The Call of God and Professional Ministry, or “Vocation within the Priesthood of All Believers”
presented at the 2008 Women in Ministry Conference, at Manhattan Church of Christ
May 13, 2008


In 1998, after graduating from Harding with a degree in English literature, I went to China to teach conversational English and do mission work. I did not use the language of calling at that time. I did not know the language of vocation. When people asked me why I was going, the best answer I could come up with was, “I couldn’t think of anything else better to do.” I meant that. There wasn’t anything else better to do. Still reeling from a bitter breakup in which my hopes to become a missionary’s wife were dashed upon the rocks, I thought that I had found an alternative way to go about the most important thing of which I was capable, despite the inherent handicaps of being young, single, and female. But I did not consider myself to be called. I just didn’t want to waste my time doing things I thought were less important.

The first year in China was instructive. I experienced firsthand the theological dilemma of the Church of Christ doctrine of vocation. Yes, we are all “ministers”; even I, as young and inexperienced and confused as I was then. I had raised money from churches and family and friends who believed enough in this to put their money where their faith was. I got on a plane funded by the strength of their faith in me and in a doctrine that everyone, even the most unlikely, are called to ministry in God’s church.

The dilemma I experienced in China was no different than what I had grown up with my whole life in the States; but like so many other things, this aspect of my heritage of Christian belief and practice was invisible to me until placed in that new context where all sorts of things came to light. What I experienced was simply the inevitable result of an ambiguity in our tradition regarding the nature of ministry and ministers, an ambiguity I had lived with without noticing it…until the question of my own vocation made it obvious.

Vocation: broad and narrow senses

Pause to define our terms here. “Vocation” itself, the word, is used in two distinct ways. We can call them “broad” and “narrow.” Broadly, of course, vocation is used to mean the calling to God’s work for any and all Christians, in whatever situation and in whatever line of work is their own. Used in this way, the doctrine of vocation is an affirmation that all people experience a call, have a task and a purpose and a function within God’s people and in the world. This kind of call has a corporate dimension—we are called as the church, as the body of Christ in the world; it may also have an individual dimension to it—we are called according to our specific gifts, to specific ways of being Christ in this world. Narrowly, vocation means a call to what we might label “professional ministry” and what other traditions would call “ordained ministry,” a call to work within the church, to take up specific tasks in the service of the church and God’s people within the church.

We see both meanings at work throughout all the theological dimensions of a doctrine of vocation: God calls Israel (broad); God calls prophets (narrow). Christ calls people to become his disciples; Christ calls the Twelve apostles. The gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism; Pentecost and the laying on of hands. The call of the church; the calling of elders, deacons, apostles, prophets…and so on.

Later on this evening, our focus will shift from the narrow meaning of vocation as “professional ministry” into the broader sense, as we seek to understand not just what vocation means for us as ministers but for everyone—ourselves, our brothers and sisters in Christ, and how we can identify and help each other identify our Christian vocation in this world. This is a pressing question, in many ways a very practical and pastoral question…and therefore, something which I must leave in Regan and Charme’s capable hands, as I am completely impractical and non-pastoral myself, being a theologian. For now, the sense of vocation I am concerned with is the narrow one—vocation as being called into the service of the church in a way that demands your full time, your full energy, your whole heart.

Priesthood of all Believers: Campbell on vocation and ordination

Back to my dilemma. Where did it come from? We might instinctively want to equate our doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” with the broad sense of vocation, but these things are not quite the same. The broad sense of vocation carries us outside the walls of the church building into the world; the doctrine of priesthood of all believers refers to our practices within the church, our concepts of ministry and ministers and ministerial authority. And so our concern at the moment is with the narrow sense of vocation, and how this has been articulated in our tradition through the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.

We inherit this, of course, from Martin Luther, though we probably don’t admit that often enough to make our Lutheran brothers and sisters happy.
But our doctrine is distinctively our own, a radical interpretation we have inherited from Alexander Campbell.

