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THE MENNONITE BRETHREN PRACTICE OF DISCERNING A “CALL TO MINISTRY”: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF MENNONITE BRETHREN WOMEN
M.A. THESIS
BY
KATHY MCCAMIS
Submitted to the Faculty of Biblical and Theological Studies
The Graduate School of Theology and Ministry at Canadian Mennonite University
Winnipeg, Manitoba 2015
ii
This thesis written by Kathy McCamis was read and examined by the following: Thesis Advisor: Irma Fast Dueck First Reader: Andrew Dyck Second Reader: Rodney Reynar The thesis was successfully defended on April 14, 2015. Director of the Graduate School of Theology and Ministry: Karl Koop
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CONTENTS
Abstract iv Introduction 1 Chapter One. 4 Why Study the Call Stories of Mennonite Brethren Women? Chapter Two. 22 Methodological Foundations: Practical Theology and Qualitative Research. Chapter Three. 32 A Brief Historical Survey of the Call to Ministry Chapter Four. 53 The Call to Ministry: Hearing Women’s Stories. Chapter Five. 75 Discerning a Call to Ministry as a Mennonite Brethren Practice: Toward Renewed Faithfulness. Conclusion 96 Bibliography 100
iv
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to
ministry. The discernment of a call to ministry is typically described as having two parts: an
external invitation to consider vocational pastoral ministry, and an inner affirmation of this
call. However, many Mennonite Brethren women report that in their experience the
external and internal aspects of the call to ministry do not neatly correspond with one
another. Therefore, attending to the experiences of women can provide a resource for a
critical examination of the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to ministry.
Unstructured interviews were completed with six Mennonite Brethren women who have
discerned a call to ministry. The narratives provided by these women were then examined
in light of Scripture and tradition. Three key themes emerged. First, the discernment of a
call to ministry must be located within the context of the church body, because it serves as
a means of recognizing the gifts that Christ has placed within the church in order to build
up the body of Christ. Second, the practice of discerning a call to ministry nurtures an
understanding of ministry as an embodied response to the love and empowerment of God.
Finally, discerning a call to ministry affirms the significant role of leaders within the body
of Christ and encourages careful discernment in selecting those to whom authority will be
given.
1
INTRODUCTION
Within the Mennonite Brethren Church, it is common to hear people speaking about
having a “call to ministry.” Typically, it is those in vocational ministry—pastors or
missionaries in particular—who are asked to describe how they were called to ministry.1 It
is often considered essential that those who are placed in positions of pastoral leadership
be able to provide an account of the call that led them to their position. Sometimes the call
has come through the encouragement of others, often referred to as “shoulder tapping.” In
many instances, the recipient of the call describes an initial reluctance to accept the
leadership he or she is being invited to consider assuming. At other times, the call has come
through the appointment of an individual by the congregation.
My own questions about the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to
ministry initially arose out of my own experience. As a woman who has been in pastoral
ministry within the Mennonite Brethren church, I found myself listening to the call stories
of other (mostly male) pastors with the awareness that the typical Mennonite Brethren
narrative of the marriage of an invitation to consider church leadership with an internal
affirmation of this call was very different than my own call to ministry. My own experience
of a call to ministry began as an internal call nurtured by prayer and an awareness of
something inside of me that came fully alive when I was engaged in the work of preaching
and pastoring people. This internal call was only slowly affirmed by the church; along with
that affirmation came many questions from the church about whether the discernment of
1 Although missionary call stories have also been a particular emphasis within the Mennonite Brethren Church, this thesis will focus on the experience of discerning a call to ministry specifically as it relates to those in pastoral ministry within North American congregations.
2
such a call by a woman was ‘biblical.’ I found myself wondering if talking about a call to
ministry was necessary at all, and if so, what made it so?
It was these questions that led me to ask what might be learned by reflecting on the
Mennonite Brethren call to ministry in light of the stories of other women who had also
discerned a call to ministry. If, as the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches
has resolved, women may be affirmed for positions of church leadership up to and
including that of lead pastor, might attending to the stories of women who have themselves
lived with the practice of discerning a call to ministry lead to insights and questions that
might enrich the current Mennonite Brethren understanding of this practice and even lead
to increased faithfulness in its engagement?
This thesis examines the practice of discerning a call to ministry within English-‐
speaking Mennonite Brethren congregations in Canada. By understanding the call to
ministry as a practice of the church and by examining it in light of its articulated theology,
its historical development, and the experiences of those who have engaged with and given
much thought to this practice, this thesis attempts to articulate how the practice of
discerning a call to ministry bears important wisdom about the nature of the life of the
church and about the nature of God. Ultimately, the practice of discerning a call to ministry
has much to teach us about what it means to be the body of Christ, about what it means to
understand ministry as emerging out of God’s love for God’s people, and about how
authority and humility shape the exercise of power within the Christian community. These
themes, in turn, offer possibilities for the renewal of the church’s practice of discerning
those who are gifted and called to exercise leadership in ministry so that the whole Body of
3
Christ might more faithfully engage in the life to which Christ has invited us, to the glory of
God.
4
CHAPTER ONE
WHY STUDY THE CALL STORIES OF MENNONITE BRETHREN WOMEN?
At some point, every person who is pastoring in a Mennonite Brethren congregation
is likely to be asked to share his or her call story. The particular experience of calling plays
a central role in the discernment and evaluation of potential Mennonite Brethren pastoral
leaders. For example, every pastor who participates in the Mennonite Brethren ministry
credentialing process across Canada is asked to describe his or her call story and to explain
how this call has been affirmed or recognized by others. At the monthly Mennonite
Brethren Biblical Seminary Canada student cohort meetings that I attend at Canadian
Mennonite University, local pastors have often been invited to join us as guests in order to
share the stories of their call to ministry. Experiencing a call to ministry is assumed to be
normative for individuals wishing to enter pastoral ministry within Mennonite Brethren
congregations.2
Traditionally, within Mennonite Brethren circles, as is often consistent with the
larger Christian church, a call to ministry is understood as having two parts. First, there
should be “a ‘sense’ or ‘heart impression’ or ‘inward desire’ felt by the person called,
causing him/her to want to serve people by guiding them toward a deeper relationship
with the Lord of the church.”3 Second, there ought to be “the clear, confident confirmation
of the call by persons in the church who know the one being called and have witnessed the 2 In this thesis, unless otherwise stated, the term “ministry” is used to speak broadly of the ministry of the church; when it is used specifically in reference to pastoral or vocational ministry, this will be explicitly stated. However, the specific term “call to ministry” among Mennonite Brethren has been used primarily to imply a call to pastoral or vocational ministry, rather than other forms of Christian ministry. This usage of “call to ministry” will be retained. 3 Doug Schulz and Michael Dick, eds., Following the Call: A Leadership Manual for Mennonite Brethren Churches (Winnipeg: Kindred Productions, 1998), 2.
5
giftedness of that person for ministry.”4 While these two elements should work in harmony
in order for a person’s call to be valid, Mennonite Brethren have sometimes placed greater
emphasis on the call of the church than on the experience of an inner call in their
articulated theology.5 For example, the leadership manual produced by the General
Conference Board of Faith and Life in 1998 noted, “The ‘feeling’ kind of call…is not
mentioned prominently in the New Testament.”6 Instead, it emphasized the role of the
church in calling people to church leadership positions: “The clear teaching of Scripture is
that the Holy Spirit helped the church discern gifted persons to serve God in the
congregations. Indeed, it is the congregation’s responsibility to discern gifted servants from
within its own fellowship (Acts 6:1-‐7; 13:1-‐3) to assist on a local basis, or to be encouraged
to take training for more formal or fulltime roles of ministry.”7
This traditional way of narrating the experience of a call to ministry can be
problematic. The experiences of Mennonite Brethren women provide a powerful
illustration of the fact that in practice the inner call experienced by the individual and the
outer call of the church do not always fit together as neatly as Mennonite Brethren
theological statements have suggested that they should. Mennonite Brethren scholar John
E. Toews wrote, “Many women are crying out for healing from the pain of rejection and
exclusion from ministry. They are profoundly aware of their spiritual giftedness. They
report clear calls to church ministry. They hear a ‘yes’ from God, but a ‘no’ from the church.
4 Ibid. 5 One might well ask whether this articulated emphasis is consistent with how the discernment of a call to ministry was practiced in Mennonite Brethren congregations, or whether it instead represents a counter-‐response to an emphasis upon the inner call in practice. This question is beyond the scope of this thesis. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.
6
The contradiction between their experiences with God and their experience in the church is
intense. More and more women are speaking of their pain and anger.”8
Mennonite Brethren women have themselves written about what it is like to live
with the tension between experiencing the inner call of God and longing for the outer
recognition of this call by the church. For example, in her autobiography, entitled The Hell
of God’s Call, Adelheid E. Koop, a Mennonite Brethren woman who studied at Associated
Mennonite Biblical Seminaries between 1975 and 1978, gave voice to the pain she
experienced and the impact it had on all areas of her life:
The phrase “God’s call” is frequently interpreted to mean a call to a specific task, career, or profession, as a call to medicine, teaching, church ministry. My interpretation is a broader, more inclusive one. Though it may include such specifics, my definition of God’s call encompasses the development of my potential, the process of putting my faith into action in every area of life. Therefore, God’s call includes purpose and meaning of life together with personal fulfillment. Hence all of life impacted on my commitment to and uncommitment from church ministry, and therefore I draw heavily on preceding and parallel experiences which affected my professional pilgrimage, as well as the consequent experiences such as health breakdown.9 Mennonite Brethren writer Katie Funk Wiebe also wrote about her own difficulty
discerning God’s call as a young woman with an interest in church ministry applying to
study at Mennonite Brethren Bible College in 1945:
I had blithely written on the college application that I was preparing for children’s ministries, something far from my goals. I knew that would be an acceptable answer. I didn’t know what else to write. The highest calling for women aspiring to church work was overseas missionary work, not in my list of ‘future things to do’ either. While I enjoyed ‘foreign’ missions reports, as they were called then, I didn’t see myself in a pith helmet, khaki skirt, and heavy boots stumbling around in the jungle. Church musician? Hardly. I played the piano enough to satisfy my own need, but that was all.
8 John. E. Toews, “Why This Book?,” in Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Women in Ministry in the Church, edited by John E. Toews, Valerie Rempel, and Katie Funk Wiebe (Winnipeg: Kindred Press, 1992), 8. 9 Adelheid E. Koop, The Hell of God’s Call: One Woman’s Pilgrimage from ‘Commitment to’ to ‘Uncommitment from’ Church Ministry (n.p.: Spitzli Publications, 1997), preface.
7
I wanted a ministry in the church with adults but couldn’t describe what I wanted. How could I admit to a vague longing for something I couldn’t identify to myself? It was a call to something holy, I knew. Without a husband, church ministry opportunities were limited. All I could think of that might lead me to my nebulous goal was to become a pastor’s wife. From my reading and experience I knew this sometimes entitled her to become a sort of “little pastor,” who stood by her man or rather, behind him.10 These experiences of Mennonite Brethren women illustrate that the present
Mennonite Brethren espoused theology of a call to ministry does not fully capture the
range of ways in which church members have worked at the practice of discerning a call to
ministry. In practice, individuals’ experiences of discerning a call to ministry are often more
complex than the two-‐dimensional description of a call to ministry that has traditionally
been narrated by the church. This thesis will examine the Mennonite Brethren theology of
the call to ministry, both as it is articulated by the church and as it is embodied by those
who practice its discernment, asking the question: How might paying attention to women’s
experiences in discerning and living with a call to ministry help to clarify an understanding
of the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to ministry?
The Call to Ministry
Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep
gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”11 The most basic call for all Christians can be
described as the call to respond to God’s love. All other callings, including the call to
ministry as a particular type of call, can be understood in light of this fundamental call.
Thus, Basil Pennington wrote, “This is the ultimate question in vocation discernment: in
10 Katie Funk Wiebe, You Never Gave Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman’s Story (Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House, 2009), 21-‐22. 11 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), 119.
8
what way can this person best grow in love; what way will best facilitate and support the
growth of love in this man or this woman given who they are, their psychological makeup
and the graced insight and determination they have.”12
Gordon Smith related the call to ministry or to a particular vocation to the universal
call to respond faithfully to God’s love in this way: “A calling is always a demonstration of
the love of God and the initiative of God; but more, it is through vocation that we come to
an appreciation that God takes us seriously.”13 The word vocation is derived from the Latin
word vox, from which we get the English word voice. Even the word’s basic etymology,
then, points to the fact that the discernment of vocation, for Christians, is rooted in
listening for and discerning the voice of God. Our desire to discern our vocation—the
specific work to which God is calling us—is rooted in a desire to know that how we spend
our life matters to God.
North American Mennonite Brethren have historically identified as both Anabaptist-‐
Mennonite and Protestant-‐Evangelical Christians. At times, Mennonite Brethren self-‐
understanding has been divided by these two influences:
The issue of American evangelicalism roughly has divided Mennonite Brethren into two camps. One group would want to be known as Anabaptist-‐Mennonites because they emphasize doctrines going back to the radical reformers of the sixteenth century, namely the believers’ church, discipleship, nonconformity and the peace witness. Another segment of the Mennonite Brethren think of themselves as more evangelical than Mennonite. They feel a stronger affinity with mainstream evangelicalism than with Mennonite groups. They emphasize the pietistic tradition, with its focus on individual salvation and personal devotional life.14
12 M. Basil Pennington, Called: New Thinking on Christian Vocation (Minneapolis: The Seabury Press, 1983), 33. 13 Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-‐Given Potential (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 9. 14 Richard Kyle, “The Mennonite Brethren and American Evangelicalism: An Ambivalent Relationship,” Direction 20, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 26-‐27.
9
This thesis will draw primarily upon Anabaptist-‐Mennonite writings as conversation
partners for understanding the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to
ministry, following Richard Kyle’s assertion that “because the roots of the Mennonite
Brethren are in the Anabaptist-‐Mennonite tradition, they have distinctives that set them
apart from many other evangelicals.”15 This reflects a broader understanding of
evangelicalism, for “any expansive approach to evangelicalism must include not only the
Anabaptists but also the Mennonite tradition.”16 Thus, while understanding Mennonite
Brethren as both evangelical and Anabaptist-‐Mennonite, Anabaptist-‐Mennonite voices are
sought as conversation partners in acknowledgment of the distinctives that its historical
roots in Anabaptism contribute to how Mennonite Brethren have come to understand the
call to ministry.
Traditionally, Anabaptist-‐Mennonite Christians have often framed God’s universal
call using the language of discipleship. Anabaptist-‐Mennonite scholar C. Arnold Snyder
claimed that for early Anabaptists there was a “necessary connection they made between
the inner life of the spirit (faith, rebirth, regeneration) and the outer life of discipleship
(obedience).”17 For the early Anabaptists, this meant “the Christian is to live as Christ lived,
for Jesus’ life is the highest example and model of how his disciples are to manifest the love
of God and the love of neighbour.”18 To respond to God’s love, for many Anabaptist-‐
Mennonites, is lived out in a call to live a life of discipleship or Nachfolge, “following Christ.”
15 Ibid., 30. 16 Ibid., 27. 17 C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 1995), 88. 18 Ibid., 335.
10
Today, much of the available literature on Christian vocation is not limited to the
discernment of a call to Christian ministry in particular. Rather, since the sixteenth century,
Protestants in particular have argued that all vocations, whether lived out within the
church or in the world, are of equal value. A call to be a farmer is no more or no less
valuable than a call to be a preacher. In this light, Anabaptist-‐Mennonite pastors Lydia and
Gary Harder wrote, “Perhaps the biggest contribution the church can make to each person’s
vocational discernment is to keep naming that he is a beloved child of God, and then to send
him into the wilderness. That is, the church sends each person into the world with the
knowledge that the choices that she will make in her vocation are crucial, because these
choices will determine how she will participate in the church’s larger vocation to be a
blessing to all peoples.”19
However, in spite of a theology of vocation that claims that no particular vocation is
any more spiritual than another, there continues to be strong emphasis among churches
and in the literature that focuses more particularly on the call to ministry. A strong case can
be made that this is, in part, because “we aren’t nearly as good at calling people to live out
God’s blessing in their secular vocations as we are at giving them a job to do in the
church.”20
Others would argue, however, that there is in fact something unique about a call to
ministry and its place in the discernment of church leaders that merits attention. After all,
the Bible cites examples in Acts of the process by which the early church was involved in
selecting and calling individuals to fill particular leadership roles within the community of
19 Lydia Neufeld Harder and Gary Harder, “Loved, Blessed, and Freed to Hear God’s Call,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 12, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 33. 20 Ibid., 29.
11
faith. Acts 6:1-‐6 is an example from the early church of the selection of individuals for the
ministry of pastoral care. The Hellenistic Jews had complained that the Hebraic Jews were
overlooking their widows in the distribution of food to those in need, and the Twelve
concluded that leaders were needed to oversee this distribution so that they themselves
could focus on prayer and the ministry of the word. So, the believers were gathered
together and given the instruction to “choose seven men from among you who are known
to be full of the Spirit and wisdom” (Acts 6:3, NIV).21 Here is an example from the earliest
days of the church where the congregation was involved in discerning those with the gifts
and character needed to fill a particular ministry role within the church. Likewise, in Acts
13:1-‐3, through prayer and fasting the community of believers identified Barnabas and Saul
as those whom God was calling, and they laid hands on them and sent them out.
Based on these and similar texts, churches have long used a call to ministry as a
means of identifying those leaders who ought to be given the responsibility for the
preaching and teaching ministries of the church. Among Anabaptist-‐Mennonites, the
external call of the church has carried significant weight in discerning those whom God was
calling. Mennonite Brethren scholar Richard Bartlett wrote that in the past “the individual’s
occupation did not matter, for if the congregational leadership discerned a man for
leadership, it was expected that he would accept. In fact, part of the affirmation for baptism
was a willingness to accept ordination for ministry.”22 In most Anabaptist-‐Mennonite
writings, the primary focus was upon the church’s role in calling individuals to pastoral
roles within the church. Moreover, the typical model of pastoral ministry in most
21 Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical references will be taken from the New International Version (2011). 22 Richard Barrett Bartlett, “A Seven Strand Cord: Braiding Together Leadership Development for Mid-‐Adolescents” (D. Min. diss., George Fox Evangelical Seminary, 2006), 52-‐53.
12
Anabaptist-‐Mennonite congregations until the middle of the twentieth century was one of
multiple lay ministry, in which responsibility for the leadership of the congregation was
shared by several men whom the congregation had called, most of whom balanced their
roles within the church with other work duties.
