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Gospel Workers' Department

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 22, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 34.

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Gospel Workers' Department

By Arthur Grosvenor Daniells

Their divine calling, qualification, and preparation. Methods of labor, plans, etc.

Conducted by A. G. Daniells

The Call to the Gospel Ministry

Some Valuable Quotations

IN last week's REVIEW we gave a number of selections from various writers regarding "The Call to the Gospel Ministry." This week a few quotations are given on the evidence all may have that the call is from God.

How Does This Call Come? and How May It Be Known That It Is From God?

"If there is this special call of God to the ministry, how is this call certified to the individual?
"The first element in the certification is the conviction that one ought to preach the gospel.
"This sense of duty or prevailing feeling of obligation is vital. . . . No man should dare be guilty of stepping toward the Christian ministry whose mind is a blank concerning this matter, so far as a sense of obligation goes. In any case, and for any occasion, the conviction should be lodged more or less clearly in the consciousness. The direct and efficient cause of the conviction is the Holy Ghost. The occasions, coincident with the conviction and leading to it, may be various, as used by the Spirit. Favoring circumstances, sense of adaptation, considerations of usefulness, providential indications,—these may be incidents and attendants instrumental. But these are not the call, nor are they the efficient cause of the conviction."—The Ideal Ministry, page 113.
"It was not Paul's fitness, or taste, or circumstances, or any consideration of greater usefulness, that based his 'Woe is me.' It was God's call,—I must preach.
"A second element certifying to the divine call is the desire to preach the gospel. This may antedate conviction, or it may follow. The desire may be present when there is great doubt as to fitness, or when circumstances may seem to hedge up the way. When it exists and continues, without any conviction, and the man enters the ministry with no profound feeling of duty, then it befits the candidate to consider whether the desire is not born of selfishness and the devil, instead of love to God."—Id., page 114.
"A third element certifying to the divine call is the possession of the natural physical and mental qualifications. Any serious defect of voice, unfitting for effective public speaking, any serious bodily infirmity, any looseness of mental machinery, constituting a radical and incurable defect, should be evidence that the following of some other pursuit would be more likely to honor God and to be in the line of his purpose.
"A fourth element certifying to the divine call, is the approving judgment of the church. This publicly corroborates and authenticates individual conviction. It is certainly an element of considerable importance in defining and settling one's duty. For the personal judgment may be blind and partial. There may be a sense of conviction, and an honest, earnest desire, along with real unfitness, because of mental defect or idiosyncrasy. And this defect may not be patent to the candidate, though very plain to others. Duty in such case is imperative. The church should deal kindly, but frankly with the candidate, and make known the adverse judgment.
"This adverse judgment should suggest a doubt of fitness, beyond all question, and lead to a careful reexamination of the grounds of the conviction that one ought to preach, and of the motives prompting the desire to preach. . . .
"Thoroughly possess a man with the conviction that he has been summoned to preach the gospel by a direct divine agency, moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon himself the office of a bishop, and it can not fail of spiritualizing all his activities and uplifting his whole life. If he feels that God has called him into the ministry in a way in which men are called to no other pursuit, then at once and forever it is to him a peculiarly sacred, divine work, not to be undertaken and prosecuted save with an active and absolute consecration, and to be secularized or made subservient to selfish interests or ambitions at the peril of his soul."—Id., pages 115, 116.
"And what patience, what courage, what steadfastness, what power, must be born of the conviction of being called of God! He who can say, 'Lord, I heard thy call. It was thou that didst send me.'—what can he fear to do or dare or suffer!"—Id., page 117.
"This call and consciousness of God is essential to a man at the outset of his ministry. Unless he has it, he had better not start out. The ministry is a vocation, not a profession. 'Wherefore wilt thou run, . . . seeing that thou hast no tidings ready?'
"But it is also essential when the man is actually at his work. The church can only echo and authenticate the call, and unless the minister is ever conscious that he is where and what he is because God has called, placed, and equipped him, his ministry must necessarily suffer in power and blessing.
"And, not least of all, this consciousness of a divine vocation is essential all through a minister's life. We must keep in touch with God. Only thus shall we preserve our freshness, and not grow stale. Only thus shall we keep our glow, and never become dull. Only thus shall we walk, and not faint. People are quick to see both the presence and the absence of this divine consciousness in their clergyman's life."—The Work of the Ministry, by W. H. Griffith Thomas, D. D., page 6.

The Evidence One Should Give to Others of His Call to the Ministry

"But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." 2 Tim. 4:5.
"Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord." 1 Cor. 9:1, 2.
"But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; (for he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles)." Gal. 2:7, 8.
"The conversion of sinners and their sanctification through the truth is the strongest proof a minister can have that God has called him to the ministry. The evidence of his apostleship is written upon the hearts of those converted, and is witnessed to by their renewed lives. Christ is formed within, the hope of glory. A minister is greatly strengthened by these seals of his ministry."—Acts of the Apostles, page 328.