The Protestant understanding of “priesthood of all believers” was radicalized in the thought of Campbell, due especially to the influence of democratic politics in nineteenth century America.[1] The radicality of Campbell’s doctrine can be seen in his allowance of laypeople to perform rites typically reserved for clergy in other denominations. While he generally thought that the leaders should lead for the sake of good order, Campbell wrote,

“we concede that in certain cases it is the privilege of all the citizens of
Christ’s kingdom to preach, baptize, and teach. Every citizen of Christ’s
kingdom has, in virtue of his citizenship, equal rights, privileges, and
immunities. So has every citizen of the United States…. [A Christian] may of
right preach, baptize, and dispense the supper, as well as pray for all men,
when circumstances demand it (emphasis original).”[2]

According to Campbell, ordination was not required to preach or baptize or preside over the Lord’s Supper. Ordination was helpful merely to create order in a community that had been organized. But every Christian had the right to do these things.

The radical theological claim being made by Campbell’s permission of laypeople to preside over the Lord’s Supper may be lost on us, for whom it has become the weekly norm. In most churches, however, the Lord’s Supper is presided over and administered only by ordained ministers or priests; the significance of this lies in the belief that these are the representatives of Christ to the people in this moment of the sacrament, and that the elements of bread and wine—being Christ’s body and blood—are holy, and require handling by these holy representatives. My husband was instructed, by the priest who taught his liturgy class, that in speaking the words of institution, which are Christ’s words (“this is my body…this is my blood”), he indeed becomes Christ to the church at that moment. Campbell’s claim, then, is that all Christians are representative of Christ in this way, without the necessity of ordination to set them apart.

This explains, then, why we in the Churches of Christ have no practice of formal ordination in the sense that most churches do. Campbell’s understanding of leadership grew out of his radical view of the priesthood of all believers and was governed by the following principles: congregationalism, plurality of leaders, a tripartite ministry structure, and an aversion to “ministerial hirelings.” Many of these principles we are familiar with from long association: congregational autonomy, a plurality of elders, a basic three-fold division of church leadership into elders and deacons and what Campbell called “evangelists,” a role we would most likely identify today as “pulpit minister.” But the identification of Campbell’s “evangelist” with “pulpit minister” shows a drift into exactly the kind of practice Campbell was opposed to, the “ministerial hireling.”

What Campbell was reacting against was what he called the “hireling” system in which a certain Christian felt a “call,” went to seminary in order to train for a profession, then went to compete for a ministry job. Campbell in typical satirical tone says,

A hireling is one who prepares himself for the office of a ‘preacher’ or
‘minister,’ as a mechanic learns a trade, and who obtains a license from a
congregation, convention, presbytery, pope, or diocesan bishop, as a preacher or
minister, and agrees by the day or sermon, month or year for a stipulated
reward…. He learns the art and mystery of making a sermon, or a prayer, as a man
learns the art of making a boot or a shoe. He intends to make his living in
whole, or in part, by making sermons and prayers, and he sets himself up to the
highest bidder. He agrees for so much a sermon, or for fifty-two in the
wholesale way, and for a certain sum he undertakes to furnish so many; but if a
better offer is made him when his first contract is out, (and sometimes before
it expires,) he will agree to accept a better price. Such a preacher or
minister, by all the rules of grammar, logic, and arithmetic, is a hireling in
the full sense of the word.[3]

Ministry for Campbell was not a profession in which its practitioners competed for jobs. Rather, a congregation chose its leaders based on qualifications they already possessed.

Now, of course, our current practices have diverged significantly from Campbell’s doctrine; the historical ins and outs are too much to go into but we are all aware not only that we hire full-time paid ministers in our churches, but that most of these have received training and education at either our universities or preaching schools and increasing numbers even hold the same professional degree, the Master of Divinity, required for formal ordination in those churches that do have formal ordination processes. And I would venture to say that I am not alone, or atypical, in having grown up perceiving the minister of my church as a person holding a special kind of authority and status (that is, of course, until my dad became a minister when I was 14; that dispelled the glamour a bit…a prophet has no honor in his home after all).