Contemporary writings about the call to ministry give more attention to the inner
dimensions of a call to ministry, perhaps in part because the nature of pastoral ministry in
North America has changed as pastoral ministry has become professionalized and the
multiple lay ministry model has given way to the paid professional pastor who leads the
congregation and who is often recruited from outside of the congregation itself. Now most
Anabaptist-‐Mennonite writings acknowledge both the inner and outer dimensions of a call
to ministry. The following is a typical example of how a call to ministry is described by
Anabaptist-‐Mennonite writers: “The call to pastoral ministry has both an inner and an
outer dimension. The inner call is a person’s sense of God’s invitation to pursue a ministry
vocation. The outer call is the affirmation and validation of the community. Usually one of
these calls will develop before the other, but both are essential for the healthy functioning
and identity of pastors.”23
A Review of the Mennonite Brethren Literature
In practice, speaking about a call to ministry is common among Mennonite Brethren.
Seminary students are frequently asked to describe the type of ministry to which they
sense God is calling them. Pastoral candidates are asked by search committees to share
their call stories, and are even asked to share such stories with congregations during the 23 Janeen Bertsche Johnson, “Holding Together Inner and Outer Dimensions of Call,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 12, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 52.
13
candidating process. The ministry credentialing process also involves writing about one’s
call story. In light of these practices, which assume the call to ministry to be normative for
those wishing to be pastors, it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to the
biblical and theological foundations for such a practice. A brief survey of the recently
published writings from a Mennonite Brethren perspective that pertain to the call to the
ministry helps to sketch out the current thinking on the subject.
The Mennonite Brethren leadership manual, Following the Call, contains a brief
discussion of the call to ministry. It states in part, “Leadership work in the church is a
tremendously challenging task, requiring spiritual giftedness and spiritual strength. Only
the person who is certain that God is calling him/her to this task should seek to become a
minister.”24 This underlines the strong emphasis that has been placed upon receiving a
specific call to ministry, both by individuals who are seeking to discern whether God is
leading them to pursue vocational church ministry, and by churches and denominations
who are seeking to address pastoral ministry shortages by ensuring that young people are
being encouraged to consider a career in pastoral ministry.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith has only very
little to say on the subject of a call to ministry. Article Six on “The Nature of the Church”
states, “God calls people to equip the church for ministry. Leaders are to model Christ in
their personal, family, and church life. The church is to discern leaders prayerfully, and to
affirm, support, and correct them in a spirit of love.”25 Here, there is no explicit mention of
an internal dimension to such a call, and only a basic instruction that it is the role of the
24 Schulz and Dick, 2. 25 General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, Confession of Faith: Commentary and Pastoral Application (Winnipeg: Kindred Productions, 2000), 67.
14
church to function as the discerning body in identifying individuals for leadership roles
within the church. Moreover, the language of call is not necessarily restricted to those in
ministry leadership; the language of the confession leaves open the possibility that God
calls a variety of individuals for a variety of roles, both in the church and in the world, in
order to equip the church for its ministry. Little in the commentary or pastoral application
for the article elaborates upon this very basic statement about God’s call.
A renewed focus on calling among North American Mennonite Brethren was
introduced for a period of time beginning in 2002, when Mennonite Brethren Biblical
Seminary launched the program “Hearing the Call.” This program was designed to
encourage high school students to consider God’s call on their lives, particularly whether
God might be calling them to church or ministry leadership vocations. The fall 2003 issue of
Direction journal on the subject of “Vocation” included several articles on the church’s role
as a calling body. John Neufeld, who was serving as the director of the “Hearing the Call”
program at the time, wrote an article encouraging churches to rediscover “what being a
calling and discerning community means in practical terms.”26 He exhorted churches,
When we discern who will lead us, we do everything in our power to prepare, equip, and support that person in the call that God and the local church extend. I have no illusions that this is easy. In fact, I would suggest that it is much more difficult than our current patterns of hiring pastors externally. But I believe it is by far preferable to a hiring process that has at its core a series of assumptions and accommodations that defer to our culture’s addiction to individualism.27
In the same issue, Jim Holm, who was serving as Mennonite Brethren Biblical
Seminary President at the time, wrote an article outlining the history of the practice of
calling church leaders among Mennonite Brethren. He encouraged churches to continue to
26 John Neufeld, “Rediscovering the Calling and Sending Church,” Direction 32, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 194. 27 Ibid., 196.
15
take seriously their role in calling people into leadership. According to Holm, in the past
“the practice of shoulder-‐tapping was practiced intentionally, and young men who were so
tapped did not often refuse that call.”28 Holm cited the biblical examples of Joshua and
Moses as models for how the church might develop leaders, and encouraged pastors and
other church leaders to take seriously their role in discerning and developing emerging
leaders within their congregations.
Richard Bartlett wrote a D. Min. dissertation on the subject of developing emerging
ministry leaders, also rooted in his experiences working with the same “Hearing the Call”
program. Bartlett, too, cited the example of Joshua and Moses as a biblical example of
leadership development, elaborating on many of the same themes pointed to by Jim Holm’s
article. Bartlett noted, “Without a clear sense of call from God and the local congregation, a
potential leader may not choose to lead.”29
A thesis written by David Falk at Regent College moved away from this focus on
developing a culture of calling among young and emerging leaders at a congregational level
to examine a New Testament theology of calling, and to compare this theology with
contemporary views of a call to ministry. Based upon his study of the biblical texts, Falk
concluded, “Our study has demonstrated that the contemporary practice of a prerequisite
‘call to the Ministry’ has erroneously appealed to the call language and phenomena. The
biblical writers prove the call language and narratives incongruous with leadership
legitimization.”30 Falk argued that an experience of God’s call is neither limited to those
pursuing vocations of Christian ministry, nor should it serve as a pre-‐requisite for such a
28 Jim Holm, “The North American MB Call to Pastoral Leadership,” Direction 32, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 204. 29 Bartlett, 66. 30 David John Falk, “A New Testament Theology of Calling with Reference to the ‘Call to the Ministry’” (Master of Christian Studies thesis, Regent College, 1990), 149.
16
vocation. Instead, in the biblical canon, the phenomenon and language of calling are more
appropriately used to serve soteriological motifs; therefore, according to Falk, our call is to
be Christians.31
Why Study Women’s Call Stories?
It is clear from this review of the literature that while a significant amount of
attention has been paid to the subject of the call to ministry among Mennonite Brethren in
recent years, there is nonetheless room for additional reflection on the subject. In
particular, much of the contemporary conversation regarding the call to ministry takes for
granted the need to hold together both inner and outer dimensions of the call to ministry,
which historically has not always been the assumption. Furthermore, as we have seen,
paying attention to the voices of Mennonite Brethren women points to the fact that, for
many women in recent decades, there has been a gap experienced between their
discernment of an inner call to ministry and the lack of outer affirmation of that call from
the church community.
Certainly, it is not only Mennonite Brethren women who experience a disconnect
between the inner call of God’s Spirit at work within them and the outer call as mediated
through the church. Moreover, not all Mennonite Brethren women who have discerned a
call to ministry would claim to have experienced this disconnect. However, in recent years,
the application of a feminist lens within practical theology has brought attention to the
value of a “commitment to the primacy of women’s experience as a starting point for
31 Ibid., 148-‐49.
17
reflection and a criterion for evaluation.”32 Within feminist methodology, Christian
practices are taken as a starting point for interrogating the core beliefs and values
embedded within them. Paying particular attention to the experiences of Mennonite
Brethren women who have worked at the Christian practice of discerning a call to ministry
offers the hope of revealing fresh insights regarding the theology embedded within this
practice.
The voices of Mennonite Brethren women have not been fully heard as it relates to
their experience of pastoral leadership, including their experiences of discerning a call to
ministry. In the past, there were times when women’s experiences of a call to ministry
were marginalized or ignored because there was no room for women with such a call in
pastoral roles that were restricted to male leadership. For example, Mennonite Brethren
pastor Herb Kopp wrote a paper citing Board of Reference and Council minutes in which it
was stated, “We counsel our congregations not to appoint a woman as the ‘leading pastor.’
When discerning the women who speak of being ‘called’ to pastoral or preaching
ministries, our counsel must be faithfully biblical, honest and wise [emphasis added].”33
It is only in recent years that women have been free to serve in Mennonite Brethren
congregations in all roles, including that of lead pastor. For many years, the roles that
should be open to women in Mennonite Brethren congregations have been the subject of
much discussion within the Canadian church. Thus, for most of the history of the
Mennonite Brethren church in Canada, congregations have not been completely free to 32 Zoe Bennett Moore, Introducing Feminist Perspectives on Pastoral Theology (London: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 20, http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=cf29da12-‐ea87-‐49ad-‐bbe7-‐2252995bf36a @sessionmgr114&vid=0#db=nlebk&AN=378464 (accessed January 22, 2015). 33 Herb Kopp, “A Serving People,” 71, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/ Study%20Conference%20Papers/1986%20-‐%20Oct.%2015-‐17%20-‐%20A%20Serving%20People%20-‐%20Herb%20Koop%20Reduced.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015).
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affirm and call women to pastoral ministry in their midst. Prior to 1957, both single women
and wives of missionary couples had been ordained for missionary work, with some of
these female missionaries freely taking on the ministry of preaching on the mission field
when the need arose. In the 1950s, as the model of multiple lay ministry was increasingly
replaced by the professionalization of pastoral ministry, the practice of ordination was
reexamined by the Conference and the act of blessing women for mission work was
deemed to be ‘a commissioning’ rather than ‘an ordination.’ 34 At that time, women were
also officially banned from holding pastoral offices and from participating in the preaching
ministry of the church.
In the 1980s, the subject of women in ministry leadership was a topic of much
debate at Mennonite Brethren study conferences. In 1981, a Mennonite Brethren General
Conference resolution allowed for women’s “participation in local church and conference
ministries, if the local church so chooses,” but it also stated, “we do not believe the
Mennonite Brethren Church should ordain women to pastoral leadership.”35 As Mennonite
Brethren scholar Doug Heidebrecht noted, “This particular restriction would prove to be
rather vague in the years to come because it was unclear whether the prohibition was
intended to restrict women from ordination, or pastoral ministry, or even church
leadership.”36
34 Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, “BFL Calls for Study of Women in Leadership,” Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, http://mbconf.ca/home/events_and_conferences/learning_together /women_in_ministry_leadership/a_word_from_the_bfl/mb_resolutions/ (accessed April 2, 2015). 35 Ibid. 36 Doug Heidebrecht, “Authoritative Mennonite Brethren: The Convergence of Church Polity, Ordination, and Women in Leadership,” Baptistic Theologies 3, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 71, http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.cmu.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=15927e99-‐efaf-‐4292-‐8790-‐9ea51fa37c46%40sessionmgr115&hid=124 (accessed April 2, 2015).
19
By 1987 some congregations began to appoint women as associate pastors or to
invite women to participate in the church’s preaching ministry, although the official
resolution that would have explicitly affirmed such action failed to pass. A revised
resolution was instead passed that encouraged churches “to free and affirm women for
ministries in the church, at home and abroad, in decision-‐making, evangelism, teaching,
counseling, encouragement, music, youth visitations, etc.” but that made no explicit
mention of pastoral ministry or of preaching.37 A subsequent resolution by the General
Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches in 1993 that would have freed local
congregations to appoint women to pastoral ministry roles also failed to pass, but a
statement from the Board of Faith and Life issued after the vote clarified that the 1981
resolution should be understood “to mean that women are encouraged to minister in the
church in every function other than the senior pastorate.”38 In 2006 a resolution was
passed by the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches officially declaring the
issue of whether or not women could serve as lead pastors to be ‘non-‐confessional,’
thereby giving local congregations the freedom to appoint women to any role including
that of lead pastor.
Today, in practice, Mennonite Brethren congregations hold a diversity of convictions
on the question of whether women ought to serve in lead pastoral roles. The 2006
resolution regarding women in ministry leadership presented by the Board of Faith and
Life and passed at the national convention “recommend[ed] that the Conference bless each
member church in its own discernment of Scripture, conviction and practice to call and
37 Canadian Conference, “BFL Calls for Study of Women in Leadership.” 38 Ibid.
20
affirm gifted men and women to serve in ministry and pastoral leadership.”39 Practically
speaking, in spite of the freedom of local congregations to call both women and men to
pastoral leadership, women remain less likely than men to receive a confirmation of their
call from their Mennonite Brethren congregations. Moreover, it is less likely that women
would receive a call from the congregation to consider pastoral ministry prior to having
any personal sense of call. Reporting on a survey of women in pastoral ministry in the
Mennonite Church, Renee Sauder wrote, “Our call as women had to come from elsewhere,
not because we rejected the Bible and certainly not because we rejected our church
tradition. It was just that there was no external means of support for the inner longing to
say ‘yes’ to God’s call on our lives.”40 While no comparable study has been completed to
date among Mennonite Brethren women in pastoral ministry, anecdotal evidence from
Mennonite Brethren women suggests that they, too, have often longed for external support
to affirm their inner sense of call.
Because of this history, listening to women’s reflections on discerning a call to
ministry can offer an alternative perspective on this ecclesial practice. Much of the current
thinking about a call to ministry, particularly in the Mennonite Brethren context, has been
informed primarily by the experiences of men—experiences which arose from a very
different set of circumstances than those faced by women. If, however, we affirm that
women are equally able to discern God’s call, then their stories also have value in forming
our understanding of how God calls people to ministry.
39 Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, Gifted, Called and Affirmed: A Pastoral Application and Commentary on the Women in Ministry Leadership Resolution of Gathering 2006 (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 2008), 5. 40 Renee Sauder, “Inner Call/Inner Ambivalence: Conflicting Messages in a Fragile Conversation,” in Understanding Ministerial Leadership: Essays Contributing to a Developing Theology of Ministry, edited by John A. Esau (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1995), 50-‐51.
21
Practical theologians believe that “to understand the church, we should view it as
being simultaneously theological and social/cultural. Added to this is the insight that this
‘understanding’ is itself ecclesial. So the very practice of understanding is both theological
and social/cultural.”41 In other words, a proper understanding of the church and its
practices involves both stated convictions, and those convictions that are carried by the
practices of the faith community. “Practices are themselves properly theological, bearers of
an emerging ecclesiology… This voice of practice must be heard, for it is spoken from the
heart of the church itself.”42 This being the case, examining the experiences of Mennonite
Brethren women who have engaged in the practice of discerning a call to ministry can yield
insights that could inform a theology of a call to ministry and its proper place in the
discernment of pastoral leaders. Gaining a richer understanding of how God calls
individuals into ministry, in turn, can only better equip the church as it seeks to encourage
individuals to explore their giftedness and to use all of their gifts in service within the
church and will enhance our ability to discern leaders for the church both today and in the
future.
In the next chapter, attention will be given to methodology, and in particular to the
use of qualitative research in the discipline of practical theology in order to attend to the
experiences of individuals and church communities. Such an approach offers the
opportunity to bring the experiences of Mennonite Brethren women who have worked at
discerning a call to ministry into dialogue with resources arising from biblical study, church
tradition, and attempts to develop an articulated theology of a call to ministry.
41 Pete Ward, “Introduction,” in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, edited by Pete Ward (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 2. 42 Clare Watkins, “Practical Ecclesiology: What Counts as Theology in Studying the Church?,” in Ward, 175-‐76.
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CHAPTER TWO
METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS: PRACTICAL THEOLOGY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
The previous chapter examined the Mennonite Brethren understanding of the call to
ministry and discussed how giving attention to the experiences of Mennonite Brethren
women may raise new questions that have the potential to enrich theological reflection on
the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to ministry. In this chapter, attention
will be given to particular methodological concerns that emerge in using qualitative
research methods to examine the lived experiences of individuals and of faith communities.
How can the experiences that emerge from the practices of Christians in particular times
and particular settings inform theological reflection on these practices? How do we honour
the wisdom that emerges from the performance of Christian practices while continuing to
honour and uphold the revelation of the Scriptures and the wisdom of corporately
discerned statements of belief? It is to these and other such questions that we now turn our
attention.
Practical Theology and Qualitative Research
In the past thirty years, practical theologians have been drawing increasingly upon
ethnographic and qualitative research methods in their study of the practices of the church.
According to Paul S. Fiddes, “ethnography, as employed by social scientists, is rooted in
observing the life and practices of a specified group of human people and drawing
23
conclusions ‘inductively’ from them.”43 The intersection of ecclesiology and ethnography is
based upon the assumption that the church is both theological and social in nature. Because
of this, according to Pete Ward, “there will thus be a constant interaction between theories
and principles generated from the theological tradition, and careful participative
observation of the particularities of an ecclesial situation. Theological generalizations or
universals will be reshaped by observation, using tools of social and cultural inquiry, but
observation is itself already theological.”44 There is now a significant body of literature that
examines how theologians may engage in research that makes use of qualitative research
tools and methods while remaining firmly rooted within a theological framework, as
opposed to one that is defined by the social sciences. The present project draws upon
insights and methods taken from this body of work.
Alister E. McGrath wrote, “Christian theology is seen at its best and at its most
authentic when it engages and informs the life of the Christian community on the one hand,
and is in turn engaged and informed by that life on the other. In short: theology is grounded
in the life of a praying, worshipping, and reflecting community, which seeks to find the best
manner of expressing that faith intellectually, and allows it to generate and inform its best
practices.”45 The use of qualitative research methods offers theologians a means of
engaging with the actual practices and experiences of individuals and of faith communities,
which in turn helps to ensure that theology takes seriously both the truths of Scripture and
theological traditions, as well as the theological truths that are rooted within the actual
practices of faith communities. Ward wrote, “Ecclesiology and ethnography argue that the
43 Paul S. Fiddes, “Ecclesiology and Ethnography: Two Disciplines, Two Worlds?,” in Ward, 13. 44 Ward, 2. 45 Alister E. McGrath, “The Cultivation of Theological Vision: Theological Attentiveness and the Practice of Ministry,” in Ward, 107.
24
ethnographic ‘voice’ demands our attention because it has the potential to make a
significant and urgently needed contribution to the contemporary discussion of the church.
This conviction arises from a growing sense that there is often a disconnection between
what we say doctrinally about the church and the experience of life in a local parish.”46
Similarly, Mary Clark Moschella wrote, “When conducted and shared as a form of
pastoral practice, ethnography can enable religious leaders to hear the theological wisdom
of the people, wisdom that is spoken right in the midst of the nitty-‐gritty mundane realities
of group life.”47 Moschella argued that ethnographic research can equip congregations to
understand the rhyme and reason behind the practices that shape their shared life, helping
the group to become purposeful and conscious of what they are doing and why.48
John Swinton and Harriet Mowat help to clarify how qualitative research becomes a
way of doing theology, rather than merely a social scientific study of the church. They
wrote, “The ongoing hermeneutical task of practical theologians will relate to the effective
‘reading’ of particular situations in order that the forms of practice carried out within them
can be understood and reflected on critically in light of scripture and tradition with a view
to enabling faithful practice.”49 Rather than merely applying theory to the practices of the
Church by developing techniques for ministry, Swinton and Mowat advocate for “a careful
theological exegesis of particular situations within which the practices and experiences
46 Ward, 4. 47 Mary Clark Moschella, Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2008), 4. 48 Ibid., 16. 49 John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: SCM Press, 2006), 12.
