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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Making sure we nurture younger generation’s call Eric Van Meter, Oct 21, 2009
Eric Van Meter
By Eric Van Meter Special Contributor
Nothing tests a person’s faith quite like working in a church. Even on good days, I leave the office exhausted from my encounters with God and God’s people.
On the bad days, when pettiness and drama cause otherwise well-meaning people to injure the most vulnerable among us, I come home and check the help-wanted ads.
On one of the more stressful days last spring during Lent, I came home to find my 5-year-old son wearing one of my white t-shirts, which of course hung all the way down to his ankles. He had my red necktie draped over his shoulders. He stood on a stool, with his unfortunate little brother on the floor in front of him, buried in a stack of stuffed animals.
“Look, Daddy!” Zachary said with genuine glee. “I’m pretending to be a pastor like you!”
His little brother, Jonathan, looked up in misery from between Tigger and Fluffy the Dog. “Daddy, I’m all done with church,” he said.
The scene was enough to make me forget the headaches of my day and laugh. It was also enough to keep me awake for a good portion of the night.
If my son wants to follow me in my vocation in the United Methodist Church, it will be because he and the Lord come to that decision together. I hope he will encounter the same breathtaking vistas of God’s work that I’ve seen—and more.
I also hope he’ll enter into a healthier clergy culture than currently exists, one dedicated to passing on the best of who we are and the essentials of our calling. And I hope the United Methodist Church can find a way to guide him, remove roadblocks and erect road signs instead along his path.
Should Zachary choose to be ordained, he will probably have to endure more than a fair amount of headaches. The ordination process is a frustrating, virtually incomprehensible maze that takes years to complete. Although most of the people I talk to find positives within the process, almost no one relishes involvement with it. Or holds much hope of substantially changing it.
All that makes Boards of Ordained Ministry (BOMs) an easy target for disgruntled young pastors, and I suppose I’ve taken my fair share of swipes at them. But as I’ve matured, I’ve come to recognize that the people on these boards do thankless, if necessary, work. They try to be both mentors to the soul and judges to the law.
My concern then, is not with the ordination process itself, or the BOMs that implement its standards, nor even with the consternation of those who endure either. By the time someone finishes seminary, she has probably developed the tenacity to grind through whatever obligations are placed upon her.
My real concern is with the first stages of the journey, the way people—particularly young adults whose first career will be in professional ministry—are called and nurtured to try on Christian vocation.
The call to ordained ministry begins with catching the breath of God beneath our wings and seeing where it will take us. In the best of settings, we hear others shouting encouragement throughout the journey.
But candidacy itself begins in a far different place—with orders and duties and checklists and timetables. It reduces discernment to personal discovery through surveys and conversations. It imposes the nouns of our Disciplinary language—word, sacrament, order, service, process, provision—onto the verbs—bless, give, love, live, care, follow—of our God stories.
It’s not that I want to hide the realities of church structure from Zachary or anyone else. He needs to know the church’s traditions and expectations, even if the robe it may place over him is a bit constricting at first.
But he also needs someone to keep alive his quest to follow Jesus, someone to point out the cloud or pillar of fire when he can’t see through the fog. He needs the assurance that a commitment to serve his Lord through the United Methodist Church won’t reduce his calling to management of a dying institution.
I’m not quite convinced that the United Methodist Church can offer such an assurance.
Perhaps our understanding of ordination needs to change, or at least our practice of it. Perhaps the way we communicate the process should be altered. Certainly, however, those of us who love our church can’t wait for pastors or BOMs or glitzy programs to teach our children about choosing their vocations, even a vocation in professional ministry.
We have to be the ones who set positive examples. We have to be the ones to offer them opportunities for meaningful leadership. We have to be the ones who, despite our desire to protect them, go with them to encounter desperate and hurting humanity. We have to step up and be the disciples we want them to emulate.
In a very real sense, it’s up to each of us to make God’s call audible to those who might enter into God’s service through the church.
When Zachary preaches to his stuffed congregation, he’s doing more than imitating his father. He’s trying on a role. The same is true when his kids’ class packs flood buckets for relief workers, or learns a song for Bible school or brings part of his weekly allowance to worship for an offering.
No one has told him that these are things a pastor might do; they are simply outgrowths of the faith he is developing. He is a disciple of Jesus, who may decide that his devotion is best lived out as a pastor or missionary or whatever.
I hope that as he grows, the adults in his life will provide him more opportunities to test out his vocation. I hope the church we are a part of will make a real investment in youth ministry, and that his friends and mentors offer guidance that serves not as a leash, but as a tether.
And I hope the United Methodist Church doesn’t stop there, just as he’s entering the most crucial years in his vocational development. I hope we will reinvest in campus ministries with our financial and personnel resources so that he has a community of peers dedicated to hearing the voice of God.
When I see my son dressed in his pretend liturgical garb, I don’t worry that God will not guide him. I will give him the very best direction I can, and I’ll pray, trusting that he’ll do his part in listening.
Instead, I worry about the church that has given me so much life. I worry that she will miss out on this generation of servants, just as she has on the previous two. I worry that she’ll be so caught up in the process of ordination that she’ll fail to communicate the beauty of the office.
Will he grow up in a church that will invest in him, trust in him, maybe even ordain him in the service of God?
Or will he and I both be all done with church by that time?
The Rev. Van Meter is director of the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University.
Eric Van Meter
My real concern is with the first stages of the journey, the way people—particularly young adults whose first career will be in professional ministry—are called and nurtured to try on Christian vocation. 