So there’s a tension, as I see it, between our doctrine, inherited from Campbell, and our practice. We are all ministers; but the minister is a particular person, identified and chosen and hired and supported by the congregation. This person is called the minister because they are set apart to do these certain things, like preach on Sundays and teach Bible classes and counsel people and visit the sick in the hospital. The minister holds an authority in teaching that is distinct from the authority of other church leaders, for other church leaders, even elders, are lay leaders, chosen from among the congregation on the basis of qualifications they already possess. Early on, some followers of Campbell—like James A. Harding—resisted wholeheartedly the practice of “located ministers” seeing that this was exactly what Campbell meant by “hirelings.”

We could, at this point, follow this thread into a discussion of professionalization and debate the merits and need for education and training. But it is enough to sketch out the dilemma; by resisting the professionalization of ministry, Campbell also undermined a specific doctrine of vocation into the ministry.

As women, when we step out in faith to answer the call to ministry within our churches, not only do we run into the obvious issues stemming from the uncertain and ambiguous status of women in our churches, but we also wake up the old antagonism toward professional ministry. Campbell’s radically democratic priesthood of all believers does, in a very real sense, open the door for anyone to answer the call to ministry within the church. But it does so by saying no to the professionalization of ministry. And so, as women, we may have also seen this radically democratic doctrine work against the recognition of our calls to ministry. Everyone is a minister; you are already a minister; if you want a ministry, go pick something and do it; there’s nothing professional about it. There’s nothing special about it. And if you want recognition of your vocation, your call into the ministry of a church…well. Counterintuitively, the doctrine that opens the door for anyone who feels called to ministry often slams the door on women. This is, in essence, what I experienced that first eye-opening year in China.

This leaves us here at this conference for women-in-ministry squarely in the middle of this inherited ambiguity, with the task not only of remaining faithful to the call of God that we experience and of doing the ministry we are called to do, but of articulating our sense of vocation in a way which makes sense within our tradition and to the people we seek to serve as ministers in our churches. And that is no small theological task.

Constructing a doctrine of vocation within the priesthood of all believers.

To that end, I’d like to spend the rest of our time beginning the constructive work of articulating a theology of vocation for this priesthood of all believers.

To begin with, as I’m sure you may have reflected on, language of call and vocation is a bit of an ill fit within our Church of Christ heritage. It’s a little too touchy-feely for the hardheaded Scottish common sense realism woven into our tradition from its forefathers. If, for instance, you attempt to look up the word “vocation” in the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, you won’t find it in there. And if you look for “ordination,” you’ll be sent to the article on “ministry.”

So perhaps the first question we pause to ask is really, is there a reason to start to using this language of vocation, seeing as how it is so utterly foreign to our theological heritage that it’s literally not even in our dictionary? What does language of vocation do for us that language of ministry doesn’t? I’d like to suggest that the language of vocation is an important recovery, particularly for women, but also generally within the context of our theology of ministry, for it gives us a way of connecting the pragmatic realities of defining, locating and practicing ministry to the very life of God. Ministry is indeed a human endeavor, but it is also service undertaken as response to God’s work in us; the language of vocation, the language of a calling, reminds us of that divine dimension even as it is worked out in the mundane processes of job hunting and resumes and answering ads and interviewing and disappointments. Particularly within Churches of Christ, with our historic lack of formal ordination at any level—institutional and congregational—the need to reconnect the largely mundane realities of finding work as a minister is an urgent one. This is exactly what a theology of vocation does.