25
that emerge from these situations are explored, understood, evaluated, critiqued and
reconsidered.”50
The use of qualitative research methods to foster exploration of the lived
experiences of Mennonite Brethren women who have engaged in the practice of discerning
a call to ministry offers a means of accessing the theological wisdom that is rooted within
this ecclesial practice. Since theological wisdom is borne not only in words, but also in the
practices of the faith community, attending to women’s experiences can deepen the
understanding of the call to ministry as the insights that emerge from qualitative study are
brought into dialogue with the insights of the Mennonite Brethren theological tradition.
This deeper understanding of the theological roots of the practice of discerning a call to
ministry in turn offers possibilities for reforming the practice in ways that are increasingly
consistent with faithful Christian discipleship.
A Model for Integrating Practical Theological Reflection and Qualitative Research
In their book, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research, Swinton and Mowat
offered a model for practical theological reflection based upon three core values:
hospitality, conversion, and critical faithfulness. With this model, Swinton and Mowat
sought to address the key question, “How can practical theology and qualitative research
be brought together in a way that is both mutually enhancing and faithful?”51 While
building upon the methods of mutual critical correlation, which finds its roots in the work
of Paul Tillich, they suggested, “Practical theology can utilize qualitative research methods
50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 74.
26
to aid in this process of ensuring that Christian practice is in correspondence to the event of
God’s self-‐communication.”52
Swinton and Mowat argued that faithfully bringing together practical theology,
particular situations, and qualitative research requires three things: hospitality,
conversion, and critical faithfulness. By hospitality, Swinton and Mowat were referring to
the creation of “a context wherein the voice of qualitative research can be heard, respected,
and taken seriously, but with no a-‐priori assumption that theology needs to merge, follow,
or fully accept the perspective on the world that is offered to it by qualitative research.”53
Conversion is used to mean that “God ‘converts’ the field of intellectual enquiry outside
theology, in this case qualitative research, and uses it in the service of making God’s self
known within the Church and from there on into the world.”54 This means that the critique
offered to theology by qualitative research methods can be offered from within the
tradition and not apart from it. Finally, critical faithfulness refers to the need to assume a
stance that “acknowledges the divine givenness of Scripture and the genuine working of the
Holy Spirit in the interpretation of what is given, while at the same time taking seriously
the interpretative dimensions of the process of understanding revelation and ensuring the
faithful practices of individuals and communities.”55
Swinton and Mowat proposed a process for incorporating qualitative research
methods into theological reflection that consisted of four steps. In the initial phase, a
practice that is in need of critical reflection is identified. In the case of this thesis, this is the
Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call to ministry. This practice is examined
52 Ibid., 90-‐91. 53 Ibid., 91. 54 Ibid., 92. 55 Ibid., 93.
27
intuitively at this phase in order to assess what appears to be going on, as has already been
demonstrated in the first chapter of this thesis.
In the second stage, the practical theologian begins to examine the practice more
critically in order to gain a deep and rich understanding of the situation. It is at this stage
that qualitative research methods are helpful: “By engaging with the complexities of the
hermeneutical dimensions of the situation new insights about its nature and structure
begin to emerge. Some of these will confirm our initial intuitive reflections, but others will
challenge and enhance that which we thought we knew.”56 By studying how the call to
ministry has been discussed among Mennonite Brethren in the past, and by interviewing
Mennonite Brethren women who have discerned a call to ministry, a rich description will
be created of how the practice of discerning a call to ministry is currently functioning
among Mennonite Brethren in Canada.
In the third step, the implicit and explicit theological dimensions of the situation are
drawn out from the rich description of the practice developed in stage two. Once the
practice of discerning a call to ministry has been described, it is possible to reflect
theologically on the principles that are operating within and behind this practice.
Finally, in the fourth stage, “we draw together the cultural/contextual analysis with
the theological reflection and combine these two dimensions with our original reflections
on the situation. In this way the conversation functions dialectically to produce new and
challenging forms of practice that enable the initial situation to be transformed into ways
which are authentic and faithful.”57 Ultimately, it is hoped that by closely examining the
practice of the call to ministry among Mennonite Brethren and reflecting theologically on 56 Ibid., 96. 57 Ibid., 96-‐97.
28
current practice, it will be possible to shape this practice in ways that are an increasingly
faithful reflection of life as the people of God.
Swinton and Mowat’s model for incorporating qualitative research methods within
the larger work of practical theology will provide the methodological framework for this
study of the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning of a call to ministry. The framework
offered by Swinton and Mowat provides a helpful model for incorporating the wisdom
offered by qualitative research into theological reflection in a way that both honours the
primacy of the theological voice and upholds its openness to learn from dialogue partners
drawing from other sources of knowledge, particularly those offered by the social sciences.
By using data from interviews with Mennonite Brethren women, as well as from an
examination of the historical and theological foundations for the current practice of calling
individuals to ministry roles within the church, this thesis seeks to develop a rich
understanding of the current practice of the call to ministry among the Mennonite
Brethren, which might then be subject to theological reflection in the hopes of contributing
in some way to the renewal of the practice.
Research Design
The research design for the qualitative research component of this study is rooted in
the method of hermeneutic phenomenology. As defined by Swinton and Mowat,
“Phenomenology is a philosophy of experience that attempts to understand the ways in
which meaning is constructed in and through human experience. This perspective views a
person’s lived experience (the thing in itself) of and within the world as the foundation of
29
meaning.”58 Hermeneutics acknowledges that all meaning and understanding is a matter of
interpretation. Thus, hermeneutic phenomenology attempts “to provide a rich description
of the experience and a necessary interpretative perspective on lived experience.”59 It
therefore functions both descriptively and interpretatively.
In this study, interviews were conducted with six women in order to seek to
understand their lived experiences of having discerned a call to ministry. Each of the
women is currently a member of a Mennonite Brethren congregation and is currently
serving in a pastoral role in a Mennonite Brethren ministry setting. The ages of the
interviewees ranged from mid-‐twenties to early sixties. Some of the women were in their
first five years of pastoral ministry, while others were nearing retirement and had served
in pastoral ministry for many years, and still others fell in between these extremes. At the
time of the interviews, the women served in a variety of pastoral roles, in both traditional
and non-‐traditional ministry settings; some of the women served in the capacity of lead
pastor of a Mennonite Brethren congregation, while others served in other types of
pastoral roles. All of the women lived in the Canadian prairie provinces at the time of the
interview. All of the women who were interviewed were married.
Participants were selected using a combination of convenience sampling and
criterion sampling. In order to allow all interviews to be conducted face-‐to-‐face in a
relatively short timeframe, participants were limited to women from the Canadian prairie
provinces. In addition to this limitation, all participants had to be active members in a
Mennonite Brethren church, over the age of eighteen, and employed in a leadership
capacity in a Mennonite Brethren church or ministry setting. Women were identified who 58 Ibid., 106. 59 Ibid., 109.
30
met all of these criteria. Within this group, an effort was made to select participants so that
the resulting group of women would be diverse in their ages, years of ministry experience,
and the types of ministry roles in which they served.
Each of the interviews was conducted face-‐to-‐face at a location selected by the
interviewee, and lasted between an hour and an hour and a half in length. Initially, the
intention was to use a semi-‐structured interview format. A broad framework of questions
was created based upon a literature review. However, it quickly became apparent once the
interviews were underway that the ways in which women described their experience of
discerning a call to ministry were significantly different than the way in which a call to
ministry has traditionally been narrated in the literature. As a result, an unstructured
interview format was adopted in order to allow the conversation to be guided primarily by
the women’s own descriptions of their experiences of discerning and living with a call to
ministry, rather than by questions shaped by the researcher’s interpretation of what such a
call might entail.
Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and participant’s names and
other identifying information have been changed in an effort to ensure confidentiality.
However, it is recognized that there are relatively few women in Mennonite Brethren
congregations serving in pastoral roles, and, therefore, it may be possible for participants
to be recognized in spite of these precautions being taken. All participants were aware of
this possibility as part of the process of obtaining informed consent.
Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. All interviews were audio recorded and
were transcribed verbatim by the researcher. Codes were then developed inductively from
the transcribed data, and refined through subsequent examinations of the data. The
31
computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) package, ATLAS.tiTM was
used to aid in the process of analyzing the interview data. Relationships between codes
were graphically mapped and themes were developed based upon the coded data which
reflected and summarized the data found in the transcripts. The resulting themes are
further described in chapter four of this thesis.
All research conformed to Canadian Mennonite University’s “Policy on Ethical
Review of Research with Human Participants,” as well as its “Policy and Procedures on
Integrity in Research and Scholarship.” The research also conformed to the Tri-‐Council
Policy Statement regarding qualitative research.60
Having laid out these theoretical and methodological foundations for the work that
follows, our attention now turns to a survey of the call to ministry as it has been described
at different stages in church history, paying particular attention to how the call to ministry
has been discussed among Mennonite Brethren in recent history. In doing so, a thick
description of the call to ministry will be developed that expands upon the basic
description of the inner and outer dimensions of the call and begins to examine how the
call to ministry functions within the Mennonite Brethren understanding of the nature of
church leadership. This, in turn, will provide a context for understanding the experiences of
Mennonite Brethren women who have worked at the practice of discerning a call to
ministry in their own particular contexts.
60 Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Tri-‐Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (December 2010), http://www.ethics.gc.ca/pdf/eng/tcps/TCPS_2_ FINAL_Web.pdf (accessed April 21, 2014).
32
CHAPTER THREE
A BRIEF HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE CALL TO MINISTRY
The practice of discerning a call to ministry is not a new one. From the very
beginnings of the biblical narrative, when God began to set aside a people to be God’s own
people among the nations, we read the stories of individuals whom God called, in a variety
of ways, to play specific roles in this endeavor. Thus, in the Old Testament, the call stories
of key figures including Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others are
told. In the New Testament, Jesus called his disciples, and later Saul had a dramatic
encounter with the risen Christ along the road to Damascus. In the first chapter of the book
of Acts, the gathered believers selected someone to join the eleven apostles, thereby filling
the seat formerly held by Judas. Throughout the history of the church, up to the present
day, the question of how to discern and select leaders for key roles within the body of
believers has been a constant.
For Anabaptist-‐Mennonites, and for Mennonite Brethren more specifically, call
stories have often played an important role in the process of discerning pastoral leaders.
From the concerns of the early Anabaptists about how to distinguish true prophets and
teachers from false ones, to discussions among twentieth-‐century Mennonite Brethren
regarding the role of the church in identifying and calling people to pastoral ministry in
light of concerns about clergy shortages, the call to ministry has been a subject of
discussion throughout this history. By surveying how the call to ministry has been
understood at various points in the history of the church, we will be equipped to
understand more clearly how this tradition continues to inform thinking and practice in the
33
discernment of individuals for pastoral leadership in ministries and congregations among
Mennonite Brethren in Canada today.
Call Stories in Scripture
A number of call narratives are recorded in the Bible, in both the Old and New
Testaments. Abraham’s call in Genesis 12:1-‐9 records Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham,
given along with the command to Abraham to “go from your country, your people, and your
father’s household to the land I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). The call of Moses in Exodus 3
and 4 involved the famous encounter with the burning bush, out of which Yahweh’s voice
told Moses, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out
of Egypt” (Exod. 3:10). In Isaiah 6, Isaiah responded to a theophanic appearance of the Lord
in the temple by answering Yahweh’s question, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for
us?” with the words, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8). Similar stories are told of Gideon
(Judges 6:11-‐24), Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-‐4:1), Elisha (1 Kings 19:19-‐21), Jeremiah (Jeremiah
1), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1-‐3), and Amos (Amos 7:10-‐17). Biblical scholars, including Norman
Habel, have attempted to identify a common literary structure shared by the call narratives
as a biblical genre, suggesting that these narratives share the common elements of divine
confrontation, introductory word, commission, objection, reassurance, and sign.61
However, it is obvious in reading these narratives that in spite of their commonalities, each
has unique elements as well.
61 Norman C. Habel, “The Form and Significance of the Call Narratives,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 77, no. 3 (January 1965): 297-‐363, http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/ pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=5c9de116-‐dcd8-‐4f68-‐8616-‐4ddb92db6ed6%40sessionmgr113&hid=102 (accessed January 20, 2015).
34
The New Testament uses call language frequently. However, the language of calling
in the New Testament shifts to take on a more universal quality. Jesus called disciples to
follow him. Acts 9 recorded how Paul was stopped in his tracks on the road to Damascus
when he was blinded by a light from heaven and heard the voice of Jesus, calling him to “get
up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:6). In these
instances, the call was associated not so much with a call to a particular leadership role, but
rather with the call to become a follower of Jesus, and to set all else aside in order to do so.
Christian Vocations Prior to the Sixteenth Century
In the first centuries of the church’s existence, Christianity was one religion among
many in the Roman Empire. The call to follow Christ came with a price, whether that was
living by ethical standards that set the Christian apart from his or her neighbours, or facing
rejection by his or her family, or even living with the constant threat of persecution. In
these early days, “the fundamental vocational questions for Christians or potential
Christians were initially, first, should I be a Christian?, and second, how public should I be
about my Christian faith.”62 To be called was primarily understood within the framework of
a universal call to follow Christ.
Christian monasticism arose around the same time as Constantine converted to
Christianity and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. William
Placher noted that “just about the time when it grew easier to be an ‘ordinary’ Christian,
Christians in large numbers began to go off to the desert to pursue a more rigorous
62 William C. Placher, ed., Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 6.
35
Christian life. They found a more demanding vocation.”63 This marked the beginning of a
division between the universal call of Christians to follow Christ, and a particular, more
rigorous call claimed only by some.
The Christian church grew rapidly in the years that followed, both in size and in
power. Vocations came to be increasingly associated with the roles held by priests, nuns,
and monks. Many people in monastic orders were set apart for such a life by their parents
when they were only children, while others joined as adults at the invitation of friends or
family members who belonged to one of the orders.64 By the time of the medieval church,
“to have a vocatio meant to be on the way to becoming a monk, nun, friar, or priest. Even
parish priests (often ill-‐educated) were generally thought to have failed to go all the way to
the heights of monastic life.”65 The central vocational question for most Christians at this
time was therefore not which career path to pursue, but instead whether or not one was
called to a particular religious vocation.
The Reformation and the Priesthood of All Believers
By the early sixteenth century, the church had enjoyed being at the center of power
in the western world for many centuries. Amidst sentiments that the papacy had become
decadent and corrupt, anticlericalism became one of the prominent themes of the church
reforms that were emerging. It should be noted that the reformers’ critiques of the papacy
and the priesthood did not necessarily imply that priests and church leaders should be
abolished entirely. As Karl Koop noted, “To be sure, by the time of the Reformation the
63 Ibid., 31. 64 Ibid., 109. 65 Ibid., 112
36
sacerdotal office, with its mediating qualities, was repudiated by many reformers. But at
that time could they have conceived of church life in fully democratic or egalitarian terms,
absent of real leadership, as has sometimes been contemplated in modern times?”66 Such
an idea would have been unimaginable in the sixteenth century.
Rather than abolishing the clergy, reformers sought to eliminate the difference in
spiritual status between clergy and laity. Martin Luther argued that all Christians have a
calling, not only those called to vocational ministry. For Luther, every vocation, whether
within the Church or otherwise, represented a faithful response to God’s leading, and no
call came with any special spiritual status. While this represented a dramatic change from
the medieval world, in which having a vocation was directly linked to belonging to a
religious order or to the priesthood, nonetheless “even though Luther in his early years
accentuated the priesthood of all believers and a more spiritualistic view of the church
against Rome, he never lost the point of a special ministry in the church…Luther was—as a
man of the late medieval era—deeply convinced that the church has its own order which
had to be followed.”67
For Luther, the highest authority in the church rested not with the clergy or with the
papacy, but with the community of believers; therefore, it was the role of the local parish to
call its ministers for preaching, teaching, pastoral care, and other leadership roles.68
Moreover, Luther maintained that a minister’s position was tied to his practice of the
ministry. Critiquing priests who held clerical offices without carrying out an associated 66 Karl Koop, “Worldly Preachers and True Shepherds: Anabaptist Anticlericalism in the Lower Rhine,” in The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective, ed. Erick Sawatzky (Scottdale: Herald Press, 2004), 28. 67 Markus Wriedt, “Luther on Call and Ordination: A Look at Luther and the Ministry,” Concordia Journal 28, no. 3 (July 2002): 261, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=9edc41ee-‐fb77-‐4d9d-‐8f80-‐cd6d9c74074e%40sessionmgr4002&vid=5&hid=4112 (accessed January 17, 2015). 68 Ibid., 265.
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ministry, Luther maintained “if a preacher refuses to preach he gives up being a
preacher.”69 Thus, while highlighting the need for clerical reform, Luther nonetheless
acknowledged the call of certain individuals for particular leadership and teaching roles
within the church, and, moreover, placed the responsibility for calling individuals to these
roles squarely in the hands of the believers who made up the local congregation. At
ordination, this call was to be acknowledged by an ecclesiastical authority—but it was first
to emerge from within the local congregation itself.70
Among the early Anabaptists, the need to discern which believers were called to
hold particular offices within the church was also identified. Like Luther, the early
Anabaptists believed that being called to a ministerial vocation within the church came
with no special spiritual status. Nonetheless, early Anabaptist writings provide evidence
that they, too, were concerned with how to properly identify those individuals who had
been called to the preaching ministry within the church. Menno Simons’ Foundation of
Christian Doctrine, written in 1539, contains a lengthy section on “The Vocation
[Commission] of the Preachers.” It reads, “According to the Scripture the mission and
vocation of Christian preachers takes place in two ways. Some are called by God alone
without any human agent as was the case with the prophets and apostles. Others are called
by means of the pious as may be seen from Acts 1:23-‐26.”71 Simons concluded, “All who
rightly preach Christ and His Word, and with it bring forth children to the Lord, must have
been called by one of the afore-‐mentioned methods. They must have been urged into the
69 Norman Nagel, “Luther and the Priesthood of all Believers,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 61, no. 4 (October 1997): 288, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=9edc41ee-‐fb77-‐4d9d-‐8f80-‐cd6d9c74074e%40sessionmgr4002&vid=22&hid=4112 (accessed January 17, 2015). 70 Wreidt, 265. 71 Menno Simons, “Foundation of Christian Doctrine,” in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, c.1496-‐1561, ed. J.C. Wenger, trans. Leonard Verdun (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1956), 159.
