Call, Waiting
What does it mean to be called? The idea of “call” is ancient in the Christian tradition; the notion that God has an intention or purpose for each of us, and that for some of us that purpose includes stepping up to some kind of leadership role within the faith community. But how do you know? A sense of calling often starts as an intuition or a niggling sense. Sometimes it emerges from the people around you naming gifts and skills they see in you. Sometimes it is a response to a perceived need in the world around you and a sense of “If not me, who?” Many people spend years avoiding or discounting these feelings, until they become so persistent that they have to be acknowledged.
And then comes the hard part. Once we acknowledge that we have been called, we need to discern: Called to what? Where? How? Is this a call from God, or is this just my own ego? Am I avoiding this because it’s not right for me, or because I’m scared? Is this a specific call or a general call? Discernment, which literally means “sifting”, requires self-reflection and self-awareness. It also requires community and the wisdom of those who can see us from the outside. Discernment requires a willingness to sit with uncertainty. It takes time and in most cases is an ongoing process.
For new CCS diaconal ministry students Angela Glasel and Drake Schupsky, discerning their call to ministry has not been a linear process.
“I was getting nudges calling me toward ministry,” says Angela, “but I was ignoring them because it felt like, That’s a weird thing to be called to. I didn’t grow up in the church; I found it much later, at a very difficult time of my life. I didn’t think that I would be ‘minister material.’ But then I realized how much church and faith had helped me get through this difficult part of my life, and I thought, Well, there’s something there.”
When Angela raised this possibility of a call with her minister in Edmonton, she prefaced it with, “Please don’t laugh…” Her minister didn’t laugh. She said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come and tell me this.” Sometimes people notice things before you do.
Unlike Angela, Drake did grow up in a church context. When he was being dedicated as a baby, the highly respected minister in his Pentecostal church announced that he had received a special word that this baby was going to do great things for God. “That was kind of placed on me growing up.”
Drake heard stories about pastors being called to vocational full-time ministry, but knew he didn’t want that. “Too emotionally taxing,” he says. “It didn’t look fun. Getting called into ministry looked like kind of a drag.”
In his forties he had a spiritual encounter with God that reawakened his curiosity and caused him to simultaneously deconstruct and reconstruct his faith. “I didn’t go to church for six years, because every church I went to didn’t reflect my experience and the theology that was developing inside me.” Eventually Drake and his partner Steph, feeling a need for spiritual community, found a United Church and a minister whose preaching and theology “lined up” for them, inspiring them to consider developing their property in the BC interior into a spiritual retreat centre.
“This still wasn’t what I’d consider an ‘official’ call,” Drake clarified. “More like being a faithful Christian.”
Angela also underwent a process of deconstruction and reconstruction as she pursued her call, though not having grown up in the church she prefers the term “unpacking.” She also uses the term “icky.”
“I struggled with the icky parts of Christianity, and the state that we’re in right now and the way the term ‘Christian’ is currently being used by people who ultimately are just calling themselves Christian but not following the teachings. So I had to wrestle with, ‘Am I Christian? Do I want to be Christian? What does this look like for me?’”
As Angela discerned her call within the context of church and Christianity, she realized she was mad. And rather than avoid “negative” emotions, she decided that that’s what she should explore. Paraphrasing author Glennon Doyle, she says, “Go in the direction of your anger. I will lead you in the direction of others who feel passionate about the same things.”
When Angela spoke to her minister about feeling called, she didn’t know anything about diaconal ministry. Her minister put her in touch with a CCS student Jen Carter-Morgan who was also living in Edmonton, and said, “Here’s someone you can talk diaconal with.”
When Drake’s beloved minister announced his retirement in a worship service, Drake’s heart sank. But during the sermon Drake heard an inner voice saying, “You can do this.” It was a call that seemed ridiculous, but on the car ride home after church his partner Steph said, “You know, I had this crazy thought during the service…” Drake started to laugh. And cry. “They were scared tears,” says Drake. “And God tears. Fear, awe, and wonder. I knew all my senses were experiencing something I couldn’t quite put to words, and they were contradictory.” The next day they talked it over with their minister, and started on a process toward candidacy for United Church ministry.
Every step of the candidacy process has felt life-giving for Drake, but he is discovering that discernment takes time and patience and a lot of uncertainty. “In the Pentecostal world it seems when someone gets a call, it’s more …grandiose? You heard this call and now it’s your job to obey immediately, so you push your way through and assume that God’s favour will be all over whatever you do.” He initially applied to AST and the ordination stream, but was encouraged in his candidacy interviews to consider CCS and the diaconal stream. So he switched. “Did I hear the call right? Did I discern right? …This sitting in a place of discerning, knowing your humanity and your biases, being aware of how you might misinterpret or mishear a call, that’s hard. But my discomfort in this uncertainty is better received by my whole system than just shifting into ‘obedience mode’. This feels better even though it’s more uncomfortable.”
“I still don’t know the specifics of the call,” he says, “except I do feel very called to CCS, and I guess I still have four years or longer to figure it out.”
Angela took the Learning on Purpose course in 2024. Learning on Purpose is a great place to do discernment. Although accepted into the Diaconal Ministries program at that time, she deferred for a year. As she says, “life happened,” including among other things the tragic loss of a cousin and the spiritual questioning that that evoked. “I was discerning when I didn’t even realize I was discerning,” she says. “There was the formal discernment at the beginning, but then life happened, and all of this unpacking, and I was like, ‘Oh, the discernment’s still happening.’”
“Sometimes it just takes time. It’s OK to take the time you need.”
What is your story of call?