But because of the nature of theology, when we borrow the language of calling and vocation from other Christians, we are in a sense taking on a great deal more than just language of calling. We are also taking on a foreign pneumatology, a doctrine of providence, a theology of prayer, even some different ecclesiology, at the same time; and without stopping to think about what it means to claim our calling, we cannot really expect this language to do more than alarm and alienate people within our churches who are aware that at some level, their settled and cherished beliefs about the Spirit, the church, even the nature and working of God is being challenged.

So what I’d like to do is address some of this, to help us sort out together just what some of these systematic implications of a doctrine of vocation are. What does a doctrine of vocation say about God? About Christ? About the Spirit? About the church?

Theology: seeing God in the process

In our theme text from Isaiah, we read that God calls both Israel as a nation and specific individuals. Again and again the OT we read fantastic stories of God’s call of the prophets and leaders of Israel: visions, and conversations, and fleeces dry and wet. There seems to be no particular pattern to be discerned. It’s hard to determine what “a call” is when God never seems to do it the same way twice. There’s no formula given we can use to measure it by. Did this happen? Check. Did that happen? Check. Okay, then, call verified. God just doesn’t really work that way.

Sometimes God chooses the obvious people, like Miriam, a member of a great family of leaders; and sometimes God chooses the unlikely: prostitutes, like Rahab, or unwed mothers, like Mary. Sometimes God chooses the prepared, like Samuel, dedicated to the priesthood prior to conception by his mother Hannah. Sometimes God chooses the unwilling, like Moses, who protested, “I don’t talk real well, you probably want someone else.”

What the Bible leaves no doubt about whatsoever is that God does call. A theology of vocation is unavoidable in the biblical testimony of God’s work in the world. God is at work, and God works through people.

This hopefully comes as no surprise to us, but think for a moment about the profundity of this assertion. God is at work in the world. Our God is alive. Our God is active. Our God is involved. Our God initiates. Our God is invested, tangled up in human lives and history, concerned with the task of making it come out right in the end, of reconciliation. Our God is not independent and autocratic and detached but is constantly bringing you and me and as many people as will come into this task—a mutual task, a collaboration of the human and the divine. This is a God who calls. This is what vocation means for our theology, our notions of who God is, and what God is like. Our God is a God who constantly invites us into the mutual task of reconciliation.

(as an afterthought: I think too that there is some work to be done in reworking our notions of theological authority and therefore ministerial authority. Campbell utterly rejected the formal hierarchies evident in other churches’ organization, and in the priesthood of all believers, he sought to articulate a doctrine of ministry that ended the distinction between clergy and laity. Yet there remains in our practice a belief in a kind of authority that remains stubbornly hierarchical. It is this that I believe is at the heart of disputes about the authority to teach, and who does and does not have it. When we consider that our God, who holds all authority in heaven and on earth, chose to share that full authority in Jesus Christ, who in turn chose other human beings to share his authority, who in turn chose other human beings…the concept of authority as hierarchical begins to become absurd. Authority that is shared is not hierarchical.)


Pneumatology: talking about the Spirit without scaring their pants off

How does this invitation take place? Connecting vocation and Spirit is perhaps the easiest systematic connection to make. Pentecost (celebrated just this last Sunday) makes the Spirit’s role in inaugurating the apostle’s ministry evident in tongues of flame and rushing wind and miracles. No less clear is the connection between the experiential aspect of vocation and the role of the Spirit. And it is exactly this, I suspect, that makes us the most uncomfortable about talk of callings. This language directly implies the kind of Spirit action in the world that we have traditionally sought to contain and reduce to the reading of the words of the biblical text; there and nowhere else did the Spirit move.[4] In our context it is also relevant to note that the Spirit has always been a leveling force with regard to limitations set for ministry; from the 4th century Montanists, a sect whose heresy included public leadership of women inspired by the Spirit, to the Pentecostal and Holiness movements in our own country, churches who have taught an active doctrine of the Holy Spirit have also historically seen the connection between the Spirit’s authority and the breakdown of barriers to ministry. For the Spirit blows where it (She) wills. Introducing language of vocation, constructing a theology of vocation, challenges a traditional Church of Christ pneumatology. There’s just no way around that.