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vineyard of the Lord by the true and unfeigned love of God and their neighbour, and
through the power of the Holy Ghost.”72 A particular concern that seems to lie behind this
text is that the church might be able to discern between those who are rightly called, and
those who are motivated by a desire to obtain the favour of others or other forms of
profit—such individuals were strongly condemned as “thieves and robbers,” and Simons
wrote that they are called “not of God and His Word but of Antichrist, the dragon, and the
beast.”73 Instead, those who are rightly called to preach Christ are sent by God, sometimes
through the agency of the church—but in order to be legitimate such a call must always
come from “a church without fault, believing and Christian.”74
Dirk Philips wrote The Enchiridion in 1564, several years after Menno Simons’
death. It was a handbook intended to present a systematic approach to the Christian faith.
This document too included a lengthy section addressing “The Sending of Preachers or
Teachers.” The particular concern for Philips, as was also the case in Menno’s Foundation of
Christian Doctrine, was “that you may know how to distinguish true prophets, teachers, and
Christians from false ones.”75 Like Menno, Philips identified two distinct kinds of calling—
one that comes from God alone, the other which comes from God through the congregation
of believers. Philips, however, seems to place a particular emphasis upon the internal
dimension of such a calling: “No one will be sent by the Lord nor correctly chosen by the
congregation, except through the Holy Spirit who must touch his heart, make him fiery with
love, in order thus to voluntarily feed, lead, and send out the congregation of God.”76
72 Ibid., 160. 73 Ibid., 163. 74 Ibid., 161. 75 Dirk Philips, “The Enchiridion,” in The Writings of Dirk Philips, 1504-‐1568, trans. and ed. Cornelius J. Dyck, William E. Keeney, and Alvin J. Beachy (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), 198-‐99. 76 Ibid., 203.
39
Many of the earliest Anabaptist-‐Mennonite confessions of faith also include articles
addressing ministry and, in particular, the call of preachers and ministers within the
church. The Kempen Confession, written in 1545, emerged among North German
Anabaptists who had been influenced by Anabaptist leaders including both Menno Simons
and Dirk Philips. Of its six articles, the longest one addressed the ministry. As Koop noted,
in this confession “the Anabaptists are concerned to redefine the identity of the true
shepherd, the authentic pastor who leads his flock according to the teachings of Christ.”77
For these Anabaptists, writing in the aftermath of the fall of the Kingdom of Münster, “true
reform is possible only when faithful and authentic leadership is in place.”78 It was
essential, therefore, that those rightly called could be distinguished from worldly
shepherds whose efforts could not produce genuine reform. Thus, the Kempen Confession
stated that true teachers “are sent by God and remain in the written word, teaching, and
order of Christ.”79 Likewise, “these teachers are sent from Christ and his beloved father
throughout all time and commissioned to work in his vineyard, as he says, ‘See I sent you
like sheep among wolves.”80
The confessions of the early Dutch Anabaptists also provide evidence of a concern
for identifying leaders for the preaching ministry of the church. Many of these confessions
placed emphasis upon the role of the congregation in commissioning people for the offices
of preaching and pastoral ministry. For example, the Wismar Articles, written in 1554, read
in part, “Ninth, no one is to undertake to preach or teach in the congregations of his own
77 Koop, “Worldly Preachers and True Shepherds,” 30. 78 Ibid., 33. 79 Karl Koop, trans., “Kempen Confession (1545),” in Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527-‐1660, ed. Karl Koop (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2006), 102. 80 Ibid.
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accord, but only if he is ordained or commissioned for this task by a congregation or the
elders.”81 Likewise, the Waterlander Confession stated that “in times of need the
congregation shall prepare itself before God with fasting and prayer, calling upon him for
help—for he alone can send the right servants into the harvest—that our heavenly Father
may prepare the right messengers among the congregations to the glory of his name.”82
The Short Confession, written in 1610, stated, “The calling or electing of servants to these
offices takes place through the ministers of the church together with the congregation (Acts
1:21, 14:23). They call upon the name of the Lord, for he alone knows the human heart, he
is in the midst of the believers gathered in his holy name, guiding them by his Holy Spirit.”83
It is clear from these confessional statements that the congregation played a significant role
in the identification and calling of preachers and ministers among early Dutch Anabaptists.
The Prussian Confession, written in 1660, was perhaps the most dominant
confession among Prussian and Russian Mennonites. This first confession in Polish and
Prussian territories stated that “when the church requires such persons to be servants of
the Word, they together pray earnestly to God—for this matter is beyond their own
power…And they humbly pray to God, that he, who knows every heart, will show through a
united voice, whom he has chosen for such a service and office.”84 Like the Dutch
Anabaptists, the confession set out a process by which the congregation may prayerfully
81 Cornelius J. Dyck, trans., “The Wismar Articles, 1554,” in Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527-‐1660, ed. Karl Koop (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2006), 113. 82 Cornelius J. Dyck, trans., “The First Waterlander Confession of Faith, Alkmaar, September 22, 1577,” in Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527-‐1660, ed. Karl Koop (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2006), 131. 83 Cornelius J. Dyck, trans., “Short Confession of Faith and the Essential Elements of Christian Doctrine (1610),” in Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527-‐1660, ed. Karl Koop (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2006), 150. 84 John Rempel and Karl Koop, trans., “Prussian Confession (1660),” in Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527-‐1660, ed. Karl Koop (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2006), 317-‐18.
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seek to identify those whom God has called to teaching and diaconal roles within the
church.
For both Luther and the early Anabaptists, then, the elimination of the special
spiritual status accorded to clergy did not mean a complete elimination of the roles of
preachers and ministers. Rather, with these reforms came an increased emphasis on the
role of the congregation of believers in identifying, with God’s help, those who had been
called by God to such roles within the congregation. Whether or not the experience of an
inner call was also thought to be normative, as was so strongly suggested in the writings of
Dirk Phillips, is not altogether clear. Nonetheless, what is clear is that God’s call was to be
mediated through God’s people, the church.
Mennonite Brethren Origins
A strong belief in the priesthood of all believers was one of the issues that lay behind
the founding of the Mennonite Brethren Church. According to Hans Kasdorf:
The genesis of the Anabaptists and the Mennonite Brethren is deeply rooted in the spirit of the priesthood of all believers, the equality of all saints with their diversity of spiritual gifts. The Brethren of 1860 also broke away from a structured authoritarian hierarchy in which an elite class of clergy was in charge of all administrative and ceremonial functions pertaining to the work of the Church. The Brethren could not reconcile the existing structures with their understanding of the New Testament Church and were looking for a form in which all members would be allowed freedom and spontaneity of worship and participation in service and ministry. What they looked for was a Spirit-‐directed Brotherhood that would express itself in a gift-‐oriented rather than status-‐oriented community.85
Within this context, the question of how ministers ought to be called was of
sufficient importance that it was one of several issues addressed in the 1860 Mennonite
85 Hans Kasdorf, “Reflections on the Church Concept of the Mennonite Brethren,” Direction Journal 4, no. 3 (July 1975), under “The Principle of a Lay Ministry vs. an Elite Ministry,” http://www.directionjournal.org/ 4/3/reflections-‐on-‐church-‐concept-‐of.html (accessed January 17, 2015).
42
Brethren Document of Secession, a letter addressed to the Molotschna Mennonite Church
by eighteen men who sought to dissociate themselves from its membership. Following the
writings of Menno Simons, the document affirmed that “ministers may be called in two
Scriptural ways: Some are chosen by God alone, without human assistance, and sent out by
His Spirit, as were the prophets and apostles, and also the house of Stephen was self-‐
appointed to the ministry of the saints…Others are called through the instrumentality of
true believers, as recorded in Acts 1.”86 Thus, according to the first Mennonite Brethren,
ministers were to be identified not simply by their association with a particular social
group in the community, but through a careful process of discerning those whom God was
calling, according to the teachings of Scripture.
By the time the first official Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith was written in
1902, the tone had shifted to place more emphasis upon the role of the church in
commissioning ministers or servants of the word, as well as deacons for service within the
congregation. Thus, the confession stated, “The commission to such office (service) is
accomplished according to the method of the apostolic church through the servants of the
Church, who in fervent prayer call upon the name of God, fully trusting that Christ, as head
of the church, through His Holy Spirit will reveal those who shall be useful in service.”87 It
did retain some emphasis upon the inner call, citing Menno Simons: “Some without the aid
of men are called out by the Lord and sent by His Spirit…”88 This was noted in a footnote to
the article, rather than in the text of the article itself.
86 Mennonite Brethren Church, “Document of Secession (Mennonite Brethren Church, 1860),” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Document_of_Secession_ (Mennonite_Brethren_Church,_1860) (accessed January 17, 2015). 87 Howard John Loewen, One Lord, One Church, One Hope, and One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith in North America: an Introduction (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985), 167. 88 Ibid.
43
The subsequent 1975 Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith stated, “Some
members of the church have received special gifts for leadership, pastoral, preaching,
teaching, evangelistic, diaconal ministries. The church prayerfully recognizes these gifts
and calls these persons…A congregation, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, may commission
or ordain such servants.”89 While emphasizing the role of the church as a calling body, the
1975 Confession also focused less on the office of the pastor in particular, instead locating
leadership ministries in the context of the gifts given to the larger congregation, so that
“each member lovingly ministers to the other until all are built up to the maturity of
Christ.”90
Contemporary Mennonite Brethren Conversations About Calling
Among North American Mennonite Brethren, there has been a significant amount of
conversation about the call to ministry at study conferences and in denominational
publications in recent decades. Beginning with study conferences in the late 1950s,
mention was made in study conference papers of the challenges facing the church as
salaried pastors became increasingly common. With the emergence of salaried pastors,
Mennonite Brethren who had long held an antihierarchical emphasis that encouraged lay
participation in ministry faced questions about whether salaried ministry fit within its
conception of church, and, if so, how such ministers ought to relate to existing lay ministers.
Thus, for example, Waldo Hiebert wrote the following in a paper for the July 1958 study
conference:
89 Ibid., 177. 90 Ibid., 176-‐77.
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Since our Mennonite Brethren Churches are now going into the pastoral system of Church leadership we need to sound a note of caution. Too readily the minister is considered purely a professional leader, rather than a servant of the congregation leading others into service (Eph. 4:11-‐12). Too readily the minister is expected to do the work while fewer and fewer laymen are drawn into participation of church work as well as into the teaching and preaching ministry.91
The 1970 study conference once again noted the steady growth in a single, salaried,
professionally-‐trained model of pastoral leadership in both Canada and the United States,
which had essentially replaced the multiple lay ministry of previous decades. This led to a
concern that the local congregation no longer felt the responsibility for identifying and
calling individuals to preaching and pastoral roles within the church. Hiebert argued that as
churches began looking outside of themselves for pastoral leaders, this resulted in a
shortage of Mennonite Brethren leaders entering into ministry, in part due to confusion
about the call to ministry. According to Hiebert, “As is vividly portrayed in Acts 13:1-‐3,
these special functionaries received an inner and an outer call. The inner call through the
Holy Spirit upon the individual conscience, and the outer call by the church substantiating
the personal call. It is incumbent upon volunteers and church alike to articulate and
identify the divine call to special ministries.”92 He concluded, “It is not important to argue
as to which is, or which comes first, the inner call, or the tap on the shoulder. But it is
91 Waldo D. Hiebert, “The Scriptural Definition of the Nature of the Church,” 6, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1958%20-‐%20Jul.%2012-‐16%20-‐%20The%20Scriptural%20Definition%20of%20the%20Nature%20of%20the% 20Church%20-‐%20Waldo%20D.%20Hiebert.PDF (accessed January 17, 2015). 92 Waldo D. Hiebert, “Recruitment of Servants in the Church,” 10, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/ cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1970%20-‐%20March%205-‐6%20-‐%20Recruitment%20of%20Servants%20in%20the%20Church%20-‐%20Waldo%20D.%20Hiebert% 20Reduced.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015).
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significant to note that God works through His church in providing workers and leaders.
The inner call needs the substantiation encouragement and support of the local church.”93
At the same 1970 study conference, Orlando Wiebe wrote a paper concerning how
servants within the church receive authorization for their ministries. Wiebe wrote:
It appears clearly that the commissioning of certain men calls for the following necessary ingredients: a saving faith on the part of the servant; a quality of life, belief, and ability, and fullness of the Spirit as indispensable for the task to be performed; a selection of such a man by some approved and visible method; the designation of the man, and the authorization for a specific task to be performed in a given area; the prayer for and upon such a man in all seriousness (fasting), with a commending of him to the Lord.94
Wiebe therefore argued that ordination was the appropriate practice whereby the church
could officially recognize and authorize individuals for the teaching and preaching
ministries. For Wiebe, ordination “seals the internal call of the candidate from God to the
ministry…Furthermore, the external call of the church to the man is sealed. No man can
take a ministry to himself. It is a public ratification of the call and the election. Only when
there is a basic conviction in the hearts of both church and candidate, shall the rite of
ordination be performed.”95 The General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches
responded to such conversations about the need for a renewed emphasis upon the church’s
role in identifying, calling, and affirming pastoral leaders with a resolution in 1972
recommending “that local churches seek earnestly the gifts of ministry in their own ranks,
93 Ibid., 12. 94 Orlando H. Wiebe, “The Commissioning of Servants in the Church,” 8-‐9, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection. http://s3.amazonaws.com/ cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1970%20-‐%20March%205-‐6%20-‐%20 The%20Comissioning%20of%20Servants%20in%20the%20Church%20-‐%20Orlando%20H.%20Wiebe %20Reduced.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015). 95 Ibid., 16.
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encourage persons possessing the gifts and offer support and assistance in their further
training and development.”96
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, there was a significant amount of discussion
among Mennonite Brethren regarding the nature of pastoral leadership and of the church,
and regarding the call of leaders for pastoral ministry, much of which reflected an attempt
to understand and respond to the transition to a new model of paid pastoral ministry in
Mennonite Brethren congregations and to the shortages of individuals entering vocational
ministry during this era. In 1976, Dr. John Regehr articulated this key question: “Does God
call some persons to a professional administrative pastoral role and expect them to move
from place to place exercising it?”97
In response, there was a renewed attempt to define the call to ministry and to
articulate how internal and external elements to such a call ought to relate to one another.
Regehr argued, “We must again come to see the call to the ministry as a call to function
with a particular gift in the Christian group in which that gift is recognized and the service
required. Few persons who are committed to Christ will resist a call when they feel that the
call is fitting their specific gifts to an immediate recognizable need.”98 Regehr clearly
identified both internal and external dimensions to the call, and argued that the church’s
external call must confirm the individual’s internal call in order for a call to ministry to be
truly valid: “It is in the congregation that a person’s gifts for public instruction,
96 A.E. Janzen and Herbert Giesbrecht, eds., We Recommend…Recommendations and Resolutions of the General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (Hillsboro, KS: Mennonite Brethren Publishing House, 1978), 296. 97 John Regehr, “The Call to the Ministry,” 2, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/ Study%20Conference%20Papers/1976%20-‐%20July%203-‐6%20The%20Call%20to%20the%20 Ministry_John%20Regehr.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015). 98 Ibid., 11-‐12.
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proclamation and/or shepherding are validated. The hearer must affirm that God is getting
his work done when the brother preaches. Where such validation occurs, the person will be
affirmed by the correspondence between the inner urging and the church’s reflection, and
he will not find it difficult to follow the call further to new areas or to full-‐time ministry.”99
John E. Toews echoed this understanding of the call to ministry: “The call to leadership is
the call of Jesus that is legitimated by the church… The authority of the charisma (the gift)
of the call of God without the legitimization of the call of the church fractures what for the
early church was a whole. Because the source of the power for the authority to lead is the
presence of Christ in the church, every call to lead must be legitimated by the church.”100
Others, including V. Adrian, recognized the potential for the inner call of the Spirit and the
church’s legitimation of such a call to lack immediate correspondence with one another, but
nonetheless argued that the two must work in concert: “It is possible, and likely, that a
personal call to the ministry may exist long before the church recognizes it. If one continues
in faithfulness in one’s life and in whatever opportunities of ministry the Word may open
up before us, the church will in due time acknowledge God’s grace to us.”101
In the 1980s, the call to ministry once again received renewed attention among
Mennonite Brethren with the emergence of the question of how churches ought to respond
to women who reported having a call to ministry. Whereas in previous papers the call of
99 Ibid., 15. 100 John E. Toews, “Leadership Styles for Mennonite Brethren Churches,” 15, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/ cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1980%20-‐%20May%208-‐10%20-‐%20 Leadership%20Styles%20for%20Mennonite%20Brethren%20Churches%20by%20John%20E.%20Toews. pdf (accessed January 17, 2015). 101 V. Adrian, “The Call and Ordination to the Ministry,” 10, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/ Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1980%20-‐%20May%208-‐10%20-‐%20The%20Call%20 and%20Ordination%20to%20the%20Ministry%20by%20V.%20Adrian.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015).
48
individuals to the ministry had been closely associated with the practice of ordination as an
affirmation and a commissioning of those who had received such a call, Kopp proposed that
“if we can unwind the idea that the laying on of hands is to establish a clergy for the church,
and retrain ourselves to think it to be a way of blessing persons for ministry, then we can
accept and bless gifted persons on the merit of their giftedness and integrity, and not on the
basis of gender.”102 Ron Penner, too, wrote of the challenge of responding to women who
reported a call to ministry, stating, “It strikes me that one of the direct implications for our
churches is to open our hearts and associate staff positions to our sisters. Or, will our
sisters have to go to other denominations to exercise their gifts and ministries? That stands
before us as a direct and immediate challenge in the decades ahead.”103
Without question, increasing numbers of women had been reporting calls to
ministry of various kinds. In previous decades, such inner calls had been weighed by the
congregation in part on the basis of the fruits of a person’s ministry. However, in the case of
women, the primary question was not one of giftedness or of need, but of biblical
interpretation of the texts that apparently restrict women’s roles within the church. As Tim
Geddert wrote, “And in the midst of all the ‘exegesis’ and the ‘hermeneutics,’ women are
being called into leadership roles. Many doubt that they have a right to be there. But many
others rejoice that finally the church has recognized their giftedness and calling. Hardly
anyone doubts that where they minister, they frequently do so with great effectiveness.”104
102 Ibid., 74. 103 Ron Penner, “Response to ‘A Serving People’,” 2, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/ Study%20Conference%20Papers/1986%20-‐%20Oct.%2015-‐17%20-‐%20Response%20to%20A%20Serving %20People%20-‐%20Ron%20Penner.PDF (accessed January 17, 2015). 104 Timothy Geddert, “The Ministry of Women: A Proposal for MBs,” 11, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/
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Thus, emerging questions related to women in ministry leadership raised a new set of
challenges for Mennonite Brethren in their efforts to understand God’s call, as well as the
role the practice of ordination for ministry ought to play in dedicating leaders for ministry
within the church.
