1) why do people want to be ministers?
2) This cartoon seems to suggest that it is only for perks and status! Then why is there competition for portfolios?
Answers
Answer:
1)I didn’t particularly want to become an ordained minister at first. In fact it was far from my mind.
I had been a Christian for about 15 months, had previously had hardly any experience of ministers apart from visiting clergy at school, and that was about that.
One day, as I walked to work, feeling disappointed that Engineering wasn’t my thing, I wondered if God had anything to say about it. This was a new idea to me.
I didn’t hear a voice, but I had a thought that was so firm, and so different from other thoughts that it was like someone had called to me, one word, “Ministry.”
As a stammerer, I couldn’t even imagine being in any career that involved public speaking. I had had to speak at times in public and became almost incoherent. But I said something like the Parisian waitress said to my wife and me when we asked for iced coffee, “If you want, we can do.”* I quickly added, “But this could just be a subjective impression, some kind of unrecognised wish. I will need confirmation this coming weekend, otherwise I will assume it is just some strange whim.”
I got through the entire morning service that Sunday and was about to breathe a sigh of relief and go home when the pastor bailed me up and said, “I believe you have pastoral gifts: I want you to help me.”
Even though I was rejected when I applied for acceptance as a ministerial candidate, I couldn’t let go of that sense of call. Over the next 19 years, if ever I moved away from that goal, I felt disappointed and discouraged, and whenever I seemed to move toward it, I felt I was on track.
One Friday I was thinking about the staff I managed in the Town Planning department at the council I then worked for, and reflected on how often they came to me to talk over their personal issues. I said to God, “If that is the only ‘church’ I ever pastor — that little group of planners — I will do it.”
The next day, there was a lot of tension and unpleasantness between my wife and me, and I couldn’t sleep. I sat up until well after midnight, writing my thoughts, and I kept coming down to the conclusion that I felt called into ministry, and the reason I was avoiding doing things my wife wanted me to do was that I felt they would only take me further from that goal.
The next evening (and there were several events during the day which confirmed my belief) I told my wife. She was startled, sat up in bed, and, instead of saying, “I will divorce you!” — as she had perhaps not jokingly threatened she would do if I undertook any more studies — she said, “You are right!”
Though it was about six weeks after the deadline for applications for admission to the 1983 academic year, the NSW Churches agreed to accept a late application; although all places for interviews in 1982 by the acceptance committee were filled, someone dropped out and I could be added to the list for the final meeting; although applications required reading and essay writing, I had leave pre-arranged since the beginning of the year, giving me plenty of time to do that; so I returned from my holidays approved (the previous Friday!) and ready to submit my resignation, and began studies in 1983 as an accepted ministerial candidate — therefore, exempt from fees.
Most of the people I went through theological college with had some sense of calling. Perhaps it was not something that came to them in so dramatic a way, but I would say that, without a sense of calling, it is something a person should not do.
Some suggest that pastors go into it for financial benefits. That would rarely be the case in Australia, though I suppose that might be true of one or two.
For me, I have to say that I have certainly been far worse off financially than I would have been as a senior Town Planner. I was actually non-stipendiary for 14-odd years while still undertaking pastoral work and working for a research company: for the first five years there, I earned less in dollar terms than I had in my final job in Town Planning. But I have to say that, as they say, “The Lord has provided.”
2)There is competition for some portfolios for better status, more power and for more extra earning and more importance among people and leaders.