Guard Your Calling, Frodo (Leadership Journal)

Article speaks for itself. Ok - back to work ... it's calling me :-)

Guard Your Calling, Frodo

Every worthy task can wear you down.

John Ortberg | posted 1/10/2011

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Of course, lots of folks who didn't start in local church ministry will end up there. And we live in a day when job change is a way of life; "40 years and a gold watch" stopped a long time ago.I ran across a striking statistic recently—90 percent of people who enter vocational ministry will end up in another field. (I wish I could remember the source. I'm pretty sure it was reliable, though I know our subculture is filled with what Christian Smith calls "evangelicals using statistics badly." And 80 percent of all statistics are just made up. You can quote me.)

But it got me thinking about the notion of calling.

There is something sacred about being called.

And a sense of calling needs desperately to be guarded.

My daughter and I were re-watching Lord of the Ringsbefore Christmas. At one point, on the last part of the journey through Mordor, Frodo turns to Sam and tells him how badly he wishes he did not have to be the one to carry the Ring. Being the Ring-Bearer was a difficult and dangerous role. He took it up voluntarily; he knew it was a worthy task; he understood in some dim way that he was suited for it—even his weakness was part of his gifting, and yet the cost of it wore him down.

Scholars sometimes speak of a distinctness that Christianity added to the idea of a vocation. The Greeks gloried in achievement; heroism was much to be aspired to. However, it was generally understood as a way to express the strength and greatness of the hero. The hero chose what army to lead and what battle to fight.

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