What Made YOu Answer the Call to Ministry?
What was it like, being called to ordained ministry? It certainly wasn’t a matter of deciding I wanted to be a minister and working to meet that goal. Quite the contrary, I was already doing what I wanted to do.
I was finishing my fourth year as a graduate student and teaching assistant. Not long after that I began to experience what I can only describe as a spiritual crisis. It wasn’t heavy or agonizing, just a quiet, unsettling conviction that my work needed somehow to be more of a “ministry.” Starting with my conversion to Christian faith in the late 1970s, I always had an active prayer life. I entered into prayer more fervently, taking long walks, making a retreat to a monastery of Benedictine Sisters. By early June, I was convinced I was being called to be a pastor.
I took a leave of absence from the English department at Case. Fresh in the conviction that I was called, I was sure the actual ordination process would be short and sweet. I already had a master’s degree in religious education. It would be a simple matter of appointment to a church, one more year at seminary, deacon’s orders in another year, elder’s orders two years later … Hey! Finally, in my late 40s, I had found my niche! It would just be a matter of jumping through the hoops.
My ordination process took almost 10 years. During the long haul toward elder’s orders I would be “continued” twice. But carrying me through all of that would be the conviction that I was doing what I was in fact born to do: serving as pastor in a local church. That proved to be all I needed — student pastor, local pastor, probationer, elder, whatever the label. I have never looked back.
Rev. Kenneth Moody-Arndt, Church of the Master, Canal District
