Called By God?

“Called By God?” Thinking About a Life of Christian Ministry

The answer is surprisingly difficult to figure out

As full-time Christian ministry recedes into the rear-view mirror, I find myself thinking about my life from a more outside perspective than was possible when I was a workaday vicar.

It’s been five years since I took early retirement, and as time moves inexorably along, it becomes harder and harder to comprehend some of the decisions I made and choices which shaped my life.

One of the questions that I ponder is about “calling.”

When I was a keen young Christian, I used to hear lots about “calling.” It was quite common to hear sermons and youth group talks in which we were challenged to consider whether we were “called” — whether to youth work, evangelism, full-time ordained ministry, or whatever.

It’s an emphasis that largely seems to have fallen out of fashion.

I suspect that’s partly because it's so rare these days to preach or give talks to a youthful audience. It’s hard to think of preaching about being “called to Christian ministry” when the average age of the recipients is about seventy-five!

I mean, I know ministry comes in many forms and, theoretically at least, God can call people at any age — but for most people I have preached to in recent years, it’s a ship that long since sailed. Getting out of bed in the morning and having enough energy to plod down to the local corner shop for their daily newspaper is about the limit of their ambition!

When I was on the end of sermons about “being called” back in the day, I was in my late teens, surrounded by people of my own age. It was a common discussion amongst the “older-youth-cum-young-adult group I belonged to.

It’s no surprise to me that about half a dozen of that group ended up being ordained in the Church of England; such was the commitment, passion and mutual encouragement in those meetings.

What about me, Lord?

This brings us back to the question I’ve been skirting around: Was I called into Christian Ministry?

My journey along that winding path actually began not very long after I became a Christian in my late teens. I’d left full-time education and was working in a job that I never really saw as a long-term career. Truthfully, I had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life.

Suddenly, I was hearing clergy and youth leaders talking about how “God has a plan for your life” and being led in prayers “seeking God’s will for my life…”

For the first time, I started thinking that maybe here was something I could embrace as a way of life.

In the lively, suburban Anglican evangelical church (which means something VERY different from what that word has come to mean) that I belonged to, there were plenty of opportunities to dip my toe into the shallow waters of Christian ministry. Pretty soon, I was leading youth group bible studies, organising evangelistic initiatives, and giving talks at church events. It was just what the keener and more confident young Christians did in that kind of church!

Pretty soon, I started thinking about taking it further and researching the many Bible colleges and Christian training courses advertised in the (then-vibrant) Christian scene in the late 1970s.

There wasn’t even a barrier in the finances department, as (incredible as it seems today) the UK Government and local Councils would fund people to take courses, and even pay a decent chunk towards accommodation and expenses.

Yes, in the late 1970s, the Government paid me to do what would rack up tens of thousands of pounds of debt in 2026.

And so it was that, around a year after first committing to follow Jesus, I was packing my suitcase, leaving home, and starting a full-time theology degree in Liverpool, about 80 miles from home.

But was I “called”?

Naturally, I prayed about whether this was “the right” (i.e God’s will) course of action, but if you are asking whether there was a blinding light like St Paul on the road to Damascus, then the answer is “no.”

I never did get a blinding flash or a booming voice from the sky as the clouds parted. It just kinda happened.

Now, you could look at the chain of events and say something like, “Well, God’s hand must have been in it, because how else would all the pieces fall into place for you to end up in Liverpool?”

I suppose God could have made it “not happen.” But he didn’t, any more than — looking back — it seemed that he made it happen. The truth is that I started down a path, and one thing led to another until I was sitting there in a bible college in Liverpool listening to lectures on the Old Testament and the theology of Origen and Tertullian.

After I’d got about halfway through my three-year degree, I started to think more seriously about what would happen after I finished. I chatted with my vicar in Liverpool, and he encouraged me to consider ordination.

Daft as it sounds, I hadn’t even considered becoming a member of the cloth!

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Hither and Thither in Liverpool

So began several months of catching public transport to meet with various clergy, often severe-looking, to discuss ordination. For some reason, they always seemed to live miles away! I learned later that Liverpool was a sprawling diocese that covered a vast area of surrounding towns as well as Liverpool itself!

It all led to the dreaded, scary three-day conference for potential ordinands, filled with interviews and group exercises, interspersed with times of prayer and silence (because, apparently, God only speaks in those times of prayerful contemplation!).

A few days later, my vicar called to tell me that the powers-that-be had recommended that I start training for ordination in the Church of England! Just like that…

Again, if you ask me, “Paul, did you receive any sign, or message or “calling” from God during that discernment process?” again the answer would be “no.”

When I look back more than 40 years to those events, I guess I just trusted that the bishop, archdeacon, cathedral canon and senior priests that I’d been “examined by” knew what they were doing. And, even if they weren’t, then God would somehow have intervened to make sure it didn’t happen.

Off to the land of Robin Hood

Finishing off my degree, with a pretty unexpected first-class qualification, led me onwards to Nottingham for specific Church of England ordination “training.” With a degree already tucked into my pocket, there wasn’t much more to do academically, so I spent the two years in Nottingham editing the college magazine, organising social events and, oh, doing a little postgraduate study in whatever spare time I had left…

Again, it was all a bit surreal, looking back. I probably should have suffered from a severe case of imposter syndrome, but honestly, I didn’t! I simply breezed through things on the assumption that I’d end up in a suitable training parish once I was ordained.

Even though, if I’m totally honest, I never really had a clear conviction of being called to the priesthood, I found myself processing down the aisle in front of packed-to-the-rafters Bradford Cathedral to be ordained with the indelible orders of the Church of England.

And so it went on…

I won’t bore you here with how I went from my curacy parish to a second training parish and then into my first priest-in-charge role. Or about working as a Youth Adviser, and — much later — a Church Growth Adviser. Then there are the various parishes I led, seven of them in all over a career of just shy of forty years.

For the most part, the pieces just kinda fell into place. When the time came to move to pastures new, the right job seemed to fall into my lap.

You’re possibly thinking that I sound like an irreligious opportunist who exploited the largesse of the Church for his own ends. In fact, I was always a dedicated, hard-working, and diligent priest who often worked much harder than I should have.

A broken marriage was one result of far too much time spent caring for others in the parish, to the neglect of his family life.

Yet I still couldn’t say with any confidence that I was “called” to that life.

As I look back now, as a retired guy with perpetually dodgy knees and diminished in health from a brush with cancer a couple of years ago, I often wonder what would have happened if I’d made different choices.

What would my life have been like if, instead of gently sliding into ordination, I’d made a conscious choice not to go down that path? What would I have done with my life? Where would I have ended up in terms of work and career? How would things have been different?

Of course, it’s a bit of a futile exercise. The reality is that even if I were to express regret for my life as a priest, I ended up spending much of my life wearing a cassock and a dog collar.

Was I called? In the end, does that question really matter?

I was ordained in 1984 and, for better or worse, I’m still (and always will be) a priest in the Church of England. My ministerial career was largely unremarkable. I never made bishop, archdeacon or even honorary canon.

When the history of the Church of England is written, I doubt I’ll merit even a brief mention.

But I did my best to serve God and serve his people. I preached what I sincerely believed, and I cared for those who were in need, hurting or requiring the ministrations of a priest.

And I have to believe that is enough.

Paul Walker, Servant of God.