The Call to Ponying Up of One’s Life

This coming Sunday, I’ll be installed as a Ruling Elder at my church. At the end of this month, I’ll be taking ordination exams. It’s possible, volente Deo, that by September I’ll be ordained into the office of Teacher Elder. I announce this with dozens of delightful terror. Because the weight is heavy. I don’t take vows and commitments lightly, and definitely not the call to eldership and ordination.

How I came to answer the call to ordination is a bit wild and circuitous. I often tell people that I got “sucked into the Ph.D. program” after I did my master’s degree. But with ordination, I can honestly say I got “dragged into the pastorate.” It wasn’t something planned; I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself, I want to be pastor when I grow up. I actually made a concerted effort to not become one.

I was dragging my feet because I knew that the Church is a messy place. Growing up a pastor’s kid, I saw firsthand the ghosts that hover over the pulpit, the dragons that wreak havoc in the nursery, the goblins that duck in the pews, and the worms that hide in the walls behind the plaques. On a weekly basis, I saw them get wrestled and the resultant mud and blood splattered on the floors.

This never shook my fondness for the Church or involvement in it, though. Growing up, I remember being at church all the time: Sunday mornings and evenings, Wednesday nights, and Friday night Bible studies. I remember one Saturday morning, after a men’s breakfast, just sitting in the car reading Justin Martyr with abandonment as my dad was talking to a passerby for what seemed like almost two hours.

I did study ministry (and philosophy) at Geneva College. And after Andrea and I got married, I took a job as a youth and associate pastor at a church plant in Orlando, Florida. And after a few years, I went to seminary to do more formal training. But my intention was never to become or stay a pastor. Which is why after all the studies, I found myself standing behind a lectern, not a pulpit.

But already at the beginning of my academic “career,” the push, nudge, the Voice was ubiquitous. I offered the church my time and talents on the weekends. I got asked to preach a few times. Did a Bible study here and there. Led a couple book studies. Attended all the retreats. I even became a Ruling Elder. Surely I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing, I told myself.

That did not squelch it. While I may have temporarily satisfied my own inquisition, the Voice was not so easily appeased. It pounded on the backside of my chest for years: You know that you’re not doing everything you could be doing. Your “service” seems awfully selfish. Your “sacrifices” are actually veiled acts of disobedience. Why does your schedule seem to always accommodate you and not others? You need to stop running.

He was knocking on the door of my heart, and He wanted more from me. Yet I was comfortable with my occasional contributions. After all, I had a sweet, sweet deal: I could choose my own duties and obligations. I could serve when I wanted and sacrifice how much I wanted. I didn’t have to be inconvenienced because I could make sure I wasn’t. I didn’t have to come under anything besides my own will. That felt nice.

I was also serving from a distance, because it was safe. I was leading from an armchair at my own leisure. When you’re “over there” or “up there,” you can keep your boots pristine by circumventing all the mud and blood. You can remain sanitized. I deluded myself that I was serving Him when in reality I was serving Myself. My “I’m doing enough” was a copout, and I knew it. He patiently, but forcibly, made me call it out.

How blinded we can be when assessing our sacrifices! We convince ourselves that we’re doing enough and the right amount. We say that if we were to take on more it would be too much for us to handle. We set “reasonable terms” and “healthy boundaries” that feel manageable to us. All the while, our schedule generously favors our preferences and passions. And strangely enough, we have no time for others.

This all came to a head on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. I sat before a half-a-dozen Session members from my church. I think at the time I would have said I was “allowing” myself to sense an internal call because I was still dragging my feet. I still had so many reservations. But I informed our Session that I wanted to give myself over to Christ in pastoral ministry and that I would like their endorsement. A unanimous vote followed.

I was dragging my feet because I knew that when you come under the One who owns you, it involves laying down your aspirations, ambitions, and possibly even your associations. It involves laying down your agendas and anticipations. You will have to come to place in which you trust Him more than yourself (Job 13:15). You give your life away. You say “goodbye” to inconveniences, hiding, and that monster: your will.