This is, of course, a good thing. But it is also an uncomfortable thing.

There are two things to be said here. First, women ministers in our churches are inevitably faced with a burden of justifying their presence. Theologically, we need a doctrine of vocation as the answer to the question—implicit or explicit—of just what it is we think we’re doing, and why we should be doing it. But we cannot use language of calling as some kind of theological trump card. Spirit beats hermeneutics. That kind of theological stalemate is unconvincing, and ultimately damaging. It’s unconvincing because what it says is, experience trumps text; and “experience” is not generally recognized as a valid source for theological reflection by most members of our churches. For most of us, experience is subject to biblical correction, not the other way around.

Yet the second thing that must be said is that vocation is undeniably experiential in some way. These biblical stories, both OT and NT, tell us about experiences. Visions. Encounters. While this is not likely to make a compelling or persuasive case to others, I do not think there is anything to be gained by denying that we can experience, and have indeed experienced, the call of the Spirit in our lives. As my advisor at PTS puts it, rather academically, “one’s own experience is always rationally compelling.” We cannot expect these experiences to conform to a pattern any more than God’s calling of the prophets or Jesus’ calling of the disciples did. Neither can we deny that these experiences happen, without courting the dangers of self-deception and a denial of God’s initiative, God’s action, God’s presence, in this world.

Ecclesiology: the Call of the Church…or not.

The NT practice of the laying on of hands to impart the Spirit in preparation for the designation of individuals for specific tasks makes the connections between vocation, pneumatology and ecclesiology abundantly clear. We see in the NT that the Spirit is imparted both by the orderly mechanism of laying on of hands, and appears in places and people clearly outside-the-box—whereupon the response of the church was to accept this de facto vocation and lay hands on these Spirit filled persons in retrospect.

The role of the church in the vocation to professional ministry is clear in many denominations; for my husband, the formal process of ordination includes many committees composed of laypersons as well as clergy, the purpose of which is to, on behalf of the church, confirm or deny the presence of God’s call to service in the church. The church is seen, theologically, as Christ’s body and the dwelling place of the Spirit; so that it becomes the location where the work of the Spirit confirms itself. Vocation in these processes is therefore neither solely the individual’s experience nor the church’s prerogative; it is a combination of the two, both being seen as locations of the Spirit at work in the world.

Lacking such a process, we in the Churches of Christ have a much harder task in discerning the role of the church in vocation. The church is active in discerning vocation only occasionally, in the congregation’s process of hiring a minister, and each process is presumably somewhat unique to each congregation (though no doubt sharing significant similarity). The question under consideration in these processes is somewhat different; it is not, is this individual called to be a minister, but is this individual called to this ministry here. A local question, rather than a global one.

This process also takes place after the individual in question has had to wrestle with the question of vocation on their own, in deciding whether to pursue education and training and in deciding when and where to seek out employment as a minister. By the time our churches are involved in the discernment of vocation, the question has been settled by the individual for some time already. This means that, practically speaking, our churches play little to no role in the discernment of vocation to ministry. It is the burden of the individual to seek out confirmation of their call. It is my hope that you have found, as my husband and I did, people willing to serve this necessary function of the church for you; elders, professors, parents or friends willing to listen, advise, pray, and discern with you.

But our churches do play a role in affirming, or not, an individual’s discernment of their vocation by the simple and practical expedient of hiring or not hiring them. As women, we are perhaps more keenly aware than our male counterparts about this role of the church in affirming vocation to ministry because we cannot take that affirmation for granted. The number of churches in our fellowship willing to recognize the vocation of women to ministry is growing, but not faster than the number of women willing to answer the call to ministry. This brings us face-to-face with a theological dilemma: what do you do with a vocation to serve the church refuses to affirm?