In recent decades, the role of ordination in the calling of pastoral leaders has
continued to emerge periodically as an ongoing theological question. In 1994, Tim Geddert
noted, “If we could move closer together in our understanding of church leadership—if we
could agree on the best ways to discern, select and affirm leaders and then hold them
accountable while still allowing them to lead—then we will have made progress on issues
much more central and important than narrowly focusing on whether we should put a
green light, a red light, or an amber light in front of the question of ordination.”105 His
conclusions about ordination suggest that questions about the place of the practice of
ordination in the church are directly related to ongoing questions about the nature of the
call to ministry: “If we are going to ordain, let us be clear that a call from the church into
leadership ministry is at least as valid and trustworthy as the sensed internal call on the
part of the one to be ordained.”106 Ten years later, in 2014, the Canadian Conference of
Mennonite Brethren Churches Board of Faith and Life report cited ordination as a “new and
lively topic,” calling ordination “a reminder that discernment of calling takes place in a
larger context than simply the congregation itself.”107
cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20Conference%20Papers/1989%20-‐%20Aug%202-‐4%20-‐%20 TheMinistryofWomen-‐AProposalforM.B.%27s-‐TimothyGeddert.PDF (accessed January 17, 2015). 105 Tim Geddert, “Ordination,” 3, in the Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies Study Conference Papers 1956-‐Present Digital Collection, http://s3.amazonaws.com/cmbs.mbconf.ca/Theology/Study%20 Conference%20Papers/1994%20-‐%20Apr%207-‐9%20-‐%20Ordination-‐TimGeddert%20Reduced.pdf (accessed January 17, 2015). 106 Ibid., 16. 107 Karla Braun, “Board of Faith and Life Report,” MB Herald, December 2014, 17.
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Contemporary conversations about the call to ministry among Mennonite Brethren
led to the creation of the Ministry Quest program in 2003, under the banner of a set of
programs called “Hearing the Call,” which were intended to encourage youth to consider
vocational ministry. Initially developed at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno,
with different Mennonite Brethren schools in Canada and the United States continuing to
host versions of this program, Ministry Quest sought to encourage local congregations to
identify youth who had gifts for leadership and ministry and to provide them with
opportunities to intentionally explore and develop these gifts. The program was in part a
response to concerns that the individualism that predominates in North American culture
had led churches to become increasingly uncomfortable with their role in identifying and
calling pastors and church leaders, allowing discernment of a call to ministry to become an
increasingly individual matter. John Neufeld, one of the program’s directors, described the
program’s goals this way:
A call to vocational ministry has three elements which complement each other: an individual’s inner call/divine awareness; the call as discovered through spiritual gifts, skills, and aptitudes; and the call of a faith community. While there may be exceptions to this three-‐fold pattern, Hearing the Call initiatives affirm and seek to strengthen opportunities for participating churches to engage in such leadership gift discernment. Youth are given the opportunity to explore ministry as a vocational choice, and thus to become sensitive to the various general and specific calls/claims God has made on their lives.108
Another example of a recent attempt among Mennonite Brethren to create
programs that support individuals in discerning a call to ministry can be seen in the C2C
Network Canada, a national, interdenominational church planting network that has its
roots in the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. The C2C Network's
108 John Neufeld, “Rediscovering the Calling and Sending Church,” Direction: A Mennonite Brethren Forum 32, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 197.
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assessment centre evaluates potential leaders to identify those who meet the profile of a
church planter. According to the C2C website, “The key to successful church planting is
identifying the right person, called of God, with the right gifts, the right heart, in the right
place, and at the right time.”109 Individuals who are interested in becoming church planters
are invited to attend an assessment centre, which is “an intense four days that uses a
variety of inventories, activities, and evaluations to help you identify your call.”110 This
approach to discerning God’s call, while it echoes earlier concerns to identify church
leaders who are genuinely called of God, uses more pragmatic language and points toward
contemporary leadership tools, and is significantly removed from the context of a local
congregation as the primary body which has responsibility for helping individuals to
discern and evaluate God’s call to ministry.
Summary
The church has used language of calling and call stories throughout its history. In
different eras of church history, this language has carried different meanings and has been
associated with different questions about the nature of Christian ministry and church
leadership. In the early Church, calling was understood universally—every Christian was
called to a life of discipleship as a follower of Christ. As the church grew in power, language
of vocation and calling was increasingly associated with the particular vocations of priests,
monks, and nuns. Then, during the reformations of the sixteenth century, with a renewed
emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, an emphasis emerged focusing on the role of
109 C2C Network Canada, “C2C Network Assessment Centre,” https://www.c2cnetwork.ca/c2c-‐assessment-‐centre/ (accessed January 14, 2015). 110 Ibid.
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the local church in identifying and calling individuals for leadership roles within the
church. Identifying those who were called to ministry became a means of separating true
teachers from false ones and of discerning those who ought to be set aside for teaching and
leadership roles within the church.
Among the Mennonite Brethren, the nature of the call to ministry has been a subject
of conversation since the origins of the denomination, and discussions about the call to
ministry have arisen each time questions emerged about the nature of the church and of
church leadership. Thus, with the professionalization of ministry, with recent
conversations about women’s roles in ministry leadership, and with discussions about
whether or not the church ought to ordain its leaders, the call to ministry has emerged as a
critical component of these conversations. Most recently, various programs have developed
which have attempted to assist individuals and churches in identifying those who have
been called to ministry.
Having examined the various narratives that have shaped the Mennonite Brethren
understanding of a call to ministry, we now turn our attention to the stories of Mennonite
Brethren women who have experienced a call to ministry. Giving careful attention to these
women’s own descriptions of how they have discerned a call to ministry will add depth to
this examination of the call to ministry in its contemporary context among Mennonite
Brethren.
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CHAPTER FOUR
THE CALL TO MINISTRY: HEARING WOMEN’S STORIES
Six women agreed to be interviewed about how they had discerned their call to
ministry, and about how they have lived into that call. Each one of their call stories is
unique; each reflecting their diverse backgrounds and personalities. Each woman spoke
readily about how she had discerned God’s leading in her life, and each was passionate
about the church and about the work that she has been called to do. And yet, even though
like snowflakes each of the call stories shared by these women was uniquely her own,
several common themes emerged. This chapter seeks to share the women’s stories in their
own words while drawing out some of the common themes that surfaced out of their
experiences.
The Call to Ministry is Discerned Within the Church
Traditionally, as has already been demonstrated, a call to ministry within the
Mennonite Brethren tradition has been described as having two components: an inner
sense of call on the part of the individual, which is confirmed by the external affirmation of
that call by the church body. The stories the women shared about their own calls identified
strong elements that related to both their internal experience of God’s call and the external
influence of the church.
In listening to these women speak about the role that the church played in their
discernment of a call to ministry, it very clearly emerged that, across the board, the
provision of opportunities to lead within the church was instrumental in their recognition
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that pastoral ministry was a possibility for them. Andrea spoke about “not really realizing I
had much leadership potential until the year before I started volunteering in the youth
ministry, and then it was a quick transition once I was involved in the youth ministry to
being asked to step into some leadership, volunteer responsibilities that involved a lot of
trust and a lot of leadership and exercised different gifts and grew them in me.” Faith’s
congregation created a pastoral internship in an area of ministry in which she had already
been volunteering. She was encouraged to apply in part because she had already had this
experience.
Dayna started working in a congregation in a ministry coordinator role; she was
hired in spite of the fact that many in that congregation did not believe that women should
be pastors. Yet, once she had been hired, “they kept asking me to do stuff” such as speaking
during the sermon time on a Sunday morning. Being given opportunities like this was
significant not only for Dayna, but for her congregation as well: “It was just the evolution of
being there and getting to try things, and going, ‘Oh, this fits.’ And then having people go,
‘Oh, that fits…Which makes no sense to us.’”
Like Dayna’s congregation, many Mennonite Brethren congregations are still
wrestling with what roles to allow women to take on. While the 2006 recommendation
passed by the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches frees congregations to
call and affirm women for leadership at all levels, it also blesses member congregations to
discern how to respond to questions regarding women in ministry leadership based upon
their own particular ministry contexts and their own discernment of Scripture. One
Mennonite Brethren woman commented that “while women’s participation goes on a-‐pace
in some congregations, the ethos of the Mennonite Brethren denomination as such has not
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changed to reflect that decision—or ‘the spirit, the direction’ it represented, as one man
who worked hard on that process put it to me recently. Perhaps it’s even regressed.”111
This means that for many women the affirmation they receive from their congregations
comes with mixed messages that they must decide how to handle. Dayna reported that
after she would preach, a common response was “somebody vigorously shaking my hand,
like they were quite upset, but more like confused upset, and saying, ‘I don’t believe in
women preachers, but that was preaching!’” At the same time, others would respond,
“Finally! We’ve been waiting for women in ministry our whole life.”
For other women, mixed messages in the affirmation they received from the church
came in the form of the types of roles they were encouraged to consider. Carrie has often
been asked if she would serve in the area of children’s ministry, in spite of the fact that she
reports she is neither gifted nor excited about serving in that area. Faith was asked to serve
on a provincial church board, to which she initially responded with excitement until they
invited her to take on the role of secretary in spite of the fact that she couldn’t type and had
previously held secretary positions on boards with little success. She ended up declining,
and reflected, “So, you know, it always seemed that there was a bit of hitch to things.”
Gender stereotypes are often reflected in the ministry opportunities that are made
available to women; congregations do not always imagine women serving in roles outside
of those more traditionally held by women.
Nonetheless, the community’s affirmation of the call to ministry is something that all
of the women described as being critical for them. In some cases, this affirmation came
from the congregation itself. In other cases, it came from trusted friends or family 111 Dora Dueck, “Speaking of Women…,” Borrowing Bones Blog, entry posted June 28, 2012, http://doradueck.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/speaking-‐of-‐women/ (accessed January 28, 2015).
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members. Regardless of its source, the affirmation was important. Carrie reflected, “I don’t
want to be one of those people whom everyone else is saying, ‘Oh, she thinks she’s called to
ministry, but really…’ So really, the only way I’ve gotten through that is because I’ve had so
much affirmation.” Andrea noted that during a critical moment of conflict early in her
pastoral ministry, “I was carried by people, I was carried by affirmation.” Similarly, Faith
stated, “I don’t have a whole lot of inner self-‐confidence and drive that push me to do
things, but I do listen to what other people say. I think that’s where the goodness of God is,
in putting people in place who would say the things that resonated, that gave me the
courage to give it a whirl.” Brenda, too, noted, “I think the call to ministry sort of has that
beginning piece of being encouraged, or having said, ‘Brenda, you should do this.’…And me
saying, sort of, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’” In some way, external affirmation by others of their call
and their gifts has been a significant part of each of the women’s stories. For some women,
this affirmation has come more readily than for others.
The Internal Experience of God’s Call
While Mennonite Brethren theology has at times emphasized the role of the external
call of the church and has sometimes treated the individual’s inner experience of call as
secondary, for the women interviewed the internal experience of God’s call has played a
strong and often initiating role in their call stories. Perhaps this is not surprising, in light of
the fact that it is only in recent years that the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren
Churches has freed congregations to bless and affirm women for all pastoral roles. If
anything, the stories of the women who were interviewed for this study affirm the
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significance of the internal dimension of the call, which was often experienced as an
encounter with God and became a significant milestone in the individual’s life.
Ellen described the inner experience of God’s call to ministry as “a sense of not
dragging your feet and ‘I have to do this because I’m being punished,’ but ‘something comes
alive inside of me when I do this.’” She used an analogy from the movie Chariots of Fire, in
which Olympic athlete Eric Liddell states, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” So, Ellen said,
“What is that… ‘When I (blank) I feel God’s pleasure’? What is that for you? That’s listening
to the inner sense of call.”
For some of the women, “feeling God’s pleasure” came in the form of a deep love for
the work that they do. Both Brenda and Faith described finding a new energy in pastoral
ministry. Brenda described her first year of work as a pastor as being “exhilarating,” saying,
“It was just like this huge, fresh air, invigorating kind of time, right? I just, you know, felt
this was so fun. It was exciting.” Faith also talked about the early days of working as a
pastor: “In those first months I could hardly stay in bed in the morning. I was way too early
to work every day. I couldn’t wait to get there. And to me that was an experience of God’s
grace and affirmation.” Dayna started working with youth as an add-‐on to her main areas of
responsibility, but discovered that “it turns out that I loved, loved youth ministry. Like, I
really, really liked it. And it was pastoral. Like, you can’t really get around what I was doing
and say it was strictly administrative. It was pastoral, and I was enjoying it.” Andrea talked
about the fear involved when she decided to apply for her current job, knowing that she
was “pursuing something that was so closely connected to my heart.”
The women talked about the joy they experienced the first time they faced taking on
a new role. For many, their first opportunities to preach stood out as pivotal moments in
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which they experienced an inner confirmation of their call. Carrie was somewhat uncertain
about her first invitation to preach, but discovered that she “loved the process.” Dayna
reflected on her first opportunity to speak on a Sunday morning, saying, “I went, ‘Oh, this
feels really good actually. This feels like something I could do.’” And Faith, who had
previously been very reluctant about public speaking, said, “I knew that when I stood up
and led a worship service, and the very first time I preached a sermon, I came away from
that thinking, ‘That’s the thing I was meant to do. I loved every second of that!”
For some of the women, fairly dramatic experiences contributed to their recognition
of God’s call. Carrie described having a dream about entering into ministry at a pivotal
decision point in her own life, from which she “woke up so happy,” determined to get back
into relational ministry again. Faith described reading a job advertisement in a periodical:
“And it was one of those sort-‐of theophany moments, where I knew I was supposed to pay
attention to that. And I thought to myself, ‘Someone I know is supposed to have this job.’
And so I circled it, I called my husband and said, ‘Do you know anybody I should tell about
this job?’ But he couldn’t think of anyone at the moment. As the day went by I sort of had
this feeling that it was me.” That was followed by what Faith described as “seven to nine
extraordinary moments affirming doing this.”
But for other women, the internal experience of God’s call came about in a much
more gradual manner. Andrea described a process of “mourning this moving forward in a
weird way. There was just so much wrestling to it. And it was some time after that when I
slowly came around and started looking forward to the possibility.” Dayna said, “I don’t
remember the moment I would have gone, ‘It’s pastoral ministry no matter what.’ It was
this gradual process of going: I love this. I’m actually fairly good at it. This is what I want to
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do.” And even Carrie said, “The dream and then the phone call later, that was kind of
dramatic. That was, like, fun call story, right? But the call to pastoral work in general, like, I
don’t think those are the same thing necessarily. They’re part of each other, but the call to
be a pastoral person, and to be pastoring in whatever context, that’s the call I feel, and
that’s a much more vague kind of ‘I think I can do this,’ starting from inside me.”
The same spiritual practices that women described as sustaining them in their daily
lives were the practices that helped them to pay attention to God’s call and to live into it.
Thus, women described drawing on practices of lectio divina and reflecting on Scripture,
silence and centering prayer, Ignatian exercises, and spiritual direction. Their description
of how these practices helped them to pay attention to God and to God’s call revealed that
most of the women ultimately think about God’s call in light of their universal call to be
faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. As Ellen asked, “How can you separate that from just the
practices of living?”
Reflections on Mennonite Brethren Call Language
The traditional Mennonite Brethren narrative about a call to ministry was not a
good fit for all of the women who were interviewed, however. Several of them spoke about
the ways in which it failed to capture their experiences. Carrie, for example, discussed the
call stories she has encountered from other pastors: “Most of the call stories that I’ve
heard…have been the classic, like, ‘I was going down this path and God called me onto this
(different) path through a community; people said I should do this, and I didn’t want to do
it. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to be a whatever, church called me, dragging my feet in
the sand.’ Well, that I cannot relate to at all.” Later in the interview, Carrie elaborated on
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how her own call story was a very different kind of experience than the stories she had
heard of pastors who were called in spite of their desire not to go into vocational ministry:
I’m so happy to be in this kind of work, and to be talking about these kinds of things. So how is that not a call? Like, to have that kind of enthusiasm and passion about something. If you’re passionate about something and you’re good at something, and you know that in your gut, and trusted people have affirmed you, then why do you need it to be unanimous? And why do you need that classic, ‘No, I didn’t want to go but God called me’? You know?
Several of the women discussed the fact that in their experience, churches and
hiring committees expect that candidates for ministry leadership positions will use a
particular kind of narrative in describing their call. Brenda, for example, related an
experience she had early in her career when she was applying to work at a large
evangelical parachurch organization:
All went well, until I met with the executive director… He was a guy who was big on language, I think. And I wasn’t using the right language. So he wondered about things… Because his life was all about using the language of ‘God has called me to do this,’ and I didn’t use those words. And so he wondered about that, and I was taken aback, kind of really took a step back. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘this is just what I do, service is part of who you are as a Christian.’ And I just didn’t see why I needed to actually say those words to him. But in his mind, that was important, to use the right words.
Brenda went on to reflect about why she believed call language has come to play such an
important role in the discernment of pastoral candidates in the Mennonite Brethren
tradition, and how she has adapted to this culture:
We want to be very sure, it seems like; we want to be very sure of this person. We want to hear people say those words: Yes, they feel strongly God has called them. And we want them to express that in very real, tangible ways. To say, ‘Yes, I really felt the call of God on my heart, and I prayed, and God spoke to me.’ We want to hear those words. It’s those trigger words, that I didn’t give the executive director all those years ago, right? That tells them, oh yes, this person is in. This person understands; this person’s heart is good. So, yeah, I mean, I use that language now to help people understand, and like I said, depending on the culture you’re in…
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Carrie, too, spoke about her struggle to find the balance between talking about her
call in a way that honoured her experience, and her desire to use the language that she
thought others expected of her:
If I ever get my Master’s degree and apply for church work, in the interview process, I know I’m going to have to tell this call story. And I know I’m going to have to work really hard, like I prayed before today’s meeting, ‘Help me to be really honest,’ because I know what they want to hear! And so, I know in that interview process, if I say, well I did not want to work in a church, which is true, like I feel like I don’t love the church enough right now, at this point in my life, to want to work in it. But I know I’m going to end up there, and God’s going to grow the love, and I’m going to be doing it. Like, I just have this gut feeling. So, if I include that, like, what part am I going to include in my call story? Am I going to include the ‘I did not want to work in a church, I never thought I’d work in a church, but here I am and God has called me to the church?’ That’s the normative story in the Mennonite Brethren world.
