Encouraging a Call to Ministry Starts at Home
A child’s attitude toward ministers and ministry is shaped early, often before anyone officially talks with them about the future. This article urges families and church members to model respect, prayer, and care for ministers, and to face their own fears when a child senses a call to vocational Christian service.
- Respect for ministers at home helps young people value ministry as important work.
- Parents may struggle most when the call involves missions or a faraway foreign land.
- Church members should treat staff like family in how they speak, decide, and support.
By Mark A. Taylor
Recruiting ministers starts at home your home. That’s part of the message in Phyllis Fox’s article this week.
A child’s view of ministry is formed early
A child’s attitude toward ministers and ministry is formed long before a youth leader or Christian college recruiter talks with him about his future. When you respect your ministers and value the work they do, you make it possible for the young person in your home to do the same. When you pray for your ministers with your family, every member believes the minister’s work is important. When you restrict your criticism of ministers to conversations out of your child’s earshot, you protect him or her from damaging misconceptions about ministry.
When the call leads far from home
But even Christian leaders who have supported their congregation’s ministry may balk when their own children feel a call to vocational Christian service especially when the child considers mission work in a faraway foreign land.
Some time ago a missionary to Brazil wrote me about this problem. “Lack of encouragement from parents and relatives is probably the biggest factor preventing young people from moving to the mission field,” he said. “I can remember a very good friend of ours who told me she certainly didn’t want her daughter moving away to a distant land.”
Most parents can understand how she feels. It’s normal to worry that a child on the mission field will suffer in a below average standard of living. It’s natural to fear for his or her well being in a hostile environment. When our children decide to cross cultural barriers with the gospel message, the biggest test of faith may be our own.
But it’s more concerning when we harbor those fears about ministry in general. Do we suspect low pay for our child because we know our minister is underpaid? Do we fear hostility because we’ve seen the pettiness our own minister has been forced to endure?
Every church member, and certainly every church leader, should pretend from time to time that those on their church’s staff are their own sons or daughters or cousins or parents. How would we treat them? How would we talk about them? What decisions about them would please us, and which would make us sad?
When we think about ministers like we think about family, we will have made a big step toward helping our family think about ministry as a personal calling. Then we’ll be making progress. For many more families must encourage their own toward vocational ministry if the need for ministers in the next decades will be met.
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
