To prevent both burn-out and loss of faith, it is important to pay attention to our sense of calling or vocation. From a spiritual perspective, we have been called by God for a purpose. There was never any promise that responding to our call would mean an easy life. At times, like Elijah, pursuing our call may result in experiences of total despair. What enables us to survive is the one who has called us. It is critical in this pressured age, to occasionally pause and reconnect with our sense of call and the one who has called us. Below are some possibilities on how to do that. More details are in the ToolBox.
1. Occasionally review your sense of call with a spiritual director.
2. Take an hour and pull off by yourself and review in your own mind the ways in which your call has developed from the beginning until now.
3. Develop a sermon on the biblical sense of call and as you do that, allow it to be a filter through which you reflect on your own sense of call.
4. Gather some colleagues and share your personal stories about being called to the ministry and how that has changed over the years.
5. Acting on the assumption that God has called you to this ministry, ask yourself what God is saying in both the positive and negative experiences you are having.
6. Pose the question, “What might God be calling me to do in the next five years?”, and write a response to that question for 20 minutes without pausing.
7. Since your call is closely aligned with God’s call to your congregation or current ministry, write for twenty minutes in a stream of conscience format about what God’s call might be for your church or ministry.
8. Explore with a trusted colleague or spiritual advisor what new calls might open for you in the future.
9. Go off to a monastery for three or more days and both pray about and talk to an available brother about how God might be speaking to you concerning your future.
10. Write a series of ten statements about your understanding of how God calls people to ministry and then reflect on how this applies to your life.