Faith wondered if the way we talk about a call to ministry “sometimes forces people
into a story that, not that has been made up, but that they then have to live into.” She
likened the experience of a call to ministry to how Mennonite Brethren talk about the
experience of salvation:
Do we limit God by insisting that everyone have a call date, a call-‐by date? Or do we need to expand our understanding of what that is, so that on an application that poor sucker doesn’t have to lie, or invent, or feel diminished? It’s like, when did you come to the Lord? I recently had to fill out an application for a young woman, and that’s what it said. Write the date when such-‐and-‐such came to the Lord. She’s still coming!
Several of the women suggested that more emphasis should be placed on spiritual
gifts rather than on a particular type of experience of a call to ministry. Both Dayna and
Brenda noted that discovering their spiritual gifts helped them to understand their call
better. In spite of the fact that she herself talks about having a strong internal call to
ministry, Carrie suggested that talking about spiritual gifts might be a helpful alternative to
the way that many have come to talk about being called to ministry:
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Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to talk about our call, as exciting as this is, and just talk more in terms of what are the gifts God has given you. Almost more like gift discernment language. Oh, you’re good with people, you’re a good listener, you’re actually a very encouraging person, you’re also a fantastic public speaker, and you are interested in spiritual things and the deep things of God, and you’re very good at communicating that. Maybe you should be our pastor. Do you like doing those things? Yeah, I kind of do. Why don’t you be our pastor? Like, I wish sometimes it could be framed that way, instead of ‘I have a call.’ You know?
The use of spiritual gifts language as an alternative to call language is perhaps one
way of beginning to move away from viewing a call to ministry as a very particular kind of
call from God that fits within a particular framework. Somewhat surprisingly, in light of the
fact that each of the women interviewed could describe how she had experienced God’s call
in her own journey into pastoral ministry, the women did not tend to use their own call
stories as a means of legitimating their ministry. Instead, many of the women expressed a
desire to move away from conversation about a particular call to ministry in order to talk
about experiencing God’s call in a more universal way. Brenda said, “I believe that we’re all
called to serve. In whatever timing, whether you feel like it or not… And that comes to
anybody who’s even volunteering in anything.” Likewise, Carrie said, “I would love for the
church to extend the word ‘call’ to a way broader vocational sense. And add a spiritual
dimension to those people’s calls too.” Thus, Carrie could speak freely about a custodian at
a school or a friend entering nursing having a particular call from God.
Dayna preferred to speak about her own call in more universal terms than as being
particular to her work as a pastor:
For some people, it still very much is, if you hear someone has a call, then you know that person’s like a pastor or a missionary. I would be way more on the side of the spectrum that says everybody has a call. God created us all with plan and purpose, and your job is to figure out how you’re wired up and live into that. So I like that, when people talk more broadly. We all have a call, and no one’s call…priesthood of all believers, no one’s call is better or worse than anyone else’s. That’s where I would lean.
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Faith also leaned on the Mennonite Brethren doctrine of the priesthood of all believers in
explaining why she disliked the current language that is often used to describe a call to
ministry: “It’s become an expression that gives some connotation of a sort-‐of set apart, and
yet we say we’re all equal. So to me it’s a contradiction in Mennonite Brethren thinking, if
you say there’s this call that’s special, and yet very clearly pastors are just one of the bunch
in the way we’re expected to be part of the congregation.” For Faith, “the call is to serve God
in whatever capacity He has for me.”
Dayna suggested that it is precisely because of women’s experiences that they tend
to reject the idea of a call as being particular to professional ministry:
I just think there’s some people who will privilege it as only pastoral. And the thing is, I’ve never met a woman who feels this way, and I think it’s because we weren’t given the opportunity to. But I know so many men who have explored a call to ministry and chosen something else, and sometimes if you talk to them you’ll hear that they feel like they copped out, or they didn’t do the right thing. And I think they did the right thing, it’s just there’s this other kind of thing about, the best way of serving God is by being a pastor. And even if you look at them, like, you’re not supposed to be a pastor, but what you’re doing is really cool, they feel it in a different way. Like they should have, it would have been better, they’ve sold out, or something. And I’m like, at least not for a long time is any woman going to feel like that, because it’s not like the opportunity will be given to her all the way to consider it. Because that opportunity is not there.
Dayna’s suggestion that women tend to understand God’s call in a more universal sense
precisely because they have not been given the opportunity to wholly embrace the
understanding of God’s call as being particular to ministry is an interesting and compelling
one. Few women within the Mennonite Brethren Church are encouraged to think that the
best way for them to serve God would be through pastoral ministry. Even today, there are
disproportionately fewer women serving in pastoral roles in Mennonite Brethren churches
than there are men, with the result being that young women have few opportunities to see
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other women in pastoral ministry as role models. As a result, Dayna noted, “I didn’t even
know it was an option, I’d never seen anybody do it. Why would I consider doing something
I didn’t even know I was able to do?” Carrie also recounted brushing off early
encouragement from a teacher that she should be a preacher someday: “And I just laughed,
like I thought he was nuts, I thought he was just rebellious or something. Women aren’t
preachers. That’s not even…I never once even thought of it.” Even Ellen, a lifelong
Mennonite Brethren with many years of pastoral ministry experience, was able to name
her calling in terms of particular tasks she felt called to apart from her calling as primarily
connected to her occupation, stating, “They are easiest to live out as a pastor, but it’s not
impossible to live those out in another context.”
The Challenges Facing Women in Pastoral Ministry
It is remarkable that, in spite of the significant challenges that women in pastoral
ministry in Mennonite Brethren churches face, they continue to live with confidence in
God’s call in their lives, and yet do not hold out the story of how God has called them as
proof of their right to be in pastoral ministry. Although the focus of the interview was on
the practices of discerning and living with God’s call, nonetheless each of the women
interviewed named particular challenges that she had faced in discerning God’s call in her
life. These challenges were directly linked to the fact that she was a woman and not a man.
Because the women did not tend to associate discerning their call to ministry as an activity
that preceded their entry into pastoral ministry, but rather as an ongoing Christian practice
that continued to shape their life, they spoke of these challenges as having a direct impact
on their discernment of a call to ministry.
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A number of the women described experiencing what a female pastor friend of mine
once explained to me as “the freight of being a woman.” Or, as Carrie put it, “There’s more
pressure on… me, because I’m a woman in a man’s world, to prove myself.” Dayna’s
description of her first Sunday morning preaching to her congregation captured what my
friend was attempting to describe: “Well, first of all, I did it and as I was walking up to the
stage that day I thought I might throw up, and I’ve never been uncomfortable with public
speaking, but I knew if I did a bad job, then therefore all women were bad preachers. As
opposed to a guy could get up and go, eh, he’s not the greatest. I felt like I was carrying that
weight, which is a lot to put on a first-‐time person who’s never taken a preaching class.”
Many of the women described similar experiences in which they felt like they were
carrying an added weight of responsibility to prove themselves precisely because they
were women. Andrea, although she had difficulty articulating where it was coming from,
also felt this added burden:
As I approached the role, I felt like I needed to prove something more than I thought a male in my role, my position, would have to prove. I don’t know if that’s true, I can’t actually speak to it, but to some extent I felt like I needed to prove that I was able to preach confidently. I felt like I needed to prove, in some ways, that I was unlike the previous youth pastor, while still maintaining all the things that were good and that people wanted, and I think that can drive me crazy… If kids are not listening to me, I am quick to associate it with the fact that I am a female, and struggle through that thought.
In some instances, the challenges associated with being a woman in pastoral
ministry were more explicit than a sense of an added burden because of being a woman as
described above. Some of these challenges were related to the practical, everyday logistics
of carrying out their jobs. Dayna, for example, described the process of trying to learn how
to perform immersion baptisms:
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But I did ask the men what they wore in the tank. And some of them knew what I was asking. But none of them could help me figure out what to wear in the tank. Or how to put on a lapel mike that doesn’t even swivel for the way a woman’s shirt buttons, kind of weird randoms. Those I’ve all had to figure out. (laughs) No, I won’t take my suit jacket off and have my shirt that’s underneath it to do the baptism, I don’t dress like that.
In other cases, the challenges of being a woman in a pastoral world that is
dominated by men are less lighthearted. Dayna related, “I accidentally found out that I was
being paid significantly less than the man who had the office right next to me. They mixed
up some forms, and sent that to me. So, there was a lot of stuff that was making me feel like,
I don’t want to be here anymore and I’m tired.”
Women also identified the challenge of holding together the call to pastoral ministry
with the call to parenting, a challenge that women seem to experience differently than men.
In part this is because, as Andrea stated,
I have no idea what it looks like to build a maternity leave into this business. I have no plans of that for the near future, but before I even started, when I was still thinking of applying, I had no idea what to do about the idea of, should I have a kid one day, what will it look like to work evenings, to be really busy, to do overtime, to be on mission trips, like what will all of those things look like in light of having an individual, a tiny individual, who I will want to be around and want to care for and do not want to be absent from their lives.
Brenda reflected that “you really are diverted in some ways, you can’t focus completely
again. And so, I’ve always thought in some ways that women who do take a lot of time off,
who do part-‐time work or whatever and focus on their children, they just get set back in
certain things. And that’s okay. I don’t regret that. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just the
reality.” Although the challenges of balancing maternity leave with career is certainly not
unique to women in ministry vocations, the demands of parenting and the demands of
being in pastoral ministry impact women differently than their male counterparts, and by
virtue of the fact that these challenges are different for women than for the men who have,
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in most cases, preceded them, these are challenges that women in vocational ministry are
still trying to navigate in significant ways. Moreover, reconciling the call to ministry with
the call to parenting can be a complicated process.
In listening to these women share their stories, it is clear that not all women
experience the challenges of being women in pastoral ministry in the same way. Ellen and
Faith both related their experiences as women working as lead pastors in a world that is
heavily dominated by men. For Ellen, “Absolutely, I’m the only female at the table, and it
actually never enters my mind that I’m the only one, because it really doesn’t matter. I feel
like I’m totally accepted for who I am, and I put my voice out there just like the rest of them.
So that’s really important for me.” For Faith, on the other hand, “It’s a hard thing, having
been in there as a woman pastor when women pastors were not openly—they weren’t
even legally at that point—accepted, was really difficult, because it meant going to the
pastor and wife gatherings, and being the only woman in a room full of men, and having
conversations about how to support your wife.”
Nonetheless, the cumulative weight of experiences such as these can become
significant. Dayna eventually left her position, stating, “And so I was the guinea pig on
which a lot of people were working out what they thought. Which is partly why I had to
leave, because that was too much… When you’re also trying to work out what you think,
that’s just too much to handle.” Brenda, on the other hand, found a different way to live
with the tension: “I don’t know how everybody feels in my congregation, even, when
women preach. I know, actually, some people don’t say negative things, but they’ll say, ‘I
don’t think women should preach.’ And so, I’ll go, ‘okay.’ And I’ve heard that, I mean,
someone I like and trust has said that. And I go, ‘okay.’ So I don’t feel that’s a negative
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against me. I don’t feel that’s a negative against call. Because it’s not a world where all is
rosy.”
Several of the women also went on to elaborate on the particular challenges
currently being faced by women in pastoral ministry within the Mennonite Brethren
Church. Carrie was very aware of the challenges that would face her if she were to try to
find opportunities to engage in pastoral ministry as a woman within the Mennonite
Brethren Church, in spite of the formal resolution freeing women for ministry leadership.
She pointed to a gap between the articulated beliefs of leaders in the church and the
practical reality she saw around her: “I feel a little bit like, okay you guys, you all say you
want equality, and you all say there’s room for women in ministry, I’ve heard the sermons,
but look around! You’re all men! Like, look around, and there’s so many, I don’t know,
there’s so many women you could be affirming.” Carrie reported feeling “tired of, like, the
hiring practices are still so geared toward men. The recruiting and the tapping.” Looking
around at emerging leaders, she saw that “they are men, they’re young, like they’re in their
twenties and thirties, and they’re being mentored by men in their fifties, generally, there’s
the token women, one or two, like literally one or two, and how on earth does that, like how
can a woman feel like there’s a place for her in the Mennonite Brethren world?”
Likewise, Dayna also reflected on the mixed messages she sensed between the
theological statements and the practices of Mennonite Brethren churches:
I heard somebody say one time, ‘The tent used to be big enough for all of us, but somebody’s moved the tent, and I don’t even know where the tent is anymore.’ And I feel that. I’m here, I’m allowed to do this stuff, I’ve been encouraged and affirmed to do this stuff. I’m not supposed to do this stuff? …So yeah, I feel less hopeful maybe than I did a few years ago when it felt like some of those things were opening. And I don’t know, I feel like none of it’s been done with very clear, we-‐all-‐sit-‐in-‐these-‐meetings and I know where things are. The
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tent got moved, and I don’t know who moved it, and I don’t know where it is. That’s how it feels.
For Dayna, then, the perceived lack of opportunities for women to take on ministry
leadership roles within Mennonite Brethren congregations led her to reflect, “I’m not sure
how much longer I’m going to be welcome here. I’m going to be a pastor or in pastoral work
of some kind probably for the rest of my life, and I’m here until you tell me I have to go. It’s
just feeling more and more like I’m being told…it would be a lot more pleasant for everyone
if I could just slip away quietly and stop bothering them.” Likewise, although Carrie would
prefer to serve within the Mennonite Brethren Church, she noted, “I grew up Mennonite
Church Canada. I think I’m going to end up back in the Mennonite Church, simply because
the Mennonite Brethren Church won’t call me.”
Carrie, though, shared an alternate, hoped-‐for vision for a Mennonite Brethren
Church in which women were welcomed as equal partners and offered more opportunities
to serve:
If you are one of those churches in the MB world that really values women in ministry, and if you feel that the most beautiful vision of God is man and woman together, that’s what I feel. The most beautiful… I still refer to God with male pronouns, it’s how I grew up, and it just flows more comfortably for me, but I don’t believe God’s male. And so if I envision the closer we get to God, we need men and women to get us there, you know? Like, how can you… Anyway, if you really believe that, then why are you not actively recruiting women to join your staff? Like, I just don’t buy it that there’s nobody out there. I just don’t get it.
Ellen shared with me one of the ways in which she had come to make sense of the
unique dynamics faced by women in pastoral ministry, based upon her reflections on the
story of Jacob and Esau. Her reflections captured beautifully what many of the women had
to say about the challenges and joys of being women in a male-‐dominated vocational
ministry world:
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The story of Esau just really became my story for a long time. He was given the blessing and the mandate, whatever, by birth, and yet he could not live into it. He could not live out of it. And that whole male-‐female thing, I felt like, oh, males are the Jacobs, and the females are the Esaus. And, you know, how does Esau fit in the story of blessing? If you have a blessing but you can’t live into it? And so I did an awful lot of thinking about blessing—and I used blessing more than calling—and I think that was very liberating for me because Esau does get a blessing, it just has a lot more pain attached to it.
The Problem of Initiative
One surprising theme that emerged from the interview sessions was how women
described taking initiative for living into their call as both a necessity and as something
undesirable. This creates a nearly impossible situation, in which, for at least some of the
women, they only receive the church’s affirmation of their call to ministry through taking
responsibility for actively seeking it out, only to find that taking such initiative is often
narrated as something they ought not to have done. They are then faced with the dilemma
that the very thing that led them to the affirmation of their call also causes them to question
its legitimacy.
On the one hand, women reported that without taking some initiative themselves,
they weren’t sure that the church community ever would have affirmed them and their call.
Carrie stated, “That’s what I mean by it’s come internal first. I have said, I like this and I
think I’m good at it. And I have put myself out there. And then the community has embraced
me.” This was not always easy, and at times required significant perseverance:
I remember meeting with my pastor and saying, I think I have pastoral gifts. Like, I’d love to be mentored by you. And, like, I think I can do this kind of thing. And at that time it was more pastoral care, not speaking. And he just kind of listened politely and didn’t follow up with it at all and dropped me. Like, just did not pursue it. And no one in that church, in my church, had seen me do anything pastorally. So, it’s fair. Like, he probably thought, like, who is this person, right? But did not follow up, did not do anything, like totally left it.
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Ellen, too, related an experience when she and her family were moving to pursue a
job opportunity for her husband in a different city. So, they drew up a list of the Mennonite
Brethren churches in that community and asked themselves which of those would be most
likely to have a female pastor. She reported, “I picked up the phone, and called the first one
on the list, and talked to a part-‐time pastor there who said, ‘Oh my goodness. I haven’t told
anybody yet, but I’m planning on resigning.’” Reflecting on that experience, Ellen said, “It
was taking the initiative and just shamelessly or trustingly, however you want to code that,
asking, ‘I’d like to be a pastor. In an MB church. Would you have me?’ And God was part of
that.”
While several of the women reported situations in which they had taken initiative
for following God’s call in their lives, they also reported that such initiative is often seen as
being undesirable, lacking in humility, or even being ill-‐advised. Dayna reported the advice
she had been given by a provincial church leader: “He said the best thing I could do was not
be strident, that was his word, and not complain. So not whine and say, ‘How come I don’t
get to preach?,’ that kind of stuff, but whenever I was asked to do something, just do it to
the best of my ability. And he said, ‘And people will see that, and appreciate it, and you’ll go
far.’” Brenda made the point of clarifying, “I’ve always been a very strong feminist… But I’m
not a militant feminist. And so I wouldn’t push it too much. Just let it go.” So, “if I’m learning,
then I’m learning, and I’m quiet, and I’ve never been a militant, but I still believe in
feminism, and will say that quietly or in different ways, but I’ll lead in areas where I’m
gifted.”
Carrie described the feeling of being caught between having to put herself out there
in order to have God’s call recognized by her community, and feeling judged for doing so:
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I don’t believe it’s suspicious, but I feel like they think it’s suspicious if you put yourself out there too far. Like, how easy is it if you’re not putting yourself out there too far, and you’re being tapped over and over again, to be humble. And come and say, I guess the church is calling me, right? I feel arrogant, and I feel… like, that’s the biggest challenge to my call… My biggest challenge in the call is my own sense of, Am I arrogant? Am I self-‐righteous? Do I think that I know better than these people? Do I… Who do you think you are? But that, I pray in the shower, and when the ‘Who do I think I am?’ thing comes up, it doesn’t sound like God to me. It just doesn’t sound like God. Um, so I try not to listen to that.
“It feels arrogant,” Carrie said, “to put myself out there and say, ‘I’m called to ministry.’”
