r why we need to embrace the physical—not just the spiritual.

By Jerry Root

I was once part of an ordination council but wouldn’t sign off on the candidate because I didn’t think he was adequately prepared. He’d neither led anyone to Christ nor discipled anyone. Also, when asked how he would deal with a couple on the verge of divorce, he said, “I’ll teach the Word.” This was his answer to nearly every question. There was a tinge of pretense about him.

Nearing the end, everybody knew the candidate presently wasn’t suited for the ministry. To make this point, one pastor pointed his finger at the guy and asked, “Have you ever lusted after anyone other than your wife?” The candidate said no. Everyone (all men) in the room knew he was lying, but we also knew that the pastor had created an unsafe, confrontational environment.

This scenario pointed to the sexual myth prevalent in the church: Christians can’t have sexual desire. This is because the church confuses sexual desire with lust.

The candidate should’ve been able to say that he’s had sexual desire for a lot of people without feeling accused. After all, sexual desire isn’t any more lust than hunger is gluttony. Lust is predatory; it figures out ways to make it happen. Lust takes advantage of people.

Free to risk
At the core, the church’s theological understanding of sexual desire is little more than Gnosticism: the spiritual is good, and the physical is bad. The church is practicing a neo-Gnosticism that denies the pleasures of the flesh. And not just sex. It denies any fleshly struggle, like anger or pride.

It also fails to see the power of the incarnation that deals with fleshly abuses. Theologically, we need to acknowledge that God made the flesh, Jesus came in the flesh, and we’ll be raised with the flesh.

The book of Galatians clarifies the problem: when the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, you’ll have problems. God made us to work holistically, but in a fallen world we need help. Forgiveness for failure is the freedom to get better and the ability to take risks. But if you create pretentious environments, like the pastor did at the ordination council, it doesn’t happen.

I had a student tell me he was on the Internet every night looking at porn sites and was confused by his feelings. I reminded him that God wired him with these desires and that we should worship him for making us that way.

We then talked about spiritual disciplines to address his behavior. I told him to share his struggle with his roommates; my guess was that these guys were all struggling with it, too.

Two weeks later, he reported that each man was struggling with it and had committed to help each other unpack these feelings daily. Today he’s now a pastor, and he’s told me that he hasn’t looked at pornography since we talked and that he and his friends are still encouraging one another.

In touch with the struggle and with God
Our Christian subculture often marginalizes the struggle in life and the struggler. A lot of churches don’t know what to do with the recently divorced, the recently widowed, the couple who just had a baby with Down’s syndrome, the alcoholic, or the person struggling with a sex addiction.

If you attend a church where the struggler is marginalized, the implication is that you have to be perfect. And because nobody is perfect, it breeds pretense. This pretense gives birth to Pharisee-ism, which I think systematizes the church’s dysfunction. Such dysfunction is out of touch with real life.

Because of this, people may begin to hide their real struggles. Anesthetizing behaviors—alcohol, drug, and sex addiction, eating disorders, and workaholism—don’t make us better, but they help us, temporarily, with the pain.

We must become like the Old Testament character Jacob and struggle with God. If I withdraw from the struggle, I won’t discover God’s grace. I’m less teachable, less honest, and less humble. Brokenness is a good thing, spiritually, though not highly valued. By facing the struggle, we embrace the value of Jesus’ incarnation—that He came to save a struggling world. That means he has come to save us.

By Jerry Root, assistant professor of Christian Education at Wheaton College.

ill Willimon on finding God's call for your life.
An interview with Duke University's Dean of the Chapel

It's one thing to feel called to seminary, but that's often only the beginning of a long struggle to discover what God's call means for your life.

No one knows this better than Duke University’s Dean of the Chapel Will Willimon, who has witnessed countless seminarians grapple with this very issue. In an interview with Ministry Mentor, Willimon encourages seminarians to remember that calling is all about the Caller—not the being called.

Ministry Mentor: How do you understand the call to serve God in full-time ministry?

Will Willimon: Vocation is a miraculous gift from God. I resist the model of calling that argues you have certain gifts and the world has certain needs—so that's where you find your calling. The Christian pastoral ministry is too difficult unless God has made you do it. We must say, first, that God is beckoning us in the direction of pastoral work.

MM: So it's more about it being God's idea than about our giftedness?

WW: I think we speak too nicely about the word vocation. In the Scripture, vocation is something that everyone tries to avoid. Everything is great until we meet God. Vocation isn’t about what we need to do; it’s about what God needs doing.

