterday's installment of this series, I began to deal with the question of how I knew it was God's will for me to move from the congregation I've pastored for the past seventeen years onto Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. I made the point that at one level, I don't know if it agrees with the will of God. That's where faith, trust in God, comes in.

I went on to say that one important indicator that this move may be God's will for our household right now is that, as is often true of God's calls on our lives, it takes me from a place where I've been comfortable.

But I think that there have been plenty of other indicators that this is what God wants.

• There's the belief that began forming in my wife and me several years ago, after we'd prayed, discussed, and reflected, that it might be best for Friendship to have a new leader to take the congregation to the next level.
• There's the way in which the green lights for going to Logan flashed after Friendship's financial condition improved, I would say miraculously, this summer. That meant that I could leave Friendship without a sense of guilt or regret.
• There's the sense of both comfort and challenge that Ann and I had when we met with the people from the Call Committee at Saint Matthew. Comfort with their faith, sincerity, and good humor. Challenge in that we would be going to a congregational setting that we hadn't had the primary hand in constructing. That appealed to us.
• There's also the sense that I had grown in ways that might be useful at Saint Matthew.
  

More convincing to me than the impressions, thoughts, reflections, and feelings that Ann and I experienced as we contemplated saying, "Goodbye" to Friendship and saying, "Hello" to Saint Matthew, though, was the reaction of Saint Matthew's Call Committee.

Among the many solid teachings of the Lutheran movement, I think, is their insistence on the dual nature of any call. It's not enough for a man or a woman to declare that they've received a call to ministry. Jimmy Ray Bob may believe that he has a call to start a congregation. But unless others in the Church universal, led by the Holy Spirit, have reached the same conclusion, Jimmy Ray has no business becoming a pastor. And that's true whether Jimmy Ray has a doctorate in Theology or sells cumquats at the local produce stand.

The church, be it an individual congregation, a church-related organization, a synod, or a seminary, must sense that the candidate for call is the right person for it. Jesus Christ has made us part of a Body called the Church, each of us having our part to play and each accountable to one another.

The early church recognized this from the beginning. The New Testament book of Acts recounts the early history of the Church. In chapter 6, there's an account of the first church fight. The apostles, the rulers of the Church appointed by Jesus, could, I guess, have simply appointed people to make sure the distributions among the church's widows were done equitably. Instead, they got the rest of the Church involved in the process, an indication of the importance Christians have always attached to mutual accountability and the belief that the call has a dual nature. (Read Acts 6 here.)

From the moment I interviewed at Saint Matthew, honestly to my surprise, the Call Committee and eventually, the overwhelming majority of the congregation, clearly wanted me to be there. I don't believe that had anything to do with my virtues or qualifications. Instead, I believe that the Holy Spirit was sending the same signals to the congregation that He was sending to Ann and me. It comforts and encourages me to consider that this impression about God's will wasn't just Ann's and my impression.

But you know what? We could be wrong. And that's okay. I'll have more to say about that in the next installment.