And yet, in many ways, that’s exactly what she has found herself having to do. But maybe,
she noted, “all of us who are called are arrogant. (laughs) To a certain extent.”
Summary
Call stories are unique narratives that describe how an individual has encountered
God as he or she has sought to understand how God has created him or her, what gifts he or
she has been entrusted with, and how he or she might best contribute to the mission of God
in the world. They are stories of an encounter with God, embedded within the context of
the shared life of the body of Christ. For the six women who were interviewed in this study,
their call stories helped them to understand themselves as people who had received God’s
blessing and who had particular gifts which they sought to use in service within the church.
However, the women were just as quick to recognize that one need not be called to
vocational ministry in order to be called by God.
The women who shared their stories of God’s call were in agreement that the
affirmation of the church is a necessary component of discerning of a call to ministry. Being
provided with opportunities to lead within the church and having their gifts affirmed by
their congregations played instrumental roles in the women’s discernment of God’s call.
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Equally central was the personal conviction that arose from experiencing a deep love of
ministry and an inner confidence in their gifts; the inner conviction of God’s call sustained
women through many of the challenges that they faced as women in ministry leadership.
These elements of inner conviction and community discernment were expressed in
different ways for different women, and many of the women urged that no single narrative
about how a call ought to be discerned could capture the breadth of ways in which God
works in the lives of men and women. A call to ministry has its roots in a call to serve, in the
discernment and exercise of one’s gifts and abilities, and in living a life of faithful
discipleship, and these elements take shape differently in different people’s lives. Yet all are
to be valued as expressions of how God is at work among God’s people to inaugurate the
Kingdom of God. Moreover, the women’s stories consistently referred to the discernment of
a call to ministry as inseparable from the universal call to discipleship.
Women in the Mennonite Brethren Church in Canada are navigating the challenges
of working in a context in which the question of which ministry leadership roles ought to
be open to women continues to be common. Women, therefore, have to reconcile their
discernment of God’s call with uncertainty about whether or not there will be opportunities
for them to embrace this call within the Mennonite Brethren Church. They also have to
navigate challenges such as a scarcity of female role models and the perception that they
need to prove themselves in a leadership context that is dominated largely by men.
These challenges impact how women think about and live into their calls; they
cannot be separated from their call stories. Therefore, women’s stories raise important
questions that encourage reflecting more critically on the theology that is borne by the
practice of discerning a call to ministry among Mennonite Brethren. For example, what is
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the connection between discerning a call to ministry and entering into a position of official
(often paid) church or ministry leadership? Is being commissioned for such a role of
necessity the ultimate confirmation of the validity of an individual’s call? What is the
correspondence between the universal call to discipleship and the particular call to
pastoral leadership in the church? And, how does the discernment of spiritual gifts relate to
the discernment of a call to ministry? Ultimately, the goal of such reflection is to prompt
Christians toward the renewal of the practice of discerning those who are being called to
ministry, in order that the practice may become increasingly faithful to a way of life that is
a reflection of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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CHAPTER FIVE
DISCERNING A CALL TO MINISTRY AS A MENNONITE BRETHREN PRACTICE: TOWARD RENEWED FAITHFULNESS
This thesis has thus far looked at the Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a
call to ministry through an examination of current literature, through surveying how this
practice has developed over time, and through attending to the stories of six Mennonite
Brethren women who have themselves discerned a call to ministry. This chapter now
brings these elements of theological reflection, history and tradition, and the wisdom
grounded in experience together to reflect on discerning a call to ministry as a practice of
the church. What does it look like to discern a call to ministry faithfully? What is meant
when Christians speak about discerning a call to ministry? It is to these questions that this
chapter now turns, in the hope that careful theological reflection on the practice of the
discernment of a call to ministry will enable Christians to shape their current practices
toward renewed faithfulness.
Discerning a Call to Ministry as a Christian Practice
As has previously been asserted, discerning a call to ministry is a Christian practice.
It can therefore be described and evaluated in terms of how it fulfills the characteristics
that are common to all Christian practices. Much recent study of Christian practices draws
upon the work of ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre. According to MacIntyre, practices are
complex social activities that pursue goods internal to the practices themselves and that
have standards of excellence. Three ideas emerge as being central to MacIntyre’s
understanding of a practice. First, practices are communal and corporate in nature,
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belonging not to individuals, but to communities of people. Second, practices possess what
MacIntyre calls “internal goods” that can only be achieved through participation in the
practice in question, and not through any other means. Third, practices have their own
standards for excellence and rules for participation.112
McIntyre’s threefold criteria help us to begin to get at the heart of the practice of
discerning a call to ministry. First, as a Christian practice, the practice of discerning a call to
ministry is located within the context of the community of faith. This means that not only is
the practice of discerning a call to ministry properly located in the context of the shared life
of particular faith communities, but that it is also rooted within and consistent with the
larger Christian tradition. One of the criteria for reflecting theologically upon the call to
ministry, therefore, is considering how the call to ministry intersects with the shared life of
the faith community and how it demonstrates continuity with the Christian story.
Second, the practice of discerning a call to ministry has what MacIntyre described as
“internal goods”—that is, goods that are independent of the outcome of engaging in the
practice and that are gained through participation in the practice itself. In the case of
discerning a call to ministry, this means that the practice has goods that are independent of
the outcome of the discernment process—the goods of this practice are greater than
achieving employment as a pastor in a congregation, for example, but are particular to the
practice of discernment in and of itself. One of the questions that must be kept in mind in
reflecting theologically about the current Mennonite Brethren practice of discerning a call
to ministry is how the internal goods that comprise this practice might be described.
112 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 187.
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Third, all Christian practices have standards of excellence—they can be performed
well, or they can be performed badly. In reflecting on the Mennonite Brethren practice of
discerning a call to ministry, we also bear this question in mind: What does a faithful
practice of discerning a call to ministry look like when it is performed with excellence, such
that it represents an authentic response to the presence and character of God?
Dorothy C. Bass, a practical theologian who has written extensively about Christian
practices, has noted, “Because communities engage in these practices forever imperfectly—
faltering, forgetting, even falling into gross distortion—theological discernment,
repentance, and renewal are necessary dimensions of each practice and of the Christian life
as a whole.”113 It is helpful to frame a discussion of the Mennonite Brethren practice of
discerning a call to ministry by beginning with these core characteristics of all Christian
practices because they not only serve as reminders of what makes a practice faithful, but
they also call attention to what a practice is not. Often, it is tempting to reflect on the
discernment of a call to ministry in terms of its ultimate outcome: Does such discernment
lead to greater clarity about appropriate career paths? Does a call story fit the pattern of
the call stories related by other pastors and church leaders? However, as a practice, the
discernment of a call to ministry is independent of its outcome and its performance has
great value in contributing to a faithful way of living as God’s people in the world.
Moreover, it is appropriate, as with all of the practices of faith communities, to take a
critical step back from the practice to reflect on it in light of Scripture and in light of central
theological beliefs. Reflecting on practice encourages the consideration of how the practice
113 Dorothy C. Bass, “Ways of Life Abundant,” in For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry, edited by Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008), 29.
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may be renewed to more accurately reflect the kind of community God is inviting his
people to be in this particular time and place.
Discerning a Call to Ministry is a Practice of the Church
As MacIntyre’s definition reminds us, all Christian practices are complex social
activities that are corporate in nature. This is certainly true regarding the discernment of a
call to ministry. In spite of the fact that many of the women interviewed for this study
reported a strong internal component to their call to ministry, they were unanimous
regarding the necessity for the church community to participate in the discernment of such
a call. As Andrea reported, “Having the congregation say ‘yes’ was huge, to say ‘yes, we
agree with you that this is where you’re supposed to be and we want you here’ was very
significant.” Likewise, Brenda stated that her discernment of her call always relied upon
“the affirmation of others around me. It just didn’t make any sense not to have that. That’s
not the way God’s church works. I’m not an individual in community; I’m part of the
community. And there’s the affirmation that comes from when you’re in community, you
need to listen to each other for these things.”
In discerning a call to ministry, it is essential to find ways to hold together both the
personal discernment of God’s leading and the congregation’s affirmation and discernment
of a person’s gifts. Even when an individual’s discernment of a call to ministry begins
internally and personally, it must at some point draw upon the collective discernment of
the body of Christ.
Mennonite Brethren have long recognized that the church has an essential role to
play in calling people to ministry. Over the past fifty years, one of the challenges to this
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practice has been the changing nature of pastoral ministry. Churches have largely moved
from a model of multiple lay ministry to the professionalization of the ministry, and more
recently to the specialization of ministry. Now, many Mennonite Brethren congregations
now have a staff of multiple paid pastors, each of whom bear responsibility for their own
distinct area of ministry. In the midst of navigating these significant changes, it is not
surprising that Mennonite Brethren congregations have often struggled with maintaining a
vital practice of discerning those whom God was calling to ministry. One indication of this
ongoing struggle is the amount of time spent at study conferences during this period of
time in discussion regarding the call to ministry and the nature of pastoral leadership.
The call to ministry has always been associated with an invitation to hold a certain
amount of power and authority. The anticlericalism of the sixteenth century was not
ultimately an attempt to abolish clergy, but to deal with the increasing gap in spiritual
status between the clergy and the laity. Thus, the writings of the early Anabaptists reflect a
desire to discern who are the individuals that are rightly called to participate in the
teaching ministry of the church. Both Menno Simons and Dirk Philips wrote of the necessity
for such individuals to be motivated by love and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be
instrumental in the discernment of such leaders.
With the move from a multiple lay ministry model to the professionalization of
pastoral ministry, churches faced the temptation to transfer the power and authority for
ministry from the congregation to the person being hired. As Waldo D. Hiebert wrote in a
paper presented at the 1958 Study Conference:
Although the pastoral system is upon us, we must not overlook the urgent necessity of examining this system in light of the New Testament Church as a brotherhood of believers. The pastoral system need not rob us of the spirit of brotherhood, but it surely can. A further warning would emphasize the danger of the congregation’s
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leaning too heavily upon the pastor and upon his decisions, rather than feeling individual responsibility, sensing the leadership of the Holy Spirit in the congregation and listening to the decision making of the brotherhood as a body.114
Over time, and as the responsibility for decision-‐making came to rest increasingly with a
paid pastor, the responsibility for the discernment of a call to ministry also shifted towards
relying increasingly upon the individual’s own discernment. The practice of “shoulder
tapping” people to consider pastoral ministry became less common in Mennonite Brethren
congregations, and by 1976 John Regehr observed, “we have left the matter of the call
almost exclusively with the individual.”115
The “Hearing the Call” program, developed in 2003 by Mennonite Brethren Biblical
Seminary, represented an attempt to encourage churches to renew the practice of
discerning those with the necessary gifting to serve in pastoral leadership roles. However,
the call stories shared by the women in this study suggest that it is still the responsibility of
individuals to seek the community’s support in discerning a call to ministry; certainly
among the women interviewed, the call to ministry was often initiated by their own
discernment of an internal call to ministry.
Similarly, the General Conference Mennonite Church published a statement on
ministerial leadership that noted, “A person’s call to ministry occurs within the body life of
the church. Thus, there is both an internal and an external verification of the call. The
congregation serves as the external validating factor for a person’s sense of call to the
ministry. A person does not appoint him/herself to the ministry; one must be chosen by the
114 Hiebert, “The Scriptural Nature of the Church,” 6. 115 Regehr, “”The Call to Ministry,” 14.
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church.”116 This position is consistent with Mennonite Brethren attempts to hold together
both inner and outer elements of a call to ministry. Those with gifts for leadership within
the church exercise them from within the body of Christ. As written in 1 Corinthians 12:27-‐
28, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed
in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts
of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.” Likewise, Ephesians
4:11-‐13 reads, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ
may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God
and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” In the Bible,
spiritual gifts, including gifts for leadership within the church, are understood as being
distributed within the body of Christ, the church. They always function within this body,
and cannot be imposed upon the body from an external location. Moreover, 1 Corinthians
12 is clear that no part of the body can function without the others, and that “its parts
should have equal concern for each other” without any hierarchy of value based upon their
function (verse 25).
Even those gifted for leadership or teaching roles receive their gifts in the context of
the body of Christ, with the intention that they be used to build up the body of Christ. It is,
therefore, appropriate that those who are called to carry out particular leadership, pastoral
or teaching functions within the community of faith be discerned and receive their
authorization for ministry within the context of the church and not apart from it. To do
otherwise, or to demand authority based upon a personally discerned call to ministry, 116 Everett J. Thomas, ed., A Mennonite Polity for Ministerial Leadership (Winnipeg: Faith and Life Press, 1996), 102.
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would be to impose one’s gifts upon the body and to elevate them above the setting for
which they were intended.
In some cases, this presents a challenge to churches to rethink how to take an active
role in the discernment of those who are being called to ministry—that is, called to
leadership or teaching functions within the church—in a contemporary context in which
much leadership development happens in institutions and settings outside of the local
congregation. Training of church planters happens at specialized clinics. Young leaders are
often developed in Bible school programs, in short-‐term missions programs, or in camp
ministry settings. Pastoral leaders receive training in seminaries and schools. Yet the
church must not forego taking an active role in discerning whom God has equipped for
leadership roles, whether the call is to paid ministry or other forms of ministry leadership.
The church does so by providing opportunities for individuals to lead, to teach, and in
doing so to develop their gifts; as we observed, for many of the women in this study such
opportunities were instrumental in their discernment of their calling. The church also does
so by taking seriously the opportunity to pray and discern with those who report sensing
an internal call to a ministry of a particular type. It does so by taking an active role in
encouraging one another, in voicing appreciation when it is evident that God is at work
through the gifts of another. In all of these ways, large and small, the church takes seriously
the authority it has received from Christ himself to “go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-‐20). When the church
does so, it is with the confidence that it does not take on this work of discernment alone,
but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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Moreover, it may be helpful to remember that the practice of discerning those who
are being called to ministry is not outcome dependent. As MacIntyre articulated, the true
goods of a practice are those that are internal to the practice itself. The church grows in
unity as a body of Christ as it comes to recognize and appreciate the gifts that Christ has
placed within it, and as it frees people to exercise those gifts in order to build up the body
of Christ. Perhaps by freeing the practice of discerning a call to ministry from the hiring
practices of the church and thinking of it as being distinct from a career choice, the church
will be freed once again to reclaim its integral role in owning the practice of the
discernment of gifts, including gifts for ministry leadership. For wherever these gifts are
discerned and exercised, the church is faithful in living into the work for which Christ has
commissioned it.
The Call to Ministry is a Gift from a God Who Loves Us
Most of the women who were interviewed for this study associated the discernment
of their call to ministry with the discovery that using their gifts to serve within the church
was something they loved to do, something that brought them joy, and something that was
closely connected with who God had created them to be. When the women were asked
about particular biblical texts that had informed their understanding of their call, the
creation accounts from Genesis were noted surprisingly often, especially considering that
in Mennonite Brethren circles the creation accounts have often been among the texts used
to argue that women ought not serve in leadership capacities in the church. Nonetheless,
Dayna explained, “I don’t think I would have made it through all of the stuff that was going
on to me at the church and figuring out if I was called to pastoring and having to debate it if
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I hadn’t managed to hear that I was beloved, by God, just as I was. Like, I wouldn’t have
made it.” Carrie likewise noted, “The creation story—I see that as a very supportive,
actually, I know lots of people read it as a hierarchical story, but I don’t. I see that as a very
egalitarian, kind of like, God created man and woman and they were awesome. Together!”
Statements such as these serve as a reminder that the call to ministry is a gift we
receive from the God who created us and who loves us. Jesus’ baptism served as the
initiation of his public ministry, and all three synoptic gospels report that the event was
marked with some version of the following words from God: “You are my Son, whom I love;
with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11; cf. Matthew 3:17 and Luke 3:22). Likewise, at the
pivotal moment of the Transfiguration, God’s voice is once again present, saying, “This is
my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7; cf. Matthew 17:5 and Luke 9:35). Jesus’
public ministry began with the pronouncement that he was dearly loved by God. This
announcement occurred at a pivotal point in his ministry and once again reminded him
that his ministry was grounded in God’s love for him.
The discernment of a call to ministry is a practice that is closely associated with
other practices that teach us to draw near to God—with practices of prayer, of spiritual
direction, and of silence, among others. As Ellen noted, the practice of discerning a call to
ministry is not easily separated from other practices that sustain a life that is connected to
God. Just as God’s pronouncement of Jesus as beloved preceded the beginning of his public
ministry, the practice of discerning a call to ministry serves as a reminder that the God who
created us also loves us, has invited us to serve Him using the gifts He has given us, and
invites us to join him in ministry, making disciples of others and inviting them to
experience the kingdom of God which has drawn near. This idea has often served to inform
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the understanding of a call to ministry within the broader Christian tradition. Thus, Robert
Schnase wrote, “The call to ministry rests most securely on genuine love for God and the
sincere desire to serve God as the highest good.”117 Likewise, Basil Pennington asserted
that the ultimate question in vocational discernment ought to be what can best support this
person to grow in love given who God has created him or her to be.118
Traditionally, the Anabaptist-‐Mennonite emphasis on a call to discipleship has
focused less on the call to ministry as an expression of God’s love and more as a means to
fulfilling the call to discipleship. However, more recently Anabaptist-‐Mennonite scholars
have also begun to articulate this theme, which is rooted in biblical texts such as 1 John
4:19: “We love because he first loved us.” The call to live a life of discipleship, and with it
the call to a particular type of ministry, emerges out of the fact that we ourselves have been
the recipients of God’s love. Thus, scholar Mary H. Schertz reminds us that, within the
Anabaptist-‐Mennonite tradition,
Perhaps what we have not noticed adequately is that the heart of the Spirit’s empowerment is nothing less than the love of God…The empowerment of Jesus by the love of God in his baptism is exactly the point. That this empowerment and this love are immediately and forcefully challenged by forces representing other kinds of power and other kinds of love is also exactly the point. The central question for Jesus is how to understand and use the love and power he has received.119
Likewise, Lydia Neufeld Harder and Gary Harder wrote, “This naming of our being loved
and blessed then frees us to hear God’s calling to love and serve others. It frees us to listen
for God’s invitation to our vocation. All ministry, all service, all calling—whether within the
117 Robert Schnase, Testing and Reclaiming Your Call to Ministry (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1991), 37. 118 Pennington, 33. 119 Mary H. Schertz, “Love and Power: Jesus’ Baptism and Ours,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 12, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 15.