I was afraid. I didn’t want to hear the call. I didn’t want to have to give over my life to His agenda and schedule. I didn’t want Him to lead me into other people’s problems. Who in their right mind signs up to help other people manage messes? But through His illumination I came to realize that I don’t get to choose. We don’t get to choose our calling and more than we get to choose when we are born. 

I don’t struggle with going into foreign lands like Abraham. I don’t question my abilities like Moses. I’m not afraid to face Goliath. But I have always felt the weight of the pastorate, and that’s why I ran from it. The expectations put on those of the cloth by the Lord is one of carrying crosses. I have a healthy respect for that responsibility—which is why, if I’m being honest, I couldn’t say, “Here I am,” without hesitation.

Carrying crosses means getting all up into other people’s hearts—where the mess is. Getting up all into their problems and saying, “this is a problem.” They will question your authority. They will scrutinize your naming. They will resist doing what you tell them to do. You will have to fight them on it. And, over time, most of them will slip out the back door. And you can’t get discouraged or despondent.

Carrying crosses means preaching the Word, which is hefty on the shoulders and rattles the heart. The ordained officer weds himself to telling the Truth and saying uncomfortable things from the pulpit. He vows to preach judgment and make declarations like, “You’re a viper” and “they’re dead—let them bury their dead.” That’s not easy to do, especially when you have to be accurate.

You also have to do home visits. Not many pastors do them nowadays, but it has been a staple in the Reformed tradition since John Calvin. Not your “Hey—let’s grab a bite to eat sometime and talk about ‘life.’” Rather, the kind of home visit in which the pastor comes inside your living room and checks on the spiritual state of your family. He asks your kids about the sermon and how family devotions are going.

Westminster Divines categorized home visits as “private teaching.” The Directory for Public Worship put it this way:

It is the duty of the minister not only to teach the people committed to his charge in public, but privately; and particularly to admonish, exhort, reprove, and comfort them, upon all seasonable occasions, so far as his time, strength, and personal safety will permit.

It’s a way of keeping the family accountable to growing in their faith. The pastor checks to make sure that each member of the family is engaging in “prayers and praises” and reading Scripture. The pastor also makes sure the head of the household is catechizing his family and engaging in “godly conferences” with each of them. In a sense, the pastor is responsible for making sure everyone is being a Christian.

Abraham Kuyper offers further insight:

What marks home visiting is its concern is not for the general terrain that has been entrusted to the preaching. It investigates in the name of the church to what extent the life of a family actually complies with the requirement that Christ assigns both to the family and to each of its members. This is why it is called a “home visit” and not a “personal visit.”

A home visit is when one of Christ’s office-bearers come to the family in the name of the church in order to keep that family close to the Christian tenor of life, to remove whatever obstacles he can from that path, to point the family to its duties and callings, to comfort it in sadness, and to demand that it submit to the Word in the name of the King of the church.

Carrying crosses also means dealing with your own insecurities. Mine is being a hypocrite. I get sick to my stomach every time I think about the possibility of being one. I don’t want to tell someone to do something that I haven’t done or won’t do. I can’t justify it in my conscience with the mere thought “I’m the authority and you’re not.” That won’t keep me asleep at night.

Because of this insecurity, I ascend the pulpit with fear and trembling. Is this how you’re living, Kyle? Are you doing these things? Can you honestly and conscientiously say that you’re doing this? Are you honoring Christ in these specific ways? Have you ponied up your life like this or are you still running from the mud and blood? I have to remember that it is Christ, not I, who preaches through me (and to me).

It’s also why I will probably knock on doors with fear and trembling. If you’re going to walk into someone’s home and tell them that their faith is weak sauce and that they need to be more diligent in examining their teenage daughter about the sermon, then you better have your own house in order. Your “liturgy of the living room” better be on point. But I have to remember it’s Him who knocks, like He knocked on me.

Please pray for me on this journey. Pray for my ordination exams: that I would prepare well, recall well, and do well. Pray for our congregation and our ministries: that I would serve “promptly and sincerely,” as Calvin put it. And please pray for my family: that the ghosts, dragons, goblins, and worms wouldn’t lead them to run and hide, and that they, too, in their own way, wouldn’t step over the mud and blood.