I put this question bluntly because I think we need to be straightforward about it. It’s a problem. It’s a thorny problem without a clear answer. Does the lack of affirmation mean that we should doubt the veracity of our calling? No, not necessarily. Consider Jeremiah: called by God so undoubtedly that he experienced his call as a burning fire in his bones, but utterly unrecognized as called by the people he served; mocked, scorned, plotted against, thrown in prison…non-affirmed is a nice understatement. Yet neither we nor Jeremiah can doubt that he was truly called by God, and that he answered that call by serving the people who refused to recognize his ministry.

There are further questions to be asked, and practical, personal dimensions to this dilemma. How do you insist on your own calling by God without sounding arrogant, and self-serving? How do you balance the need to make a living and feed your kids and pay your school loans with the imperative to answer the call of God in your life, when you can’t find paid work in the ministry you feel called to?

I can’t answer these questions. But I want to return to the example of the NT church’s response to the presence of the Spirit in unexpected persons and places. The response of the church, once it was clear that the Spirit was present, was to accept and confirm the vocation of those people through baptism and the laying on of hands. Interestingly, though perhaps not too surprisingly, Campbell recognized the laying on of hands as a necessary ritual and even provided a short service format for it. As women, at this time, we are the unexpected. Part of our task, I believe strongly, is to make the fact of our vocation obvious, as obvious as was the calling of Nicodemus in the NT, as obvious as the vocation of Paul on the road to Damascus. The task of the church, I believe strongly, is to take notice; accept the presence of the Spirit in these unexpected persons and to confirm the work of God in us, through the laying on of hands and the affirmation of our calling. And the provision of work for hands that cannot remain idle.

Christology: imago Dei, imago Christi means women too

Finally: Christ, of course, is our example of what it means to answer the call into this mutual divine-human collaboration in the task of reconciling the world to God. This call is an inclusive one; this vocation is for everyone. This is what it means to be Christ-like, to put on Christ, and this is every Christian’s new identity through the rebirth of baptism. And what I want us to understand is that the vocation to be Christ-like is not the “broad” vocation out of which some special new vocation to professional ministry comes, as a different kind of vocation altogether, but that the calling to professional ministry is one particular form of being Christ-like. It is one way to enact the reconciling love of God to one another, within the context of the church, which is God’s people, the body of Christ, the community of the Spirit. Once we understand this, it is clear that those who receive this particular call must be free to follow it, for to not do so means not being the Christ-like Christian that we are all called to be.

I believe that this is the theological connection that we need to be making most strongly when we talk about vocation in our churches. If we can indeed show persuasively, not simply in our words but in our conduct and our determination, that our vocation is the vocation to faithfully follow Christ’s example, wherever it leads us—whether overseas into mission fields, into women's shelters, into classrooms, into our churches, our altars and our pulpits—then we can humbly persist in the audacious claim that we too are called, and we have no choice but to respond. And someday, I trust, our churches will respond with a recognition of our de facto vocation through the laying on of hands, and a blessing of our work.


[1] Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 71-73. Nathan O. Hatch, church historian at the University of Notre Dame, in his watershed book The Democratization of American Christianity uses Campbell’s movement as a prime example of democracy’s influence on American religion. He says that Campbell’s movement emphasized three aspects in this regard: 1) an exalted conscience of the individual over church organization, 2) a rejection of traditions of learned theology, and 3) a populist hermeneutic emphasizing individualistic interpretation of the New Testament.

[2] Alexander Campbell, The Christian System, in Reference to the Union of Christians, and a Restoration of Primitive Christianity, as Plead in the Current Reformation, 4th ed. (Cincinnati: H. S. Bosworth, 1866), 81-82.

[3] Alexander Campbell, “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. XII. The Bishop’s Office.—No. 1.” The Christian Baptist 3, no. 9 (April 3, 1826): 232-33.

[4] Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 403ff.