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church or in the world—grows out of being assured that we are loved and that the Holy
Spirit will empower us for what God invites us to do.”120
The impact of understanding ministry to be a gift of God, which is ultimately rooted
in God’s love for us, is significant. For as practical theologian Craig Dykstra pointed out,
When pastors try to master ministry on their own, they are overwhelmed by the fearfulness of it. They can become frightened and defensive, clutch up, grit their teeth, and sink. When ministry is received as a gift of God within a larger life of faith shared by pastors and people, an entirely different dynamic begins to take over. Instead of working frenetically and compulsively to harness their own powers and energies, pastors are somehow set free to receive, draw upon, release, and share in the multiple energies and capacities of the people in their congregations and of the whole body of Christ.121
For the women interviewed, the practice of discerning a call to ministry has
sustained them through many difficult experiences, whether these have come from the
challenges of navigating congregational conflicts or from struggling to find ways to use
their gifts within the limitations that have at times accompanied the simple reality of being
a woman within the Mennonite Brethren church. At its best, the practice of discerning a call
to ministry serves as a reminder that we are called into service by a God who created us
and who loves us; one of the internal goods of this practice rests in its ability to aid
individuals in drawing near to God, in understanding better who God has created them to
be, and in coming to understand that they, too, are God’s beloved children.
The Call to Ministry is a Call to Exercise Authority as Jesus Did
While the stories shared by the women interviewed for this study invite us to
reclaim an understanding of the call to ministry as being rooted in God’s love, they also
120 Lydia Neufeld Harder and Gary Harder, 30. 121 Craig Dykstra, “Pastoral and Ecclesial Imagination,” in Bass and Dykstra, 56.
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serve as a reminder that at its heart, the call to ministry is rooted in Christ’s call to follow
him. This understanding that all of the life of faith is a life of discipleship has long been a
part of the Anabaptist-‐Mennonite tradition. As C. Arnold Snyder noted, “At the heart of
Anabaptist spiritual life is a continuous, active yielding to the living Spirit of God, to the
point that the divine nature becomes our nature, according to the image of the Son of God
in the measure that grace provides.”122 Therefore, in the Anabaptist-‐Mennonite tradition,
“baptism with water not only publicly affirms the reality of spiritual baptism (dying and
rising in Christ), it is at the same time a visible covenant made with like-‐minded believers.
The commitment made at baptism is no less than a promise of yieldedness by members to
one another.”123
Historically, among Anabaptist-‐Mennonites, the willingness to submit to the practice
of baptism carried with it a signal of one’s openness to accept ordination for ministry.124
Thus, the discernment of a call to ministry is continuous with a life of discipleship, not an
interruption thereof. Moreover, it is rooted in the commitment to be accountable to a
community of believers that is made at one’s baptism. Each Christian is called to such a life
of discipleship within a community of believers.
In some Mennonite Brethren contexts, the practice of discerning a call to ministry
has become closely associated with choosing a particular career path; even programs such
as “Hearing the Call” were intended to encourage young adults to consider pastoral
ministry as a potential career, in an effort to address anticipated pastoral ministry
shortages. The stories of Mennonite Brethren women, on the other hand, encourage us to
122 C. Arnold Snyder, “Gelassenheit and Power: Some Historical Reflections,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 5, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 11. 123 Ibid. 124 Bartlett, 52-‐53.
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ensure that our discernment of the call to ministry remains firmly located within the
context of a call to a life of discipleship. Hence, Carrie stated, “I would love for the church to
extend the word ‘call’ to a way broader vocational sense. And to add a spiritual dimension
to those people’s calls too.” Likewise, Dayna said, “I would say I have a call but I would say
that somebody in my church who’s a really good business person and cares for his staff has
a call too. And you just have to figure out what yours is and follow it.”
Like the sixteenth century Reformers, the women interviewed were not denying
that they have discerned a particular call to ministry leadership, nor were they intending to
downplay the significance of such a call. Instead, they invite us to remember what
Mennonite Brethren have historically known: a call to ministry cannot be understood apart
from the call to be disciples of Jesus who are members of a local community of believers.
Faith, for example, spoke about a call to holy living. Her call to ministry, although
“indisputable,” is something that she understands as being in complete continuity with her
previous call to be a teacher: “It wasn’t an end of that call. I think it was more of a
continuation in a different way.”
In this way, we can begin to explore how discerning a call to ministry is continuous
with the Anabaptist-‐Mennonite affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. Those who
are discerned to have a particular call to ministry in a leadership, teaching, or pastoral
capacity within the body of Christ have a particular and important role to play. Ephesians
4:11-‐13 reads, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ
may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God
and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Notice that
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according to these verses, those who are called to assume positions of particular authority
within the church—apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers—are called to do so in
order to equip the people of God for service.
Anabaptist-‐Mennonite history provides the reminder that the call to ministry is not
distinct because of any special spiritual status granted to those who receive it within the
body of Christ. Rather, it is rooted within the activity of the Holy Spirit—as are all of the
other gifts given according to the grace of God: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the
same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There
are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at
work” (1 Corinthians 12:4-‐6).
Nonetheless, framing the call to ministry in this way, as being embedded within a
call to discipleship, invites reflection on the reason why various Christian groups, including
Mennonite Brethren, have understood discerning a call to ministry to be a distinct practice
of the church. This practice affirms that there is something significant about the
discernment of individuals to serve in roles that involve exercising leadership in the
church, whether through pastoral ministry, worship leadership, teaching and preaching, or
pastoral care. In each of these areas of ministry, those who are affirmed to serve in
particular roles are given a significant amount of authority by the church. The church
cannot dispense with the practice of discerning those who are being called to ministry,
because to do so would be to ignore the significance of being selective with regard to whom
it chooses to endow with such power. The abuse of the authorization for ministry can carry
with it catastrophic results.
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Anabaptist-‐Mennonite scholar Joseph J. Kotova Jr. wrote, “Contemporary pastors
have significant power—influence on others and the ability to make things happen—that
they frequently overlook.”125 Pastors and other leaders are often formally affirmed and
appointed to their roles within the congregation, giving them a particular kind of authority.
By virtue of their roles within the body of Christ, they are also frequently invited to
function as symbolic representatives of the church and of God, and are given access to
people’s lives at vulnerable moments such as births, family crises, and deaths. According to
Kotova, “this symbolic representation is a form of power, and despite the ambivalence that
Anabaptists sometimes feel about setting pastors apart, the pastor’s role as symbolic
representative is present at some level in most church-‐related encounters with most
congregation members.”126 Therefore, discerning a call to ministry not only involves a
discernment of giftedness, but also of character—it involves being sensitive to those who
can and will use the power and authority that they are being offered in a way that is
consistent with a life of Christian discipleship.
Anabaptist-‐Mennonites affirm that our ultimate model for the right use of authority
is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is identified as
one who has received authority. Jesus “taught them as one who had authority” (Mark 1:22).
He “called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits
and to heal every disease and sickness” (Matthew 10:1). He had the authority to lay down
his life, and to take it up again (John 10:18). Repeatedly, Jesus’ words and deeds revealed
him to be one who possessed authority. And yet “he made himself nothing by taking the
125 Joseph J. Kotava Jr., “The Paradox of Pastoral Power,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 5, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 39. 126 Ibid., 40.
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very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7). As Anabaptist-‐
Mennonite scholar Sally Weaver Glick put it, “In Jesus we encounter one who used power to
heal and reconcile and bring transformation. We encounter one who met the onslaught of
this world’s powers and principalities with vulnerability, accepting death on the cross
rather than resorting to the power of the sword or calling in angel armies… The crucified
and risen Christ turns our assumptions about power upside down.”127
The stories of women draw attention to the questions of power and authority that
are embedded within the practice of discerning those who are being called to ministry. The
debates around women in ministry leadership within the Mennonite Brethren church
centered upon the question of who can be in a position of authority and, more particularly,
whether women ought to be in positions of authority over men. If women should not be
placed in positions of such authority, then the church could not affirm a woman as having a
call to ministry, regardless of whether she had reported an internal sense of such a call.128
In their accounts of their own call stories, women tend to emphasize the universality
of gifts, perhaps out of sensitivity to the fact that women have not often been given the
opportunity to associate a call to ministry with a call to assume authority, as Dayna
suggested. Feminist pastoral theologian Lynn Rhodes explained, “It is crucial to these
women’s experiences and understandings of vocation that we must struggle to honor the
gifts of all, to enable all people to express these gifts, and to change the conditions that
trivialize them.”129
127 Sally Weaver Glick, “Power and Congregational Discernment,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 5, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 57. 128 Kopp, “A Serving People,” 71. 129 Lynn N. Rhodes, Co-‐Creating: A Feminist Vision of Ministry (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1987), 112.
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On the other hand, Mennonite Brethren women often receive messages that suggest
that their call to ministry is best lived out in a posture of listening—not being “strident” or
“militant,” not “arrogantly” putting oneself out there, to use the words of the women
interviewed in this study. Such messages, while well intentioned, serve to subtly reinforce
the traditional norms in which “listening was understood to be more suitable for women,
while the active involvement in the process was deemed more suitable for men.”130
While the discernment of a call to ministry is rooted in a call to discipleship, it is
nonetheless also a call to assume a position of authority within the body of Christ. To
accept such a call is to strive to use this authority in a Christ-‐like manner, neither shying
away from using authority well nor using it to demand status and submission from others.
To find this balance is a delicate dance, regardless of gender, one that requires a great deal
of humility: “Humility is likely the most important virtue for keeping pastoral power rightly
directed. Proper self-‐understanding, an estimate of ourselves that is neither too high nor
too low, frees pastors to see their power honestly and clearly.”131
The questions women ask about the practice of discerning a call to ministry help to
bring into focus the necessity for authority to be rightly used by those who receive such a
call from the church. They serve as a reminder of the delicate balance of exercising
authority and living out a call to ministry with excellence: of holding power together with
humility, as modeled by our ultimate example, Jesus Christ. They provide the reminder that
in the practice of discerning a call to ministry, what is ultimately being discerned is who
will lead well, equipping all of the saints to use their gifts in service in the body of Christ. To
130 Lydia Neufeld Harder, Obedience, Suspicion, and the Gospel of Mark: A Mennonite-‐Feminist Exploration of Biblical Authority (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1998), 49. 131 Kotova, 45.
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practice the discernment of individuals who are being called to ministry with excellence,
the church needs to be aware of the reality that questions of power and authority are
central to this particular practice. Jesus had authority, which he passed along to his
disciples during his earthly ministry, and which he later conferred upon the church. In
discerning those who are called to ministry leadership, the church must be conscious that
in doing so it is inviting individuals to take on authority, following the example of Jesus, in
order that they might in turn equip other members of the body for ministry. The church
must, therefore, be prepared to support those individuals in assuming their appointed
authority. To ignore these questions of authority is to fail to understand the significance of
this practice in the life of the church.
Summary
By critically reflecting on the current practice of discerning those who are being
called to ministry through the examination of Mennonite Brethren tradition and theological
reflection, and through listening to the stories of Mennonite Brethren women, several key
nuances of this practice have been identified.
First, the discernment of a call to ministry is ultimately a practice of the faith
community. While the internal discernment of a call to ministry by the individual is often a
critical part of this practice and played an initiating role in the stories of the majority of the
women interviewed, nonetheless the church plays an indispensible role in discerning and
authorizing individuals for ministry leadership. The women in this study universally
affirmed the necessary role the church community played in helping them to discern God’s
call. In spite of the fact that most of the women reported experiencing both affirmation and
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challenge to their call from the church community, they affirmed that the discernment of a
call to ministry is a practice that occurs within the context of the church community. Even
when their call to ministry was first experienced personally and internally, women’s stories
affirm the necessity of the external validation of a call to ministry by the church.
Second, the practice of discerning a call to ministry is a practice that invites us to
draw near to God, to come to know ourselves as people created and beloved by God, and to
accept God’s invitation to participate in His mission in the world. In reflecting on the
practices that nurtured their discernment of a call to ministry, women often pointed out
that these practices were the same practices that nurtured them as they drew near to God
in all areas of life, not only in their discernment of God’s call. Moreover, the women spoke
frequently about God’s call as something that brought them joy and that involved
discovering how to serve within the church by doing things they loved to do. Many of the
women equated discerning their call to ministry with discovering themselves to be loved
and valued by God. Just as Jesus’ public ministry was preceded by God’s pronouncement of
him as God’s beloved son, so the practice of discerning a call to ministry serves as a
reminder that the one being called is created and loved by God, and is invited to serve using
the gifts that God has given him or her in order to participate in the unfolding of the
Kingdom of God in the world.
Finally, the practice of discerning a call to ministry necessitates a thoughtful
understanding of the authority that is vested in those who take on positions of leadership
within the body of Christ in order that they might equip others for ministry. This requires
understanding and practicing authority as modeled by the example of Jesus Christ. In the
Mennonite Brethren Church, the discernment of a call to ministry among women has been
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preceded by extensive discussion in the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren
Churches about whether or not the exercise of leadership by women in the church is
consistent with the witness of Scripture. This makes clear the essential connection between
the discernment of a call to ministry and the invitation to exercise authority within the
church. For many women, discerning how to use the power that is integral to the
discernment of a call to ministry is a challenge. Many women tend to emphasize the
universality of gifts and of God’s call out of sensitivity to the fact that women often have not
been given the opportunity to assume the authority associated with a call to ministry.
Other wrestle with their attempts to exercise leadership being labeled as “strident” or
“lacking humility.” Nonetheless, the call to ministry is a call to exercise leadership as
modeled by Jesus Christ, balancing authority with humility and using this power to build up
other people within the body of Christ.
By reflecting on each of these themes, the goal is to prayerfully allow them to renew
how churches go about calling individuals to ministry, in order that the practice of
discerning a call to ministry might with ever-‐increasing faithfulness reflect the life that God
has called us to as his people.
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CONCLUSION
The Church has always affirmed the importance of practicing careful discernment
when selecting its leaders—those who preach, teach, lead worship, or provide pastoral
care. From the beginning of the Old Testament, Scripture portrays leaders who were called
by God to serve in particular roles within the faith community. Throughout Anabaptist-‐
Mennonite history, leaders have been selected with careful discernment, relying upon the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. Among contemporary Mennonite Brethren, the call to ministry
has been a frequent subject of attention and discussion. All of these things point to the fact
that discerning those who have been called to ministry is an important Christian practice:
one that ought to be performed thoughtfully and that can be done with excellence.
But too often in recent years, the call to ministry has become intertwined with
questions of hiring paid pastors. As a result, the internal goods of the practice itself have
become hidden behind questions about what elements a call story should contain in order
to be considered authentic, or about whether or not one should pursue pastoral ministry as
a career option. Until recently, though, pursuing paid pastoral ministry has not been an
option except in rare circumstances for Mennonite Brethren women. They also lacked role
models of women in such ministry leadership roles. Consequently, it has been more
common for women to experience an inner, personal call to ministry than to receive the
affirmation of this call on the part of the church. For this reason, women’s stories of
discerning a call to ministry offer the reminder that God calls all of God’s people to a life of
discipleship and to exercise the gifts that they have been given in service to the Kingdom of
God—God’s call is not limited to those gifted for leadership. Mennonite Brethren have often
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tended to separate the discernment of a call to ministry from the need to discern and invite
the exercise of all of the spiritual gifts that are given to the body of Christ. On the other
hand, women’s stories encourage understanding the call to ministry as an expression of the
essential Christian call to discipleship, and leadership gifts as just one of the many
expressions of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to equip the church for ministry. They invite
giving attention to the practice of discerning a call to ministry as having value that emerges
in the engagement in this discernment, completely apart from outcomes such as
strategically identifying future leaders, thereby preventing clergy shortages, or such as
evaluating the suitability of ministry candidates through hearing their call stories.
The practice of discerning a call to ministry is a reflection of what it means to live as
God’s people in the world. Rightly practiced, it is a practice of the community of faith that
emphasizes the fact that gifts for ministry leadership are given by the Holy Spirit in order
to equip the saints for the ministry to which God has called them. It thus serves as a
reminder that it is God who calls to ministry, and God who equips His people to live as His
body in the world. God’s call is neither discerned nor lived out in isolation, but rather
within the body of Christ. The women who shared their experiences of call affirmed that
their discernment of God’s call was not complete without having received the affirmation of
the church. They related feelings of pain when the church did not affirm their personal
sense of call to ministry, and affirmed the Mennonite Brethren insistence that both inner
and outer dimensions of a call to ministry are essential. While many women related having
to actively seek out the church’s assistance in discerning whether God was indeed calling
them to ministry, they universally understood the discernment of a call to ministry to be a
practice that is rooted within the shared life of a faith community.
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The practice of discerning a call to ministry is also an invitation to draw near to God,
conveying the knowledge that the life of discipleship always flows out of the love that we
have received from God, who created us and invites us to be reconciled to Himself and to
one another. While Mennonite Brethren have tended to place emphasis on discerning a call
to ministry as a practice about discipleship, the understanding of this practice will change
as it is also understood as being a practice of living in the love of the Creator. In other
words, the stories of Mennonite Brethren women invite understanding this practice as
being as much about who we are as it is about what we do. Many of the women spoke about
their call to ministry as being a source of joy and encouragement, and as being something
that gives them life. Their experiences echo the association in the Bible between Jesus’
baptism and preparation for public ministry, and God’s naming of Jesus as beloved.
Discerning a call to ministry is a practice of drawing near to God, and, in the process,
becomes a tangible reminder that the one who is being called is a person who has been
created by God, who has been gifted by God, who is loved by God, and who is invited into
relationship with God and God’s people.
Finally, the practice of discerning a call to ministry is an invitation to remember that
authority in the church is derived from and modeled after the example of Jesus, who held
authority and humility together as he healed, taught, served, performed miracles, and
ultimately died on the cross. The issue of whether women ought to be able to exercise
authority in leadership roles within the church has historically been associated with how
the Mennonite Brethren Church has responded to women who have reported discerning a
call to ministry. Moreover, even as the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren
Churches has freed churches to appoint both men and women to leadership roles, women
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continue to report facing challenges in how free they are to exercise authority within the
church. As a result, even women whose calls to ministry have been affirmed within the
Mennonite Brethren Church report mixed responses regarding their freedom to exercise a
corresponding authority in ministry. In discerning those whom God has called to ministry,
it is necessary to bear in mind that the call to leadership involves seeking those who will
lead by example, living according to Christ’s example rather than according to the ways of
the world. As congregations discern with those who are called to ministry, they must also
recognize that to call individuals to serve in these roles is to support them in exercising
authority in a way that balances a right use of power with an appropriate degree of
humility. By becoming conscious of these themes, it is possible to pave the way for renewed
faithfulness as the church continues to discern those who are called to ministry and to
equip them to exercise the authority necessary to serve within this calling, to the benefit of
both those being called and the congregations who call them.
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