I worry about students who are overwhelmed with their field education and thus wonder whether church work is where they’re supposed end up. I also worry about students who say they’re happy with their work and calling.

Moses is a more typical example of ministry. Some things go well; other times they don’t. Sometimes he complains, sometimes he doesn't.

MM: How do we root our call more solidly in God?

WW: By continual renewal. The call is usually not as interesting as the recall. I wish I could tell seminarians just to pray more and convince them that they really, really need to be here.

But we need to remember that our ministry doesn’t depend on our savvy techniques, but rather on God saying, “I can still use you; I have some tasks for you.” Those called to ministry face a frightening kind of dependency and fragility that causes us to continually return to God and the basics of why we entered ministry in the first place.

Always remember it was and is God’s idea, not yours.

MM: Have you ever counseled a student to leave seminary because you felt he or she didn't have the gifts?

WW: I am not dumb enough to do this.

I had one student who turned in papers late and wasn’t punctual. I told her that if she wanted to be a pastor she’d have to get her act together.

She told me to “back off.” She acknowledged that she was completely ill-suited for this work, but that it was God’s doing and that I should take it up with God if I questioned his judgment! I had to admit she was right.

We have to keep refurbishing the miraculous quality of ministry.

MM: Have you ever come across a seminarian whose call wasn’t genuinely from God?

WW: Duke is a secular, high-powered, motivated atmosphere, and people stumble in and say they’re “feeling called to Duke Divinity School.”

I often will ask a bunch of questions: What is your church background? How is your relationship with your mother? I search for an anthropological explanation for why they want to go to seminary, and I can’t come up with any other reason than a calling by God.

When I talk to students about their vocation, it renews my faith in the risen Christ. These are testimonies to the power of God to reach into our lives and use us.

MM: Why is it so hard for us to acknowledge that our call is, first off, all about God?

WW: The modern world is rooted in personal control—a life without God.

Students will often say that they need to discover God’s plan for their life. They wonder what “God’s plan” really means. They believe God has a plan, but yet they’ve never seen it.

In seminary, some of our ideas of providence break down the idea of “God's plan for our life.” I see people who leave seminary because they know that ministry isn’t for them. They need to know that God has a plan for them in ministry; it just might not be as a pastor.

I respect people for the courage and insight when, after taking my pastoral ministry class, they realize that it is not their calling. I believe that God is so much more mobile than any of our plans.

nly God needs to have all the answers.

By Rick Penney

My stomach churned as one of my pastors asked me if I would teach my adult Sunday-school class in a few weeks. I was intimidated by the thought of speaking in front of my peers. But I knew that I wanted to grow in my ability to teach, so I accepted.

The week before I was to teach was marked by apprehension and anxiety as I procrastinated in my preparation. By Friday night, my stage fright had reached a fever pitch: I lost sleep, I fretted over how I would present the material, and in my nervousness, neither my wife nor I enjoyed the weekend.

“How do pastors go through with this on a regular basis?” I asked my wife, Amber. She told me that teaching would begin to feel more natural with time. I knew then that if Amber was wrong, I might as well forget the thought of being a pastor.

Even as my young family and I were making all the necessary lifestyle adjustments associated with becoming a full-time seminary student, I was still uncertain if I would ever be able to become a pastor. At that point, I had only taught the Bible in front of a group once or twice, and my confidence had improved very little. During my undergrad years, I actually avoided taking speech classes, opting for an unpopular criminology class in its place.

What I discovered in grad school, however, was that before I could get any better at teaching the Bible, I had to improve my ability to study it first. The biggest source of my anxiety was that I felt like I had to make up stuff that would sound wise to my audience. I was only liberated from my fears when I realized that my job was to present what God had already said. Since it was already all there in his Word, there was no need for me to make anything else up. My task had changed from an inventor to a discoverer, and I found God’s Word rich in treasure that I would never be able to exhaust in a whole lifetime of preaching.

Amber was also right. The more I taught, the less anxiety I experienced.

My stage fright was replaced by a healthy awe of the task of preaching, coupled with the realization of my own inadequacy. If you would have told me several years ago that I would soon be able to do the job of a teaching pastor, I would have told you it would take a miracle. While I certainly would have desired it, I just thought it was a gift that God had reserved for other people besides me. But as I have taught on a regular basis this past year, the body of Christ has affirmed me and encouraged me to pursue my desires to be a pastor. So now as I continue as a messenger of God’s grace, I am even more keenly aware of my own need for his grace, which enables me to do his will.